Resistance grows to Victorian Labor’s demolition of public housing

The call went out at 10pm on Sunday, 1 June—workers in hazmat suits would enter a public housing tower in North Melbourne the following morning to begin work. It’s the first step in demolishing the homes of the 50 families still living inside.

Ten hours later, 50 people gathered outside the 33 Alfred Street tower, ready to block any work. We didn’t have to be there long. Within fifteen minutes, three workers in high vis walked out of the precinct, telling community members they had been told not to begin work and citing “hygiene issues”.

The next morning, Tuesday, we were back at 7am with a crowd twice as big. The workers respected the picket, and Homes Victoria, the government department in charge of public housing, soon updated residents that the planned works had been delayed for the week.

It’s a small victory. And it’s a sign that we can build a campaign to resist Labor’s destruction of public housing.

Along with two towers in Flemington, 33 Alfred Street is part of the first tranche of public housing up for demolition as part of the Victorian government’s “urban renewal project”. Ultimately, the project will destroy all 44 of Melbourne’s public housing towers. The plan was one of the final policy announcements of Labor Premier Daniel Andrews in 2023, and is now being carried out by Jacinta Allan’s government.

The government claims an increase in social and affordable housing will offset the units lost in the towers. But behind the spin, the plan is really about the privatisation of Victoria’s public housing stock. It was announced after extensive talks between the government and developers, who will take over the sites to build private apartments.

Only a small portion of all the housing built on the sites across the city will be reserved for privately owned “community and social housing”—in which tenants have fewer rights and more expensive rents than in public housing. Some of it will be touted as “affordable” housing—to be rented privately slightly below the market rate.

The government has admitted that there will be no public housing rebuilt at the Flemington and North Melbourne sites, where the first demolitions are scheduled to occur. The sites will be handed over entirely to private developers. Resisting these demolitions then, as we did last week, is an important first battle.

In many ways, the towers are reminders of the past. Their construction was a product of decades of campaigning by communities and reformers from the 1930s. Today, their 1950s facades have become an iconic part of the inner city skyline, but inside, maintenance has been neglected thanks to restrictions on spending by successive governments. The idea they represent—that the government ought to provide housing at least to society’s most vulnerable—has long been abandoned by the major parties.

Being up close to the towers puts Labor’s spin in perspective. As we stood in the rain and prevented work from beginning, kids from the building were heading out the front door, off to the school up the road. Real families live here, a real community full of migrants and workers and disabled people, who all deserve public housing and a whole lot more. For the government and developers, they are simply in the way: poor people taking up prime inner-city land that could be used to make some cash.

What’s to be done with these people? As soon as the plan was announced, Homes Victoria began knocking on residents’ doors, pushing them to sign contracts agreeing to move out of the buildings. Many residents are migrants who weren’t provided with translations of what they were signing. Those who have moved out already have found themselves in privately owned community housing, with reports of mould and faulty heating.

Many who remain in the towers are holding out for a better deal—relocation to public housing, or the right to return once the redevelopment is complete. Others simply want to continue living in the towers and don’t want to be displaced from their communities and support services. “They want to put us in private housing. But we only know commission housing”, one resident told the rally on Tuesday.

Opposition to Labor’s demolitions has been building since the first announcement.

A central feature has been the class action lawsuit brought against the government by residents of the Flemington towers and progressive lawyers.

Over months of hearings, Homes Victoria argued that it had no obligation to consult residents about the demolitions and admitted that, even if it did, it wouldn’t have listened to their concerns, because the residents had no legal rights that were affected by the decision to demolish their homes! The department also made clear that it was acting completely under the orders of the Labor government.

The court found that the demolitions would have a significant impact on residents’ human rights, but concluded that the government was under no obligation to do anything about this. After the case was dismissed, the government pushed ahead with the demolitions.

The loss in court was a setback, and the residents are considering an appeal. However, we were never going to defeat the government’s plans solely in the courts. The case has held up the government, delayed the demolition and, importantly, sent a signal that people are standing up and fighting back. Residents in the second tranche of towers marked for demolition—in Richmond and South Yarra—have begun organising to resist pressure from Homes Victoria to vacate.

Organising by residents will be key. Defending the towers will require a big campaign on the ground. Last weeks’ mobilisations, bringing together the Greens, Victorian Socialists, renting and housing activists and other community campaigners, were a good start.

Building links with unions will be another important factor: the demolition contract has been handed to construction company John Holland, whose workforce is represented by the construction union. Ultimately, it will be workers who are sent in to destroy this housing. Building a big campaign can help make a case to them that they shouldn’t.

Labor’s drastic plan to knock down all 44 towers presents us with a big challenge. Every step of the way we will have to fight it—from preventing testing and surveying, to building confidence among residents to resist Homes Victoria, to mobilising to stop the actual demolition. But as last week shows, each of these steps presents an opportunity to mobilise, grow our support and put pressure on Labor.