Saying Goodbye to Millers Point, an Ancestral Home to Some Residents

Families who have lived in The Rocks for generations are now preparing to say goodbye, writes Elly Clough.

I moved to The Rocks in December of 2006. I moved into my late grandmother’s apartment and took over her 17+ tenants in two buildings. Being a live-in landlady at the age of 24 with property management experience was… interesting, but I loved it.

Almost all of my family had lived in the buildings at some point. It felt very much like an ancestral home. And the freedom the job afforded me was a wonderful opportunity at that time in my life.

That’s not to say it was without its challenges. The late rent payments, the noise complaints petty arguments between tenants, the wharf rats. One particularly memorable tenant always dressed in all white and handed out prayers printed on tiny squares of paper. He complained once that someone had been breaking into his room and replacing his white t shirts with slightly smaller white t shirts while he was in the shower. But he always paid his rent on time.

In October of 2009 the 20-year leases secured by my grandmother and her fellow landladies expired. The management of these properties was handed over to a community housing organisation, and those of us who were not moved out to other Housing properties at that time were put onto individual leases.

One of my grandmother’s friends lived a block or so up managing another of the rooming houses. When I would visit her she would be sitting in her squeaky rocking chair, chain smoking. The walls were stained sticky yellow and the TV was always on, though she would mute the volume when she had guests. I’d make tea in her little kitchen and she’d tell me about what her tenants were up to and catch me up on the gossip on the street. After the leases expired she was moved to an apartment on High St, one of the properties that are now earmarked for sale. She died within a month.

The recent decision from the government to sell off all the public housing stock is not surprising, but it is disappointing. Despite my personal connection to the terraces my family lived in, I understand that the situation is of another time and agree that it makes sense to lease those buildings as luxury homes and offices and invest that money in more suitable public housing, but the purpose built Sirius building and the dwellings in the Observatory Hill Resumed Area are good public housing.

They are close to services and the argument that they are too expensive to maintain would be easier to swallow if the dwellings hadn’t been purposely run down over decades and the Sirius Building wasn’t purpose built in the 1980s. These properties are good public housing, good for the tenants and good for the city.

Families have lived in Millers Point for generations. (Supplied)

 

A sign is seen on a home at Millers Point in Sydney, Wednesday, March 19, 2014. (AAP)

 

There are many reasons why demographic diversity is important for the vibrancy of an area. The Rocks can be an annoying place to live. The top George St is closed every weekend for The Rocks Markets. Wherever there is a major event on the Harbour Foreshore the area is shutdown and inundated, making it tedious to get in or out of. These annoyances are the kinds of things public housing tenants tolerate without much complaint. I will be surprised if the people who move in and spend millions on these homes will be so tolerant. With the development at Barangaroo and Arts NSW’s proposal for the Walsh Bay Cultural Precinct I predict there will more disruption and more noise and the government is making a rod for its own back by replacing a tolerant community with one that will not tolerate disruptions.

Last year I made the decision to leave The Rocks. My personal circumstances had changed, and I wanted to leave on my own terms. After years of being told by the community housing organisation I then rented from that I would be evicted ‘within two months’ I wanted to live without that anxiety. The thought of being evicted from my ancestral home was overwhelming, but leaving of my own volition felt different. I was extremely privileged to be able to make that decision to leave in my own terms when so many will be forced out with no options.

History is so on the surface in The Rocks. I don’t just mean the architecture and the cobbled streets, it’s the people too. Families who have lived there for many more generations than my family did. People who literally watched the building of the Sydney Opera House from their front window, people who called the area home long before it was the prize property it is now, people who have been a part of building the city they are now being evicted from. The Rocks has been mismanaged and neglected for decades by governments of both stripes, it’s so sad that the people who will suffer are the people who fought so hard for the area they love.

Elly Michelle Clough is a publicist and writer.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/23/comment-saying-goodbye-millers-point-ancestral-home

Residents Rally for Public Housing Meeting

Friday, 11 April, 2014

A large turnout of passionate local residents attended a meeting at Balmain Town Hall last night to protest plans by the State Government to relocate tenants and sell-off public housing.

Leichhardt Mayor Darcy Byrne said representatives of the Millers Point community also attended and received strong, vocal support.

"Public housing tenants in the Inner West are angry and determined to fight alongside the people of Millers Point to save their community.

"Our residents know that if Prue Goward is allowed to get away with selling off homes in Millers Point then Glebe, Leichhardt and Balmain will be next.

"Given the O'Farrell Government's refusal to rule out evicting tenants across the inner city, the only course of action is to prepare to battle them."

Cr Byrne said people from different social and economic backgrounds living together in the same local community is what makes our neighbourhoods great.

“Now is the time for us to stand up and fight to protect public housing in the inner city, before it’s too late,” Cr Byrne said.

The meeting called on the State Government to:
• immediately cease present and any future attempts to relocate and sell-off Housing NSW properties in Millers Point;
• increase Government investment in building new public housing properties, including in the inner city, as well as in maintenance of existing Housing NSW properties to cover a $300M deficit.

The meeting also called on local Councils across the Sydney metropolitan area:
• to take a stand against public housing sell-offs;
• to help build the campaign to save public housing in New South Wales;
• to hold a mass rally to demonstrate the support to save public housing in our city
http://www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au/News-and-Events/Media-Releases/2014/Residents-Rall-for-Public-Housing

Millers Point and The Rocks: cold hard facts

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward has today presented her rebuttal to Anthony Albanese's personal reflection on the proposed sell off all social housing at Millers Point and The Rocks. Says the Minister, let's talk on the level of 'cold hard fact'.

It is a cold, hard fact that selling social housing assets to pay the recurrent costs of the social housing system is precisely the unsustainable approach that alarmed the Auditor-General.

The Minister has stated that the proceeds of sales will be 'reinvested in the social housing system'. She has not stated, however, where any new housing purchased will be, or how much of it there will be – indeed, she has not said that the proceeds will go to the purchase of new housing at all.

The Minister implies an expansion of the social housing stock when she says that for each Millers Point resident Housing NSW could 'help more than five tenants in places like Campbelltown.' We don't think she means to imply that Housing NSW is planning on putting 2045 additional social housing properties in Campbelltown, and in any event, the subsidy multiples the Minister refers to are based on accounting for market rents, which, as we discussed earlier, do not reflect the actual cost of providing housing and related services.

We don't know what Housing NSW is planning. The cold hard fact is that there is no plan.

There's no plan for the local impact of the sales – that is, the loss of affordable rental housing in the inner city. In its response to the social impact impact assessment, NSW Family and Community Services (cold hard FACS?) expressly disavowed any role in developing non-heritage sites for affordable rental in the area, stating that 'development of affordable and mixed tenure housing in Millers Point is a planning consideration for the City of Sydney.'

And there's no plan for the sustainability of the social housing system generally: no asset portfolio strategy, no estates strategy, despite their recommendation by the Auditor-General.

All we have is a decision to sell-off 293 high-value properties... within two years. The previous sales programs in Millers Point proposed to sell 36 properties in eight years. By contrast, what's happening now looks like a fire sale.

That's the strong impression it gives. Back to cold hard facts. Half of Millers Point residents are aged 60 or over. And about one-fifth have lived in their current tenancy for more than 20 years – more if successive tenancies were counted. The Minister refers to their mere 'short-term anguish' on the loss of their homes, neighbours and community. This is, with respect, wishful thinking on the part of the Minister.

 

RESOURCED: http://tunswblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/millers-point-and-rocks-cold-hard-facts.html

'Cowardly' act forces Millers Point residents to move

Last Monday, 63-year-old public housing resident Colin Tooher left hospital after recovering from a heart attack.

On Wednesday morning, he got a shock almost big enough to put him back there, when wife Terry answered a knock on the door of their modest terrace house at 9 Windmill Street, Millers Point.

Two young women from Housing NSW were on the doorstep with a letter informing Mr Tooher that the government-owned house he had occupied from birth would soon be sold and the couple moved to an as-yet unknown destination.



Portrait of Barney Gardner at his home in Millers Point, Sydney. Photo: Tamara Dean

The Toohers were not alone. All over Millers Point, one of Sydney's oldest and most picturesque precincts, long-time public housing residents were getting the same message.

Tenants' spokesman Barney Gardner said the way people were informed of the decision, with no opportunity to see or comment on a social impact study commissioned by the government, had left them seething with anger. ''It was a dog of an act, cowardly,'' he said.

Residents were not the only ones complaining of the government's stealth-bomber tactics. NSW lower house independent MP Alex Greenwich said he contacted Community Services Minister Pru Goward's office as late as Monday asking if a decision had been made on the fate of the precinct and was given a point blank no. (Goward's office claims Greenwich was only told there had been ''no announcement'').


Portrait of Colin and Terry Tooher outside their home in Millers Point, Sydney. Photo: Tamara Dean

Yet, by early Wednesday, when Goward dropped her bombshell, the department had already put a sophisticated media package together.

Nearly 300 public housing properties in Millers Point, near Gloucester Street and the high-rise Sirius apartment building in The Rocks, are to go on the market, with proceeds to be ''reinvested'' in the broader state social housing system.

Goward says the heritage-area properties, many more than a century old, cost four times as much to maintain as public housing elsewhere and that effective subsidies to tenants in Millers Point are three to five times higher than those for public housing tenants in areas like Newcastle or Minto. With 57,000 families on the housing waiting list, she says, she can no longer justify sinking ''millions of dollars into a small number of properties.''

               

Portrait of Colin and Terry Tooher in their home in Millers Point, Sydney. Photo: Tamara Dean

The sale will undoubtedly reap a bonanza. Millers Point, its architectural heritage protected by the union green bans of the 1970s, sits on elevated harbourside land a stone's throw from The Rocks on one side and Barangaroo on the other.

A recent government-commissioned report praised its ''extraordinary range of [early colonial] fine buildings and spaces'', all within walking distance of Sydney's best amenities.

But there is deep scepticism about the sale among housing policy experts contacted by Fairfax Media this week.

Many felt the two-year time frame was too rushed and that the brutal impact on long-term tenants - some of whose families had been in the district for generations - had been underplayed. There was concern too that possible compromises such as partial sale over a longer period, with proceeds ploughed back into public housing renewal within Millers Point, had been overlooked.

And there is considerable doubt about whether proceeds from the sale - which might well reap more than $300 million to $400 million - will be ploughed back into new public housing stock.

''The public housing system is basically bankrupt and the state government is desperate to find ways to prop it up,'' says Hal Pawson, professor of housing research at the University of NSW. ''Asset sales are being used to balance the books.''

Shelter NSW executive officer Mary Perkins also doubts that money from the Millers Point sale will end up back in new public housing stock.

She says phrases used by the minister, such as ''reinvestment'' in the ''social housing system'', are a deliberate fudge.

''If it's not about increasing the supply of stock and it's just about stemming the operating deficit, then it won't create a sustainable system, it will simply be this round of sales followed by the next, followed by the next,'' she says.

Anxious tenants of public housing estates in inner city areas such as Glebe and Woolloomooloo are already wondering if they might be next.

More broadly, policy experts worry about the social and economic impacts of driving lower-income people out of one of the few remaining vestiges of affordable housing close to the city.

Sydney University's associate professor of urban geography, Kurt Iveson, says ''if we run out of all the affordable housing in the city centre, then we've got nobody to teach in the schools, nurse in the hospitals, work in the bars and restaurants to keep the global city humming''.

Pawson agrees, saying: ''There is something slightly seductive about this idea that we can sell these very valuable properties, which potentially could fund the construction of another two of three elsewhere for each one sold … but what you get is a completely socially segregated city where there isn't any affordable housing in any neighbourhood which has a high land price.''

Peter Phibbs, professor of urban planning at Sydney University, says the logical extension of the government's argument is that you ''relocate everyone in housing need out to western NSW''.

There are also the social costs of breaking up a community which, although low-income, has been highly functional compared with newer public housing estates in outer Sydney.

Stretching back to the earliest days of the colony, when the area took its name from a local miller, the point has been home to generations of maritime workers from 19th-century whalers, sealers and wool traders onwards.

When the housing was under the control of NSW Maritime, low-paid workers passed on leases from father to son. This contributed to the high social cohesion of the area, though the tenant mix started changing when the precinct passed to the control of the Department of Housing in the mid-1980s.
In 2003, the whole of Millers Point was listed on the state heritage register as a ''living cultural landscape'' with ''an unusually high and rare degree of social significance''.

Former Whitlam urban development minister Tom Uren told Fairfax Media this week ''the people of the inner city are a very special breed''.

Uren was responsible for buying the Glebe housing estate from the Anglican Church in 1974 for public housing and says ''the social mix is good for people - that's been my philosophy all my life''.
Particular concern has been raised by housing policy experts about the long-term elderly residents of Millers Point. They say the rush to get them out directly contradicts the competing philosophy of the Health Department, to let people ''age in place''.

Phipps says ''the big risk for an older person is social isolation; the last thing you want to do is move someone out of a network where people keep an eye out for them and they can navigate their way around a neighbourhood''.

He says he is ''OK with them selling some houses but in a way that minimises social disruption …

What the government is doing at the moment is getting a large piece of four by two and whacking them around the head''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/cowardly-act-forces-millers-point-residents-to-move-20140321-358g9.html

Alex Greenwich Interview on the The Project about Millers Point

Millers Point Public Housing to go

 Friday March 21, 2014

When Sydney grandfather Colin Tooher's uncle died, he left behind a curious document: a government certificate listing his birthplace as 'USFR'.

It took him a couple of years to realise USFR stood for the upstairs front room in the old terrace on Windmill Street, the place his family has called home for six generations.

On Wednesday, he received another piece of paper from the government: a pro forma from the NSW Community Services Department chirpily headed 'Moving to a new home'.

Tooher is one of about 400 public housing tenants whose Millers Point properties will be sold off by a state government keen to capitalise on soaring property values along Sydney's harbour foreshore.
The brutalist Sirius Tower around the corner is up for sale, too.

'I've lived here all me life,' Tooher tells AAP.

'Born here. And now, we got this.'

NSW Communities Minister Pru Goward calls it a numbers game: she cannot justify annual maintenance bills of up to $44,000 each for these ailing terraces when 57,000 low-income families are waiting for a chance at a home.

'I cannot look taxpayers in NSW in the eye, I cannot look other public housing tenants in the eye and I cannot look the 57,000 people on the waiting list in the eye when we preside over such an unfair distribution of subsidies,' Goward told reporters this week.

For every tenant in upmarket Millers Point, the government says, it could subsidise three tenants in Campbelltown, in the city's southwest, or five down the coast in Warrawong.
Yet Tooher has known no other home.

He was a kid here in the 1950s, when the wharfies and sailors ruled one of Australia's oldest suburbs.
'We played in the streets because the cars weren't around like today,' he tells AAP.

'Our first swimming lesson was down in Walsh Bay, in the harbour. No nets! Just dived straight off the wharf.'

He grew up amid the rough-and-tumble and wild drinking of this neighbourhood, where he would go on to raise three children of his own.

'We'd be playing down in Lower Fort Street and the seamen would say, 'Oh, there's a fight up the Captain Cook Hotel!'' Tooher laughs.

'Well, forget the game of marbles. We'd be straight up there to watch the fight.'

These are the streets Jack Mundey and the union green bans of the 1970s fought to protect.

But those who face eviction remember when there wasn't much love for The Hungry Mile.

Barney Gardner has spent all his 65 years on High Street.

'When the place where I live was built in 1910, they were built for the maritime workers,' he says.

'No one wanted to live here. It had a stigma about it.'

The woolsheds and the bond stores needed workers, and the cheap lodgings lured them in.

Like so many of those who have stayed through the decades, there's salt in Gardner's veins: his father worked on the wharves, his mother sold food to the dock workers, and he would go on to work on the waterfront for a spell, too.

'Our first landlord was the Foreshore Authority, then the Maritime Board of Services. We didn't get rent assistance,' he says.

'It was not a welfare area 'til the Housing Commission took over.'

If it wasn't a welfare suburb before. It is now.

For every 50 Millers Point public housing tenants, according to official figures, 47 rely on Centrelink payments as their primary source of income.

But Gardner says the long-term 'Pointers' are mostly retired blue-collar workers.

'They contributed to society. They paid their taxes. They paid the rent that was required of them,' he says.

'They're living here and now they're being told no, you're not good enough. You're not good enough to live in this area.'

Though there was shock at this week's announcement, there have been rumblings about sell-offs in this area for more than a century.

Authorities during the slum days of the early 20th century seized on a plague outbreak to resume land around the foreshore, though there were murmurs the razing of homes might have been driven less by public health concerns and more by construction plans for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

'The Bubonic Plague,' read the headline for one report in the January 25, 1900, edition of The Sydney Morning Herald.

'Suspicious Case in Sydney: A Family Quarantined. No Need for Alarm.'

The patient was one Arthur Payne of Ferry Lane, Millers Point, a 35-year-old lorry and horse driver employed by the Central Wharf Company.

Payne, his wife, three small children, a servant and a female relative were carted off to quarantine, and No.10 Ferry Lane was 'thoroughly fumigated'.

By the following year, the Sydney Harbour Trust had resumed hundreds of properties around the Rocks and Millers Point - the red-brick homes and squat terraces that would pass into Housing Commission hands in the 1980s.

Today, the mariners and the scent of lanolin are long gone.

Instead, there is the grocery store selling aged balsamic and organic polenta, and the throngs of well-heeled theatre-goers on Hickson Road.

On Wednesday, in the same park where megaphone-emboldened tenants promised to fight, a young bride in a sweeping gown posed for photographs.

Here, in the sunshine, Colin Tooher vows he will not go.

He says he cannot imagine a life in Campbelltown on Sydney's southwestern fringe.

'I can walk down here of a night and I have not got one bit of fear because I'm in me neighbourhood,' he says.

'Even if I go up to Park Street, I'm looking around, thinking, 'Is this bloke drunk? Am I going to get mugged?'

'Well, once I walk through the Argyle Cut here, I know I'm home.'

Read More: http://www.skynews.com.au/local/article.aspx?id=960023

Heritage Impact Ignored in Proposed Sale of Historic Houses in The Rocks area, says National Trust

 

 The National Trust wants the government to reconsider its decision to sell 200 historic homes. Photo: Tamara Dean

 

Nicole Hasham State Politics reporter

The O'Farrell government must halt the sale of 200 historic homes at Millers Point, because it failed to properly assess the potential heritage damage or seek appropriate advice, the National Trust says.

The decision has raised fears that other public housing sites are also earmarked for sale.

Private buyers have already been encouraged to register their interest in public housing properties at Millers Point and the Rocks, where 400 public housing tenants are set to be evicted over the next two years.

The government says the heritage value of Millers Point will be protected. Critics argue the sale ignores the social significance of the public housing tenants, some of whom have links to the suburb stretching back five generations.

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National Trust NSW chief executive Brian Scarsbrick called for an immediate halt to the sales process and evictions. Mr Scarsbrick said the trust was not consulted ''despite the entire area being listed on the National Trust register'' for the past 36 years.

The suburb of Millers Point is also listed on the state heritage register as a ''living cultural landscape'' with ''an unusually high and rare degree of social significance''.

Mr Scarsbrick said the government must consult the community and give ''proper consideration'' to the state and national heritage impacts.

The sale is expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars.

Community Services Minister Pru Goward says the proceeds will be reinvested into social housing to help alleviate long waiting lists.

An Office of Environment and Heritage spokeswoman said the sale was allowed under heritage laws.
The NSW Heritage Council must approve changes that affect the buildings, and may also require measures to maintain social significance, such as ''on-site interpretation of the social values and collating an oral history'', the spokeswoman said.

The decision has raised fears that other public housing sites on prime land are also earmarked for sale.

Leichhardt mayor Darcy Byrne will write to other inner-city councils including the City of Sydney, Ashfield, Marrickville, North Sydney, Randwick, Rockdale, Waverley and Woollahra, asking them to join a campaign to prevent public housing sell-offs.

The government's Land and Housing Corporation sells about 1000 public housing properties a year to help manage a massive budget shortfall - an approach described by an auditor-general's report last year as ''not financially sustainable''.

A department spokesman said it would start building 276 new dwellings this financial year and expects to finish another 379.

Housing officials last week began interviewing tenants to determine where they will move to.
Millers Point resident action group chairman John McInerney said it had urged residents not to attend any meetings until legal options had been explored.

Tenant advocates have also advised residents to delay relocations to allow more time to fight the evictions. However a department spokesman said tenants who met with officials soon ''will have more options than tenants who leave things to the last minute''.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/heritage-impact-ignored-in-proposed-sale-of-historic-houses-in-the-rocks-area-says-national-trust-20140330-35rxd.html#ixzz2xXm8tCtR

Another City Landmark Gets The Brush-Off

It could make a beautiful penthouse or a restaurant with 360 degree views..

 

Hit list: The heritage-listed MSB Tower is set to be demolished. Photo: Quentin Jones


Almost every structure Jane Bennett has painted has been demolished, such is Sydney's wont for a blank canvas on which to build a more fashionable harbour.

With brushes and oils she captured the last ships to leave the Hungry Mile, and the Pyrmont Power Station site before the Star casino took over. And now, three decades after she began painting the 87-metre tall harbour control tower at Millers Point, that too is set to be erased.

The Barangaroo Delivery Authority has recommended that the 40-year-old structure be knocked down to make way for redevelopment at the old wharf site.

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The tower is considered the most prominent reminder of Sydney Harbour's commercial shipping past.
A spokeswoman said the board voted for its demolition "in keeping with the vision for a spectacular park". The tower occupies 640 square metres, which the authority plans to incorporate into a simulated natural headland and cultural space.

Bennett, Sydney Ports' artist-in-residence and painter of "doomed things", laments the impending loss. "We've got a dreadful record with our history, particularly our industrial history. There won't be anything left," she said.

"[The tower] has this strangely classical look, like a classical column. I know it's concrete and functional, but it certainly has a lot more architectural qualities than a Meriton block."

The tower opened in 1974 to give maritime controllers the best possible views of the harbour and wharves and ensure safe passage for thousands of ships each year.

It was manned 24 hours a day, but has not been used since 2011 when vessel control services for Sydney Harbour moved to Port Botany.

The authority bought the concrete, steel and glass structure from Sydney Ports for $2.6 million.
Many view it as a blight on the skyline - it has been variously dubbed the "concrete mushroom" and a "hypodermic in God's bum".

It was also known as ''the Pill" because it controlled berths in the harbour. The National Trust says it symbolises more than 200 years of shipping trade in Sydney and should be conserved and reused.
The government must approve the removal. Bennett wonders why the structure, with its "magnificent 360-degree views", could not be turned into a restaurant or museum. She watched several New Year's Eve celebrations from the tower. "The fireworks were underneath you and you'd just get this river of fire," she said.

"Afterwards you'd get this smoke haze, and the sky wouldn't be black - it would be green, or burgundy, or it would have a wonderful yellow afterglow."

The authority is preparing a planning application for the tower's removal. A spokeswoman said it considered several options for retaining the tower, including tourism or artistic uses, however the cost was "three to six times greater than demolition".

Precision Demolition managing director Sean Miller said the removal must consider nearby terrace homes at Millers Point and existing structures at the Barangaroo site. The tower's cabin could be removed and the column pulled down in sections, or there may be room to just ''tip it over'', he said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/another-city-landmark-gets-the-brushoff-20140330-35rxa.html#ixzz2xXoZReIZ

PUBLIC HOUSING: Demolition by neglect?

Over 600 public housing households in Millers Point and the Rocks face an uncertain future, as the state government considers the future of public housing in the area.

Tenants have condemned the uncertainty, and those who favour breaking up their 200 year old community in favour of wealthy vested interests. Many say they are prepared to fight to keep their homes and their community.

Housing NSW says that if the public housing in the area is sold off, the money will be used to purchase more housing elsewhere. Tenants say the government’s deliberations take no account of their unique and long standing community.

Millers Point has been a working class community in Sydney since soon after white settlement. For decades the area has held public and low cost housing, owned over the years by Housing NSW, the Maritime Services Board and private landlords operating out of the MSB premises.

The history of Millers Point and the Rocks parallels that of Sydney. For most of its history, the area was a slum. It was the home of the notorious razor gangs until the late 19th century. Bubonic plague broke out there at the turn of the 20th century, and many buildings were demolished. More were knocked down to accommodate the Harbour Bridge. In the 1970s the Askin government tried to demolish all housing in the area, only to be stopped by a determined community and green bans imposed by the Builders Labourers Federation.



Now, spurred on by the Barangaroo development and the prospect of James Packer’s casino development, wealthy interests are eying off the area.

Sixty concerned tenants attended a public meeting in Millers Point, called by independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, and attended by representatives of Housing NSW and the Barangaroo developers.

Residents at the meeting spoke against Housing NSW’s "community demolition" by neglect. Tenants spoke of how they had reported repairs issues to Housing NSW, only to be told there was no money and the repairs would not be done. In many cases, tenants reported, Housing NSW offered to transfer affected tenants out of the area.

According to residents, Housing NSW has refurbished buildings once public tenants have been moved out. Tenants at the meeting said that refurbished buildings have been left vacant, vandalised, refurbished again, and vandalised again.

Although there are vacant Housing NSW properties on High Street, Millers Point, Housing NSW is not putting new tenants into them.

James Packer has expressed an interest in using this area as a part of his casino plans.

In November 2012, Alex Greenwich MP said of the area: "Alarmingly, it seems that the current Government intends to sell occupied homes and move tenants, and many have been in residence for years – some for five generations. Selling homes and removing low income tenants will have a major impact on this community… Selling high value inner city properties is like selling the family silver; it will also cleanse the area
Source> http://www.tenantsrights.org.au/Publications_Archive/PUBLIC%20HOUSING_%20Demolition%20by%20neglect.pdf 

The truth about 'generations' of tenants at Millers Point and The Rocks

http://tunswblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/the-truth-about-generations-of-tenants.html

The truth about 'generations' of tenants at Millers Point and The Rocks

There's another incorrect impression getting around in media reports about tenants at Millers Points and The Rocks whose families have lived there 'for generations'.

Furious Miranda Devine at the Telegraph castigated them as 'hereditary housos' (no link – we don't link to the Terror). And lots of other talkback callers and newspaper commenters have gotten indignant at the thought that multiple generations of a family should live in public housing.

 

 

As we say, the impression is incorrect.

There's a variety of people living in social housing at Millers Point and The Rocks. Most got their tenancies according to the usual rules for social housing: they applied to Housing NSW (or before it, the NSW Housing Commission); were eligible for a tenancy in inner city; and, when a vacancy came up in Millers Point or The Rocks, they accepted it.

Some others became tenants in another way – but this is also quite within the usual rules for social housing. They first lived in their homes as non-tenant members of their households (typically, as the tenant' spouse or adult child) and when the tenant died or moved away permanently (typically, to a nursing home), they applied for 'succession' of the tenancy. (At least until recently, it was not considered reasonable or humane to insist that a person eligible for social housing and living in social housing should have to move out of social housing because the household member on the tenancy agreement had died or moved away.)

A small but significant number of tenants at Millers Point came to live there in different circumstances. They've lived there since before the Housing Commission took over the properties in the 1980s. Originally, their landlord was the Maritime Services Board, which let dwellings in Millers Point to people who worked in harbourside industries. Many of them worked on the wharves or the ships in dock, some of them operated boarding houses for workers and retirees from those industries (like our correspondent's mother, who was originally a nurse).

And some of these people are from families that have lived and worked in Millers Point for generations. (The MSB itself took over from the Sydney Harbour Trust, which had let dwellings to workers since the turn of the century, when it resumed the area following the 1900 bubonic plague.) Many of these people are not working now, on account of their advancing age, but they did work, as did the generations before them.

The social impact assessment (SIA) reports on the lengths of tenancies at Millers Point :

• 157 (45 percent) have been in their current tenancy for 10 years or less; 
• 91 (26 per cent) have been there for 10-20 years;
• 66 (19 per cent) have been there more than 20-30 years;
• two have been there more than 30 years.

There's a big proviso on these figures: they refer only to tenants' current tenancies, and some tenants have had prior tenancies in Millers Point, having moved premises as circumstances change. So the figures generally undercount the length of tenancies in Millers Point. 

The SIA also reports that there are 12 households (containing 15 persons) whose families have lived in Millers Point for 'generations.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthony Albanese's Interview with 2UE's Angela Catterns

Click on the link listen to Interview:
http://www.2ue.com.au/blogs/2ue-blog/albanese-defends-public-housing/20140401-35v3v.html

Lessons for Millers Point from Anthony Albanese's Mother



Like many residents of Millers Point, I was raised in a public housing property where I was born in 1963. My first community-based political campaign in the late 1970s, was fighting Sydney City Council, which had decided to sell our council house in Camperdown.

It was a battle that was fundamental to my identity and critical to the person I am today.

My mother had been born in this home in 1936 and was raising me there as a single parent. Her parents had been the first residents in the home after the Alexandra Dwellings estate was built in 1927.

For my family, this was more than just bricks and mortar. It was our home for three generations.

It sat in the centre of a proud working class community, made up of people as firmly anchored in the inner city as my own family.

The sense of community was enhanced by it being something of an island - surrounded by the Children’s Hospital, factories and light industry.

It was our home. We cared for it as though we had built it with our own hands, renovating and painting it at our expense to keep it up to scratch.

Yet the council was, as my worried mother said at the time, treating us with no respect. It was as though we did not matter.

My school friends from Millers Point at St Mary’s Cathedral School, supported our campaign because they understood the importance of security of home and community.

Months of tension and uncertainty followed, until the conservatives lost control of the council to Labor and the sell-off was shelved.

I lived at Camperdown for years afterward as I completed my education.

It remained my mother’s home until she passed away in 2001.

Today about 400 residents of Millers Point facing eviction at the hands of the NSW Liberals are suffering the same apprehension and uncertainty I remember so well.

For many, the first they heard of the government’s plan to sell their homes was a cold-hearted eviction notice slid under the door.

No respect.

The government appears to have made no attempt to weigh the financial gains of a sell-off against the social losses involved in the devastation of a community.

I was pleased to read in The Sydney Morning Herald on Monday that the National Trust is opposing the move because of the heritage value of the buildings at Millers Point.

But heritage is about much more than just buildings.

It’s about people.

Miller’s Point is a community – a living, breathing mixture of people that adds to the diversity of the broader Sydney community.

Successful cities are not disconnected enclaves of privilege and disadvantage. They are diverse. Their people come from a mixture of backgrounds.

The logic that only wealthy people should be able to live at Millers Point is a formula for a divided city based on haves and have-nots.

It also points to further public housing sell-offs in Sydney down the track.

That’s out of line with the values of most Australians who understand that a community is only as good as the way in which it treats its least-advantaged members.

Recently I read in The Sydney Morning Herald an elderly resident of Millers Point quoted as saying: “These people cannot come in and walk all over us and turf us out like we are rubbish’’.

It was as though I heard my own mother’s voice ringing down the years.

More than 800,000 Australians live in social housing, including a quarter of a million in NSW alone.

They matter.

Sydney, we can do better than this. Anthony Albanese is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/lessons-for-millers-point-from-anthony-albaneses-mother-20140331-zqozg.html#ixzz2xa7DzBYX


Shadow Ministerial Interview Transcripts

Transcript – ABC Radio 702 Mornings

Subject/s: Millers Point housing, Budget, Senate election, trade unions, light rail, climate change, asylum seekers 

HOST: Federal Infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese is here this morning, good morning.

ALBANESE: Good to be with you Linda.

HOST: The Budget in a moment, among other things, but you’ve penned a missive for the Sydney Morning Herald this morning telling your story of growing up in public housing in Camperdown, and accusing the State Government of cold hearted eviction notices to the Millers Point residents. You’ve also said the government has failed to weigh up the social losses against the financial gains. Aren’t you romanticising things when in the case of Miller’s Point, it’s more a question of how do we accommodate a long list of people wanting public housing when there are tight budgets?

ALBANESE: Not at all. Successful cities are ones that celebrate their diversity. They’re ones that don’t have suburbs of haves and have nots. If you take the principle of Millers Point to its logical conclusion, you’ll also be selling public housing in Balmain, in Glebe, in Newtown, in a whole range of suburbs where it currently exists. But most importantly, this is a question about community, and whether we value not just the heritage of buildings, but also the heritage of social history that exists in real people, in real homes.

HOST: The community services minister, Pru Goward joined us yesterday. She said the residents have two years to relocate and that’s reasonable, she said they would move to social housing in the city’s inner ring, that was her description. She’s also talked about injuries to older tenants in those older terraces, [climbing stairs] up and down, and that in the past they’ve had to move people because of that. What’s more she’s said that there’s a misconception about the makeup of Millers Point.
PRU GOWARD, COMMUNITY SERVICES MINISTER: I mean 94% of people who live in Millers Point properties are on Centrelink benefits, so this romance about a low income working class suburb might have been true once when the MUA used those properties for their workers but it’s not true today. I mean we’ve got a huge number of people with mental illness. We’ve got elderly people. About half the people who live in Millers Point are of working age, but they’re not working.
HOST: That was Pru Goward talking to us yesterday. Your response?

ALBANESE: Well they are people who’ve lived in that community for a long time. There are people who have lived there for more than 80 years. They deserve better than getting what effectively an eviction notice under their front door.

HOST: It might have been able to be handled better, but the wider principle of the changing mix of housing and the wider economic demands is very real, isn’t it?

ALBANESE: What they’re talking about is selling all of the housing. Moving everyone out, compulsorily, at one time. I noticed yesterday on your program you had someone talking about the economic nonsense of putting all the houses on the market at once. Even from that perspective, it doesn’t make any sense.  This is a debate about community that we have to have. I grew up in a housing estate in Camperdown that was City Council housing. In that community we were surrounded by the Children’s Hospital and factories, and there was a real sense of community there. People looked after each other. I spoke today about my mother being born and dying in the one house. She lived there 65 years. For her, and for my family, that lived there for three generations, we renovated it, we painted it, we looked after it as if it were a private home.

Disconnecting people from their communities is of concern. The logic of Pru Goward’s comments mean that the next stage will be to move people on from Pyrmont, from Ultimo, where there is still public housing. Our city needs diversity. After the work that Frank Sartor did to attract residential living in the city it certainly changed the composition. And that’s a good thing.
HOST: But there are a lot of residents living in the cities. There are a lot of students. There are a lot of older people. Pru Goward mentioned various other facilities. It’s not as if they’re being banished just because they’re working people.

ALBANESE: They’re being told to leave because they live in public housing. This is an attempt to remove all public housing from that city area, from Millers Point. That’s an important part of its culture. It began as Maritime Service Board housing before it was transferred to the Housing Department. These are people who have a real connection with the area. From time to time of course, people should be found alternative accommodation, but not if the move is just about economics rather than people.

HOST: The economics are pretty real, I mean the waiting list…

ALBANESE: So is selling the entire Glebe estate. It would be worth a motza. If you don’t challenge that logic, then that will be next. We’ll find ourselves in a situation where we say no matter how long you’ve lived in an area, no matter how strong your connections to the local community, we can say we’ll move you on, because it suits the economics of the time. When I was at school and living in Camperdown and hanging around Millers Point, it wasn’t as desirable as it is now. It wasn’t the sort of place people were clamoring to live in. Now just because it is, to treat people with no respect is unacceptable. That is the problem here. We need to have that debate, about community and what makes up a successful community.

National Trust Criticises Sale of Public Housing in Millers Point

The National Trust has criticised the New South Wales Government for what it describes as a lack of consultation over the sale of historic public housing properties at Sydney's Millers Point.

 

400 residents will be evicted over a two year period when nearly 300 homes are sold including 200 historic houses at Millers Point and The Rocks.

The National Trust's Advocacy Director, Graham Quint, says the social significance of the homes and their occupants has been overlooked.

"It's the speed with which it's occurring and the lack of consultation," he said.

"This is an incredibly important area, there aren't many areas which are actually listed for their social significance, and it needs to be treated more thoughtfully. You just don't evict the number of people who are being evicted now and think you won't disturb the very important social fabric that's there."

Mr Quint says the heritage value of the area and its people have been ignored by the State Government.

"Millers Point is the oldest surviving continuously inhabited urban residential precinct in Australia's european settlement history,' he said.

"The buildings they've been listed, the area's twice been listed. Now the second State Heritage listing specifically spoke about the social history and these people who are about to be evicted."

The Family and Community Services Minister, Pru Goward, has rejected the criticism

Ms Goward says the reasons for selling the homes outweigh the concerns.

"There are better places in Sydney for those families and that's what I want to do," she said.

"And this is about fairness, this is about me and the Government being able to look at 57,000 people on the waiting list and saying no no you can't have a house, sure, because we've got people there living in very very valuable properties who want to stay."

Professor Peter Phibbs from the University of Sydney says the Government has ignored many of the recommendations made in a social impact study done on the plan.

He says one of the key recommendations was to relocate residents on spare land in the same area.

"The thing that worries me about it, it's almost like Pru Goward as the Minister for Family and Community services seems to be the Minister for real estate, and not actually thinking about the needs of the tenants down there," he said.

"I think the Government could meet their economic and their social objectives if they basically looked at some smarter policy options."

Photo: Public housing tenant Patricia Haub, 77, with her dog Randy, outside her home in Millers Point.