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
Saturday, 12 April 2014
Thursday, 3 April 2014
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.
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.
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
'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
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 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.
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.
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
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
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.
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 :
The SIA also reports that there are 12 households (containing 15 persons) whose families have lived in Millers Point for 'generations.'
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Saving the Community
Sunday
30th March 2014.......Saving Our Community........Smiling In The Face Of Adversity...Go Girls
Go Girls
Go Girls
Jack Mundey Story at The Rocks Sydney... Saved the soul of Sydney
The story or legend has not been forgotten..Much of Sydney has been saved....
Through the efforts of The residents action Groups and the BLF Green Bands.
Sydneysiders and visitors should be grateful The Rocks was saved from demolition. It’s a vibrant place these days.
Sydneysiders and visitors should be grateful The Rocks was saved from demolition. It’s a vibrant place these days.
Saturday, 29 March 2014
Millers Point for Sale
21 March 2014: Millers Point for Sale
This week the state government announced plans to sell off 293 public housing properties in Millers Point and The Rocks. Residents of Millers Point and The Rocks must be thinking here we go again, as this is not the first time the housing has been considered for sale.
The area has a long history of conflict over housing and housing rights, spanning most of the twentieth century and now the first decades of the twenty first. It also has a long history of publically owned housing.
In 1900 the arrival of the plague in Sydney heralded the resumption of Millers Point and The Rocks by the state. Residents’ houses were resumed and demolished, and the government became the new landlord. To replace those lost the Sydney Harbour Trust, and then the State Housing Board, built new apartments and flats between 1908 and about 1915 to house the workers, many of them wharf labourers, who had lived in the area.
In 1936 the Trust was reconstituted as the Maritime Services Board, and responsibility for housing was divested to the MSB. The MSB provided the houses for workers and their families already in the area, rather then what we would consider needs based housing that Housing NSW provides now. Some of these families were second or third generation residents. This practice of inheriting the house continued until the late 1980s, when with the declining wharf usage in the area, the MSB handed control of housing to the NSW Housing commission, putting Millers Point into the general pool of housing.
In 1988 the then Greiner Liberal Government made the first attempt to sell properties in the area. In November the sale of two hotels, the Hero of Waterloo and the Harbour View, was advertised. After protests about undermining the character of the area, the sales went ahead with Conservation Orders on the hotels to protect them. Attempts to sell some of the shops and residences above them the following year was meet with more opposition, and the sales were deferred. Research into the area as part of the proposal, concluded that Millers Point was an area of national significance, with an outstanding urban significance best managed through ongoing government ownership.
In The Rocks, the current proposal is also to sell the Sirius apartment block. This block was built in 1979 to house those long term residents who had lost their houses in the demolitions on the 1960s and early 1970s that had led to the Green Bans by the BLF. The Sirius apartments were a revolution in public housing in NSW. Designed by Tao Gofers and Government Architects for NSW Housing Commission, the modernist design incorporated individual refinements for residents determined through interviews with the prospective tenants. Much like in Millers Point, the residents included families who had lived in The Rocks since the colonial period.
The question is who does the city belong to? Is it only for the rich, those who can pay up for harbour views? What about public housing in other increasingly exclusive suburbs like Newtown, Redfern, Balmain, Glebe? Any what about diversity, vibrant communities, a fair go for all?
http://scratchingsydneyssurface.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/21-march-2014-millers-point-for-sale/
The area has a long history of conflict over housing and housing rights, spanning most of the twentieth century and now the first decades of the twenty first. It also has a long history of publically owned housing.
In 1900 the arrival of the plague in Sydney heralded the resumption of Millers Point and The Rocks by the state. Residents’ houses were resumed and demolished, and the government became the new landlord. To replace those lost the Sydney Harbour Trust, and then the State Housing Board, built new apartments and flats between 1908 and about 1915 to house the workers, many of them wharf labourers, who had lived in the area.
In 1936 the Trust was reconstituted as the Maritime Services Board, and responsibility for housing was divested to the MSB. The MSB provided the houses for workers and their families already in the area, rather then what we would consider needs based housing that Housing NSW provides now. Some of these families were second or third generation residents. This practice of inheriting the house continued until the late 1980s, when with the declining wharf usage in the area, the MSB handed control of housing to the NSW Housing commission, putting Millers Point into the general pool of housing.
In 1988 the then Greiner Liberal Government made the first attempt to sell properties in the area. In November the sale of two hotels, the Hero of Waterloo and the Harbour View, was advertised. After protests about undermining the character of the area, the sales went ahead with Conservation Orders on the hotels to protect them. Attempts to sell some of the shops and residences above them the following year was meet with more opposition, and the sales were deferred. Research into the area as part of the proposal, concluded that Millers Point was an area of national significance, with an outstanding urban significance best managed through ongoing government ownership.
In The Rocks, the current proposal is also to sell the Sirius apartment block. This block was built in 1979 to house those long term residents who had lost their houses in the demolitions on the 1960s and early 1970s that had led to the Green Bans by the BLF. The Sirius apartments were a revolution in public housing in NSW. Designed by Tao Gofers and Government Architects for NSW Housing Commission, the modernist design incorporated individual refinements for residents determined through interviews with the prospective tenants. Much like in Millers Point, the residents included families who had lived in The Rocks since the colonial period.
One historian has commented that the Sirius building is ‘an artefact of a time when governments believed that all citizens deserved quality housing’. Those days may be coming to an end. Mind you they’re a tough bunch down there and have won fights before.
The question is who does the city belong to? Is it only for the rich, those who can pay up for harbour views? What about public housing in other increasingly exclusive suburbs like Newtown, Redfern, Balmain, Glebe? Any what about diversity, vibrant communities, a fair go for all?
http://scratchingsydneyssurface.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/21-march-2014-millers-point-for-sale/
Sad state if there’s no place for poor in our city
THE people of Millers Point have not seen or heard from Christine Forster recently. If she spent more time with her constituents, her opinion piece in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph might not have been a rehash of the government’s media releases and spin.
Since being elected I have worked with the residents of Millers Point and the state government to seek an outcome that would protect this part of Australia’s history.
Having convinced the government of the need for its ageing population to be near services, it initiated a Social Impact Assessment. The assessment recommended a number of options that would have retained housing for those most in need. Despite promises, the government failed to release the study before making its decision, probably because the study did not support a wholesale sell-off.
Former Liberal minister Greg Pearce devised a plan to retain around 150 properties. Sadly these were discarded by the government, which is now planning a clearance sale. I cannot think of a term other than “social cleansing” to describe the systematic removal of all poor, vulnerable and elderly people.
Media is repeatedly shown a few terraces that are apparently “too good” for public housing tenants, but many properties are low-key 1980s units, without views apart from the Barangaroo construction site.
The “massive subsidies” the government alleges these residents receive are just based on the difference between market rent that someone made up and the rent paid by tenants — which is based on income, the same as for all social housing tenants.
Many tenants make their own repairs, because the government has neglected them pretty well since the then Housing Commission took them over. Maritime Services gave the land to the government years back to ensure our city had a place for low-income earners and vulnerable groups.
The decision to sell fails to address the vacuum of social and affordable housing in the inner city.
Sadly the government says we need a casino in this area but not a community that supports aged, ill and frail people.
Alex Greenwich is an independent NSW MP
Since being elected I have worked with the residents of Millers Point and the state government to seek an outcome that would protect this part of Australia’s history.
Having convinced the government of the need for its ageing population to be near services, it initiated a Social Impact Assessment. The assessment recommended a number of options that would have retained housing for those most in need. Despite promises, the government failed to release the study before making its decision, probably because the study did not support a wholesale sell-off.
Former Liberal minister Greg Pearce devised a plan to retain around 150 properties. Sadly these were discarded by the government, which is now planning a clearance sale. I cannot think of a term other than “social cleansing” to describe the systematic removal of all poor, vulnerable and elderly people.
Media is repeatedly shown a few terraces that are apparently “too good” for public housing tenants, but many properties are low-key 1980s units, without views apart from the Barangaroo construction site.
The “massive subsidies” the government alleges these residents receive are just based on the difference between market rent that someone made up and the rent paid by tenants — which is based on income, the same as for all social housing tenants.
Many tenants make their own repairs, because the government has neglected them pretty well since the then Housing Commission took them over. Maritime Services gave the land to the government years back to ensure our city had a place for low-income earners and vulnerable groups.
The decision to sell fails to address the vacuum of social and affordable housing in the inner city.
Sadly the government says we need a casino in this area but not a community that supports aged, ill and frail people.
Alex Greenwich is an independent NSW MP
Millers Point faces ‘social cleansing’
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Community Services Minister Pru Goward announced that 293 public housing in Millers Point and The Rocks on Sydney's harbourside would be sold. The billions gained would be used to invest in public housing in the rest of the state, Goward said. But the sell-off would come at a human cost — the destruction of the close-knit working-class community that has existed there for hundreds of years.
Barney Gardner is a well-known community leader and a member of Millers Point Save Our Homes. The 65-year-old has lived in Millers Point all his life. For him and many others, the government's announcement is a tragedy.
Millers Point has a long history of hosting Sydney's poor workers. Gardner told Green Left Weekly: “People say Australia was born on a sheep's back. That may be true, but all that wool had to go somewhere, and it came here to be exported.”
The area originally housed mainly maritime workers who worked on the nearby wharves. The rents were cheap because of the nature of the area. In fact, up until only a few decades ago, the wealthier denizens of Sydney looked down on the area.
“The roads were our playgrounds, we swam down in the harbour, we would go fishing because you could do it for free down on the wharves,” Gardner said.
But the area has changed markedly. “I've seen a lot of the old woolstores turned into offices, and a lot of the offices turned into apartments. This wasn’t done for the benefit for the public housing tenants, but we still got along with all these people. We have no jealousy or animosity towards them.”
Indeed, Gardner told GLW that many new private residents love the simple fact that people say hello to each other in the streets, a rarity in the rest of the bustling metropolis.
The community’s spirit remains high, but public housing conditions have deteriorated. "They didn’t continue doing the regular repairs that the maritime board did, who previously managed our housing. Houses began to fall into disrepair, some of the places are shocking. But we do the best we can, we all help each other out. I personally have helped paint two houses.”
The residents see a long-term trend of the department seems to deliberately run down the public housing tenancy. "I've been told now that since 2009, no families were being moved into this area. They were moving single elderly people in, they were moving vulnerable people in. It was a form of attack on us, the public housing tenants, because the government knows they can move them on at any time. The thorn in their side is us long-termers ... but we've adopted a lot of these vulnerable people into our community too.
“They move a lot of people with social problems here, more than we can handle. Mind you we look after our neighbours if they've got a problem, but we can't look after them all. They just fall through the cracks in the system.
“They're gonna socially cleanse this area ... it’s the total destruction of a community that has existed for near on 200 years.”
Even if the sell-off takes place, Gardner is wary of what will come of the money. The government has previously made $42 million by selling 30 houses in the area, which was meant to be reinvested in the area. “When we questioned them they said, no it’s going to Glebe. We asked people in Glebe were there any major projects in the area, they said no. Where has the money gone? Are we to trust them to put billions of dollars back into public housing? I think not.”
The media have spread many misconceptions about Millers Point public housing. One is the low rent they pay. People in public housing are the most vulnerable in society, and the waiting list is about 50,000 in NSW. It is reasonable to expect that most people in housing are on welfare. “Everyone knows when you pay rent to department of housing when you're on welfare, you pay 25% and that’s a minimum of at least $100. Low income earners pay 30%, Gardner said. “And it goes up the scale until you pay market rates.”
"My dad worked on the wharves, my mum worked in the canteen on the wharves. We've contributed to this community for years. I know people who go back four or five generations. We haven’t been sitting on our bums on welfare all the time, we built this community. I wish people would appreciate that instead of saying we're all welfare bludgers."
Gardner was an electrician then a dockworker until both his hips needed replacement, forcing him onto the disability pension. His partner Glenda “lost a few jobs in the Rocks that have closed down. She still goes to jobsearch, but she's 64. So where does she place on the system?"
Another myth is their million-dollar views. Gardner said: "In front of me were double decker finger wharves. No view. That was stripped down to make container sheds, no view. That was pulled down and it was the first time we had a view. But that’s soon to be lost because they're going to develop Barangaroo." Other properties, he said, have “good” views of old woolstores, apartment buildings and concrete walls.
Another misconception is the millions in subsidies that Goward says tenants in Millers Point receive. But as the NSW Tenants Union says, this is just the perceived missed revenue for not charging tenants market rates.
In other words, tenants are not receiving millions in cash from the government. Instead they are paying the department rents, and receiving barely any maintenance in return — and the possible destruction of their communities.
"It's just a total grab for money at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people of our society. The people own these properties, the people should have a say about whether we should stay or go.”
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56145
A protest to save Millers Point in Sydney on March 25. Photo: Peter Boyle.
Barney Gardner is a well-known community leader and a member of Millers Point Save Our Homes. The 65-year-old has lived in Millers Point all his life. For him and many others, the government's announcement is a tragedy.
Millers Point has a long history of hosting Sydney's poor workers. Gardner told Green Left Weekly: “People say Australia was born on a sheep's back. That may be true, but all that wool had to go somewhere, and it came here to be exported.”
The area originally housed mainly maritime workers who worked on the nearby wharves. The rents were cheap because of the nature of the area. In fact, up until only a few decades ago, the wealthier denizens of Sydney looked down on the area.
“The roads were our playgrounds, we swam down in the harbour, we would go fishing because you could do it for free down on the wharves,” Gardner said.
But the area has changed markedly. “I've seen a lot of the old woolstores turned into offices, and a lot of the offices turned into apartments. This wasn’t done for the benefit for the public housing tenants, but we still got along with all these people. We have no jealousy or animosity towards them.”
Indeed, Gardner told GLW that many new private residents love the simple fact that people say hello to each other in the streets, a rarity in the rest of the bustling metropolis.
The community’s spirit remains high, but public housing conditions have deteriorated. "They didn’t continue doing the regular repairs that the maritime board did, who previously managed our housing. Houses began to fall into disrepair, some of the places are shocking. But we do the best we can, we all help each other out. I personally have helped paint two houses.”
The residents see a long-term trend of the department seems to deliberately run down the public housing tenancy. "I've been told now that since 2009, no families were being moved into this area. They were moving single elderly people in, they were moving vulnerable people in. It was a form of attack on us, the public housing tenants, because the government knows they can move them on at any time. The thorn in their side is us long-termers ... but we've adopted a lot of these vulnerable people into our community too.
“They move a lot of people with social problems here, more than we can handle. Mind you we look after our neighbours if they've got a problem, but we can't look after them all. They just fall through the cracks in the system.
“They're gonna socially cleanse this area ... it’s the total destruction of a community that has existed for near on 200 years.”
Even if the sell-off takes place, Gardner is wary of what will come of the money. The government has previously made $42 million by selling 30 houses in the area, which was meant to be reinvested in the area. “When we questioned them they said, no it’s going to Glebe. We asked people in Glebe were there any major projects in the area, they said no. Where has the money gone? Are we to trust them to put billions of dollars back into public housing? I think not.”
The media have spread many misconceptions about Millers Point public housing. One is the low rent they pay. People in public housing are the most vulnerable in society, and the waiting list is about 50,000 in NSW. It is reasonable to expect that most people in housing are on welfare. “Everyone knows when you pay rent to department of housing when you're on welfare, you pay 25% and that’s a minimum of at least $100. Low income earners pay 30%, Gardner said. “And it goes up the scale until you pay market rates.”
"My dad worked on the wharves, my mum worked in the canteen on the wharves. We've contributed to this community for years. I know people who go back four or five generations. We haven’t been sitting on our bums on welfare all the time, we built this community. I wish people would appreciate that instead of saying we're all welfare bludgers."
Gardner was an electrician then a dockworker until both his hips needed replacement, forcing him onto the disability pension. His partner Glenda “lost a few jobs in the Rocks that have closed down. She still goes to jobsearch, but she's 64. So where does she place on the system?"
Another myth is their million-dollar views. Gardner said: "In front of me were double decker finger wharves. No view. That was stripped down to make container sheds, no view. That was pulled down and it was the first time we had a view. But that’s soon to be lost because they're going to develop Barangaroo." Other properties, he said, have “good” views of old woolstores, apartment buildings and concrete walls.
Another misconception is the millions in subsidies that Goward says tenants in Millers Point receive. But as the NSW Tenants Union says, this is just the perceived missed revenue for not charging tenants market rates.
In other words, tenants are not receiving millions in cash from the government. Instead they are paying the department rents, and receiving barely any maintenance in return — and the possible destruction of their communities.
"It's just a total grab for money at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people of our society. The people own these properties, the people should have a say about whether we should stay or go.”
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56145
Residents of Ivanhoe estate worried they are next on ’hit list’
Front: Esme Drew and Marie Sillers. Back: shadow housing minister Sophie Cotsis and Labor candidate for Ryde Jerome Laxale with concerned residents. Picture David Swift Source: News Corp Australia
Ivanhoe Estate residents are nervous about their future following the State Government’s announcement that it would sell public housing in Millers Point.
Ivanhoe Estate Tenant Group secretary Marie Sillars feared there was a “hit list” of public housing the Government was getting rid of and that their community was next.
The 600-plus residents of Ivanhoe, in Macquarie Park, have long worried their community could face the wreckers ball after it was declared an Urban Activation Precinct in 2012, destined for redevelopment into high-rise apartments.
“We are now into our third year of not knowing,” Ms Sillars said.
“It’s very depressing for everybody and we need answers.”
Esme Drew, 80, said she would not cope if the estate was shut down because she would be separated from a friend who cared for her.
“I don’t think I’d survive to be truthful — I’m not steady on my feet and every year I get older, it will become harder,” she said.
80-year-old Esme Drew at her home at the Ivanhoe Estate in Macquarie Park. Photo: Dave Swift Source: News Corp Australia
Labor candidate for Ryde Jerome Laxale, who visited the estate with shadow housing minister Sophie Cotsis, said it was clear the O’Farrell Government was on a mission to sell public housing.
They both called on the Government to rule out demolishing the estate.
“Society should work together to help those that are most in need and the Ivanhoe community is a perfect example of this,” Mr Laxale said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Planning said plans for the precinct were being finalised and were expected to be released soon.
A spokesman for Community Services Minister Pru Goward said: “The Government has made no further decision on public housing estate sales.”
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Public Housing Tenants Facing Eviction say Process Too Hasty
Trade unionists and community activists have pledged to fight alongside the public housing tenants of Millers Point who are now facing eviction by the NSW Government, during a demonstration on March 25, 2014.
Protesters chanted "Millers Point here to stay". This march, which went from the Kent St fire station to Millers Point, was organised by the Maritime Union of Australia with support from the Fire Brigade Employees Union. Local residents and tenants groups have united to resist the eviction plan.
Another protest is scheduled on Thursday March 27, with plans to meet at the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park North for a march on NSW Parliament House.
Barry and Pru you have somehow have become heartless since you have come into government: COWARDS, come talk to the people.
Florence Seckald received an eviction letter days after her husband was buried. Photo: Brendan Esposito
Millers Point public housing tenant Florence Seckold buried her husband last Tuesday. ''Wednesday we got the eviction notice,'' the 80-year-old said.
Mrs Seckold, who was born, spent her youth, her 60-year marriage and - she had hoped - her final years in the harbourside suburb, was among roughly 150 people protesting the sale of almost 300 public housing properties on Tuesday.
At the same time, representatives from the Department of Family and Community Services were elsewhere arranging relocation interviews with some of the 400 tenants who would need to be rehoused in the next two years.
The move was criticised by some protesters as adding undue haste to a process that only served to compound their distress since last week's announcement
''Have a bit of decency, give us all time to take it in,'' said Barney Gardner, who accused relocation officers of approaching tenants with poor English skills, without giving them access to interpreters.
''Come and ring us or send a letter and say we'd like to make an appointment to see you, and the tenant can respond.''
Zulema Carro, a long-term resident of the Sirius Building, said she was accosted when leaving the house for a doctor's appointment. ''She said 'it takes five minutes'. I said 'no, you're taking away my life. It takes more than five minutes.'''
A Family and Community Services spokesman said tenants were being contacted either in person or by phone to arrange a suitable time for a meeting, and would be linked to interpreter services if required.
Some had contacted the department to ask to be relocated sooner, he said. ''We have offered every tenant the opportunity to meet with family, friends and support workers if tenants feel they need additional support.''
Mrs Seckold said she was told, given her recent circumstances, the department would hold off contacting her until next month.
''As if I'm going to be any better at the end of April, or even the end of December,'' she said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/public-housing-tenants-facing-eviction-say-process-too-hasty-20140325-35g9e.html#ixzz2x3xVGeqP
Protesters chanted "Millers Point here to stay". This march, which went from the Kent St fire station to Millers Point, was organised by the Maritime Union of Australia with support from the Fire Brigade Employees Union. Local residents and tenants groups have united to resist the eviction plan.
Another protest is scheduled on Thursday March 27, with plans to meet at the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park North for a march on NSW Parliament House.
Barry and Pru you have somehow have become heartless since you have come into government: COWARDS, come talk to the people.
Florence Seckald received an eviction letter days after her husband was buried. Photo: Brendan Esposito
Mrs Seckold, who was born, spent her youth, her 60-year marriage and - she had hoped - her final years in the harbourside suburb, was among roughly 150 people protesting the sale of almost 300 public housing properties on Tuesday.
At the same time, representatives from the Department of Family and Community Services were elsewhere arranging relocation interviews with some of the 400 tenants who would need to be rehoused in the next two years.
Millers Point Public Housing Protest
''Have a bit of decency, give us all time to take it in,'' said Barney Gardner, who accused relocation officers of approaching tenants with poor English skills, without giving them access to interpreters.
''Come and ring us or send a letter and say we'd like to make an appointment to see you, and the tenant can respond.''
Zulema Carro, a long-term resident of the Sirius Building, said she was accosted when leaving the house for a doctor's appointment. ''She said 'it takes five minutes'. I said 'no, you're taking away my life. It takes more than five minutes.'''
A Family and Community Services spokesman said tenants were being contacted either in person or by phone to arrange a suitable time for a meeting, and would be linked to interpreter services if required.
Some had contacted the department to ask to be relocated sooner, he said. ''We have offered every tenant the opportunity to meet with family, friends and support workers if tenants feel they need additional support.''
Mrs Seckold said she was told, given her recent circumstances, the department would hold off contacting her until next month.
''As if I'm going to be any better at the end of April, or even the end of December,'' she said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/public-housing-tenants-facing-eviction-say-process-too-hasty-20140325-35g9e.html#ixzz2x3xVGeqP
Sign Up for a Petition Save Our Homes
Click on the link Below to sign up:
https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/stop-premier-barry-o-farrell-and-housing-nsw-minister-prue-goward-from-selling-off-public-housing-in-millers-point
STOP Premier Barry O'Farrell and Housing NSW Minister Prue Goward from selling-off public
https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/stop-premier-barry-o-farrell-and-housing-nsw-minister-prue-goward-from-selling-off-public-housing-in-millers-point
STOP Premier Barry O'Farrell and Housing NSW Minister Prue Goward from selling-off public
It is so unfair to uproot and dislocate a whole community of people who have lived in these homes for many years. Forced removal will destroy their community and cause distress to the current residents. It is the oldest community in Australia.
To:
Pru Goward, Minister for Community Services
Barry Robert O'Farrell, NSW Premier
Don't sell-off Public Housing!!! Let the Millers Point residents keep the homes they have lived in for many generations.
Sincerely,
[Your name] .
Peoples Preceptions Lets Cook the Financial Books
Great article of how the truth can be manipulated if worded correctly by the government media unit...
The truth about 'subsidies' at Millers Point and The Rocks
http://tunswblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/the-truth-about-subsidies-at-millers.html
The truth about 'subsidies' at Millers Point and The Rocks
When the NSW State Government announced last week that it would sell all the social housing at Millers Point and The Rocks, it highlighted the issue of social housing 'subsidies' there. It gave the impression that taxpayers' money – and lots of it – is being paid to tenants. This is incorrect.
Said Minister Goward:
The Government's media release refers variously to subsidies 'paid' and 'funded by the NSW taxpayer', and 'received by' tenants, all in dollar amounts.
The truth is that not a dollar of money raised from taxpayers is paid to public housing tenants or otherwise credited to their rent accounts. Not one dollar. Tenants pay money to Housing NSW, not the other way around.
The subsidies to which the Minister refers are accounting entries. The 'subsidy' for each tenancy is the difference between the 'market rent' for the property as assessed by the NSW Land and Housing Corporation, and the rent actually paid by the tenant, rebated according to the usual rules of Housing NSW's system of income-related rents.
The market rent for a property does not reflect the cost to the NSW State Government of providing housing or related services at the property. The market rent for a property can go up – and hence the 'subsidy' go up – without any change in the housing being provided at the property, or in Housing NSW's costs. (Housing NSW need not account for 'market rents' at all – for decades the old Housing Commission accounted for 'economic rents', reflecting the historic cost of its properties, and income-related rebated rents.)
What actually does cost money at Millers Point is repairs and maintenance. We'll take the Minister at her word when she says that in the past two years $6.8 million has been spent on repairs and maintenance there. This is a lot less than the $8.89 million per annum in 'subsidies' that was not actually spent.
It is important to note too how much tenants have paid towards that real cost of housing. There are 409 social housing tenancies in the properties at Millers Point and The Rocks. We understand the average income-related rent paid is about $100 per week, so, over the past two years, tenants have paid about $4.25 million in rent – in other words, not quite two-thirds of the repair bill.
You can see the impression it's trying to make. Let's turn it around. Half of all public housing tenants are over 60 years of age. They are ageing in homes to which they are much attached in a supportive community and should be allowed to stay there. As for the younger half: of course most of them receive Centrelink payments, that's why Housing NSW picked them to be public housing tenants! (Most tenants in Millers Point were housed there through the usual way: applying (and waiting) for social housing. A significant minority, however, have been there since before it public housing, when the Maritime Services Board owned the houses and let them to people who worked on the harbour.)
Cracks two and three are leveled against two individual tenants. The media release does not give their names, but it does disclose the gender, age, street of residence, period of residence, family circumstances of each person, and the amount of the 'subsidy' each has 'received'. We'll not repeat those details here; their privacy has been infringed enough as it is. Disclosures of personal information about clients of government services have no place in Ministerial media releases.
Said Minister Goward:
Subsidies to tenants in the last year alone reached $8.89 million, with individual tenants receiving subsidies as high as $44,000 per annum. This compares to subsidies of $8,000 per year in Campbelltown, $7,000 in Gosford, and $11,000 in Wollongong. For every subsidised tenancy in Millers Point, the Government could assist 5 tenants in Warrawong, or 3.5 tenants in Newcastle or Minto.
The Government's media release refers variously to subsidies 'paid' and 'funded by the NSW taxpayer', and 'received by' tenants, all in dollar amounts.
The truth is that not a dollar of money raised from taxpayers is paid to public housing tenants or otherwise credited to their rent accounts. Not one dollar. Tenants pay money to Housing NSW, not the other way around.
The subsidies to which the Minister refers are accounting entries. The 'subsidy' for each tenancy is the difference between the 'market rent' for the property as assessed by the NSW Land and Housing Corporation, and the rent actually paid by the tenant, rebated according to the usual rules of Housing NSW's system of income-related rents.
The market rent for a property does not reflect the cost to the NSW State Government of providing housing or related services at the property. The market rent for a property can go up – and hence the 'subsidy' go up – without any change in the housing being provided at the property, or in Housing NSW's costs. (Housing NSW need not account for 'market rents' at all – for decades the old Housing Commission accounted for 'economic rents', reflecting the historic cost of its properties, and income-related rebated rents.)
What actually does cost money at Millers Point is repairs and maintenance. We'll take the Minister at her word when she says that in the past two years $6.8 million has been spent on repairs and maintenance there. This is a lot less than the $8.89 million per annum in 'subsidies' that was not actually spent.
It is important to note too how much tenants have paid towards that real cost of housing. There are 409 social housing tenancies in the properties at Millers Point and The Rocks. We understand the average income-related rent paid is about $100 per week, so, over the past two years, tenants have paid about $4.25 million in rent – in other words, not quite two-thirds of the repair bill.
*
It is bad enough that the Government's media release creates a misleading impression about subsidies in the social housing system generally and at Millers Point and The Rocks in particular. What's worse is that it takes a couple of other cracks at Millers Point and The Rocks tenants as a group and, in a couple of cases, individually.
Crack one, against Millers Point tenants:
Half of all public housing tenants in Millers Point are of working age (18-59), but 94% of tenants claim Centrelink benefits as their primary source of income.
You can see the impression it's trying to make. Let's turn it around. Half of all public housing tenants are over 60 years of age. They are ageing in homes to which they are much attached in a supportive community and should be allowed to stay there. As for the younger half: of course most of them receive Centrelink payments, that's why Housing NSW picked them to be public housing tenants! (Most tenants in Millers Point were housed there through the usual way: applying (and waiting) for social housing. A significant minority, however, have been there since before it public housing, when the Maritime Services Board owned the houses and let them to people who worked on the harbour.)
Cracks two and three are leveled against two individual tenants. The media release does not give their names, but it does disclose the gender, age, street of residence, period of residence, family circumstances of each person, and the amount of the 'subsidy' each has 'received'. We'll not repeat those details here; their privacy has been infringed enough as it is. Disclosures of personal information about clients of government services have no place in Ministerial media releases.
http://tunswblog.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/the-truth-about-subsidies-at-millers.html
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