Written by Alma Ryrie-Jones
for Friends of Public Housing Victoria
in her document 'HOMES UNDER THREAT'
Public housing estates in the inner urban areas of Melbourne were built following slum clearance in areas long considered fit only for the poor.
But times have changed, and the suburbs around them have changed.
These developments are now located in areas of excellent public transport, vibrant cultural and culinary diversity and convenient closeness to workplaces in the city, entertainment, health services and hospitals.
These areas are now highly desirable and sought after by developers, except for the inconvenient truth that many thousands of people already live there as public tenants and would like to stay there.
It seems that governments and developers would like to find ways of dislodging public tenants, by transferring the ownership and management of their tenancies to others, by removing their rights as government tenants, or by outright threats or evictions.
This is property clearance.
I have been in public housing off and on over 40 years now I am in a senior at 60 I am one of the lucky one, I was speaking to a young mum with 3 children who has been waiting 16 years, when you walk around my suburb of Braybrook you see housing commission home sitting empty going to waste if these home are to old to live in why not pull them down and build new units for the disadvantage instead of them being a eyesore as it does not look good in our suburb knowing there are homless that need a roof over there head THANKS DEE
ReplyDeleteI think it is the same up here in NSW in Millers Point Sydney as well we have in our community had homes stand empty for years on either side of me and others in the area for up to a decade some of them and we used to complain about it to housing to No avail then in march last year the minister announced we all have to move because the morraly corrupt woman wanted to Sell Off Freehold to property Speculators, all the social housing in our community . It seems time to me that all still existing social housing needs a 99year social housing leases for each suburb to maintain social diversity for without diversity there really is No Democracy.
DeleteWhat a great line! Without diversity there is no democracy. The innercity will end up becoming a kind of 'millionaires ghetto'. All the vibrancy, and diversity that attracted people to the area in the first place will be lost. A Yarra councillor ( here in Melbourne ) once told me that without all the multicultural public tenants, Yarra would become pretty boring...As you point out in your comment- money talks louder than anything else. Empty properties left vacant for years would suggest they have been planning these sell-offs for years. No transparency of course with the public.
DeleteShameful.
ReplyDelete