Nostalgia, in the city of Sydney, is for the weak

Resourced: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/nostalgia-in-the-city-of-sydney-is-for-the-weak 

Liam Hogan



'In Australia, we recognise the natural centres of our urban areas mostly by the fingers of concrete-and-glass business towers.' Photograph: flickr

If a house is a machine for inhabiting, as Le Corbusier's famous aphorism went, then central business districts are machines for compressing, containing and concentrating an economy. Sydney's CBD, specifically, is a machine for concentrating a very large number of white-collar workers, dominated these days by financial and professional services, and reaping the aggregation effects: get all of those lawyers, accountants, financiers and managers together, close enough to go to the same coffee shops and have cigarette breaks on the same corners, and you've got yourself a powerful economic entity. For better or worse, Sydney's centre is a business park on steroids.

In Australia, we recognise the natural centres of our urban areas mostly by the fingers of concrete-and-glass business towers. Much of that expansion was the product of gut-level politics: what to keep, what to abandon, and why. What we think of as "heritage" in the Sydney CBD is the layered leftovers, everything that for various reasons was never bulldozed, flooded, or remodelled into something "better".

Nostalgia, in Sydney, is for the weak.
The 19th century city started out as a brutal little torture port, crammed with workers and animals. As it grew bigger and got respectable, three things identified its edges: factories, wharves, and cemeteries. Nineteenth century Sydney had a bit of a morbid habit of laying the dead to rest at the urban fringe, then deciding the land was more useful for the living. Sydney Town Hall was built on the old Sydney burial ground. The 19th century central station wasn't exactly located where it is now; its current site used to be the Devonshire Street cemetery. If development had to happen, the past had to make way, even when that past was embodied in human remains. Sydney has been a ruthlessly modern city. Not only has it turned its face from its own European heritage, it has most of all tried to erase the 40,000 years' heritage of its first, Aboriginal, inhabitants.

'The 19th century city started out as a brutal little torture port.' Harbour scenes, Circular Quay Photograph: flickr

Something new happened in the aftermath of the second world war: we started becoming concerned about the real costs behind the prosperity metaphor of cranes on the city skyline. Instead of always celebrating the destruction of the older built environment, political movements started framing what was going on in terms of loss. In already-developed cities across the world, people began to worry about the costs to old buildings and established neighbourhoods. Citizens started seeing our cities not just as places in space but as culturally significant artefacts in their own right, deserving of protection.

The results are part of folklore. In the 1960s and 1970s, if you wanted to work in the construction industry, or if you wanted something built, you joined or dealt with the famously militant Builders Labourers Federation (BLF). They were a serious union, a left-wing closed shop which prospered on their ability to get pay rises and stop its members getting killed in preventable accidents.

When a group of residents in the upper-class Hunters Hill asked the BLF in 1971 to help save a piece of bushland from property developers AV Jennings, the real fight started. The union's refusal to work on the site – what has since been called a "green ban" – was taken by the developer as a pretext to go ahead anyway with non-union workers. The BLF threatened to stop work on an AV Jennings office block in North Sydney in response.

There isn't a community campaign anywhere that won't shamelessly compare itself to the green bans movement, which grew throughout the 1970s. In practice, the green bans had a class and union aspect which contemporary urbanists forget about: the BLF was a working-class organisation that merely saw its remit more widely than most unions, figuring that since its members were in the business of demolishing and building, they might as well have a say in what they put up or down – especially when they were talking about working class housing. It was not as though a union simply, one day, saw value in heritage arguments for the preservation of the built environment fabric.



'In practice, the green bans had a class and union aspect which contemporary urbanists forget about: the BLF was a working-class organisation which merely saw its remit more widely than most unions.'

The minister formerly responsible for public housing in NSW, Pru Goward, added a perverse footnote to this history in March when she pushed through the sale of the Millers Point housing estate. She argued that the value of the estate could be best deployed buying more and better housing away from the CBD, and at least in terms of the value she is right: it's the location and preserved heritage aspects of the Millers Point housing stock that make it worth so much money. In this case there's at least a part of the green bans legacy (the valuation of the historical built environment) which is being deployed against the kinds of working class men and women who started it in the first place.
Urbanism abounds in ironies like this. The Burra Charter, the 1979 set of basic heritage principles used by Australian planners and historians, places "cultural heritage" front and centre in the decision making process. It is deliberately, provocatively, broad in its remit: places, not just individual sites, are its objects. A more recent 2011 ICOMOS statement, the Madrid Document, specifically includes 20th century architecture in the context of heritage. The heritage sector isn't about protecting what's profitable, or good for the economy, but rather, that which is intangibly important – and that past starts now.

The 20th century central business district, which was largely designed and constructed in the context of furious, enthusiastic abandonment of the past, is now falling under the protection of legal regimes of heritage. It's being appreciated as worthy fabric too. There's a growing appreciation for brutalism as an architectural style, for example. The old light rail line that people remember running through the Sydney CBD is to come back, though naturally without the central tram depot that used to sit on Fort Macquarie (now the site of the Sydney Opera House, listed by UNESCO as having World Heritage, along with the Pyramids and Taj Mahal).

'Urbanism abounds in ironies.' Sydney Opera House under construction, 1968 Photograph: Phillip Capper/flickr

A central city so dominated by office space exerts a powerful force on Sydney's culture of work and travel. The simple fact of the CBD's existence protects rather old patterns of work and communication. There is no inherent reason that nine-to-six, Monday to Friday office hours should be kept, as opposed to those which suit employees better; but central offices served by a radial transport network tend to make that pattern convenient. There's no inherent reason it should be a matter of status for a firm to have an office in the city, rather than the suburbs; but, culturally, a Collins, Macquarie, or Bourke Street address really does matter.

There are plenty of good reasons why suits and jackets are unsuited to the Australian climate, but air conditioning makes that style of business-uniform dress possible. We've got a historical city of offices which were designed before the Internet, and that architecture tends to determine work practices. What of this kind of accidental heritage demands protection? Is office presenteeist culture part of the cultural fabric of the CBD, worth preserving in place?
We have patterns of commercial land use in which we can read the past. In Australian cities we have long suburban retail strips, developed around 19th and early 20th century tram lines; we have central department stores designed to cater to the new middle class consumers who emerged after the first world war; we have larger developed post-second world war shopping centres attracting car-owning shoppers; and most recently there has been a growth in suburban one-store big box retailers (IKEA and Bunnings being the best examples).

Commercial and residential patterns do change over time, but with some amount of difficulty, and always subject to the past. In Australian inner suburbs, terraces have been turned into shopfronts and bars. What were once inner-city warehouses and factories have become in-demand housing and office space. Developers drawing up skyscraper developments that once might have been sold as offices, suddenly, are relabelling them as apartment housing for a new booming demand for units in the city.

The economy of cities tends to change rather faster than any system of land-use can account. And to a great extent, this was always the point of the concept behind the central business district: that it could be an area governed by the new, forever reinventing itself – modernity, in the famous phrase, melting the solid into air.




Knitting Nannas Against Gas sitting tight outside Lismore MP's office

The Knitting Nannas Against Gas are calling on Lismore MP Thomas George to better represent his community on the issue of unconventional gas, or leave office.

By Margaret Burin


Louise Somerville, one of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas, say the group will continue to protest outside the office of Lismore MP Thomas George until he speaks out against unconventional gas exploration in the region. (ABC Local:Margaret Burin )

Every Thursday afternoon for the past 18 months, the Knitting Nannas have unpacked their chairs and yellow balls of yarn and sat outside Thomas George's Carrington Street office.

 

Knitting Nanna Louise Somerville says the state member for Lismore is not representing his community on the most important issue in his electorate.

"We're ashamed of him. He's let us down. We pay him," she said.

"He's got to start representing us."

Last week the NSW Office of Coal Seam Gas suspended petroleum company Metgasco's licence to drill for gas at Bentley.

In a separate announcement, Resources Minister Anthony Roberts referred the project to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).

Despite the suspension, the Knitting Nannas have vowed to maintain their vigil outside Mr George's office each week until the Nationals MP speaks out publically against unconventional gas exploration in the Northern Rivers.

Ms Somerville says in a meeting with Thomas George, she took in photos of her own children to voice her concerns about the gas industry.

"I put them in front of him and said 'this is my future'...you need to seriously look at these pictures and think about these kids and their future.

"He's more than once said 'what can I do?', but it's just not good enough."

Thomas George has declined ABC North Coast's request for an interview

Reference: http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2014/05/23/4010881.htm?site=northcoast

Millers Point: Letter to the Editor

This piece was first published by The Brown Couch, a blog written by the Tenants' Union of New South Wales. It is one of the best pieces of writing I have come across. I often struggle trying to describe the significance of homes, and community ties, to renters. This writer does so beautifully. Please read.

I sit here with tears in my eyes so I cannot pretend that I do not have a deeply personal and emotional connection to the proposed removal of the social housing residents of Millers point. I grew up in a terrace in Lower fort street and my mum still lives there as she has done so for 40 years, laboriously maintaining and restoring her home (largely herself). Even if she is forced to move away, that house will always be our family home and the fact that she doesn't own it does not make that connection or the emotional distress any less valid.

When I was growing up our terrace was, like many in the area, a Maritime workers owned boarding house populated by single old men who had worked on the wharves. These men had lived here through their working life and now into their retirement. Our men were "Jocky" and "Bluey". "Jocky" was a Scotsman who I loved dearly. We watched Sale of the Century each evening and shared chocolate biscuits. "Bluey" would say "respect your mother" if I gave her too much lip and would ball room dance with me in the kitchen at Christmas.

Mum assumed responsibility for our terrace when the former landlord moved on and it was always understood that these men would stay in their home with us as long as they wished. They were family to me and my childhood was infinitely enhanced by their presence and changed by their passing. We still refer to those rooms as Jocky's and Bluey's. Times changed as did the government department overseeing the property, but it was always our home. That is our story and if you scratch the surface in Miller's point there are a myriad of colourful, complex and moving stories to be told. There are of course such stories everywhere, the difference is here all our stories are entwined and many go back generations.

I do not live in Millers point and have not done so for many years. The announcement last week was not something which was completely unexpected. Indeed the community has been living in the shadow of the threat of this for years. A shadow of uncertainty which has pervaded everyday life and had a detrimental effect on many.

Never the less, reading the media over the last few days I have been profoundly moved. These are people I know. People who are part of the fabric of this community and hence my life. I see people in the articles who helped out at the canteen when I was a primary school on Observatory hill, people who brought my dog back when he escaped because they knew he was mine and where we lived, people who STILL stop me in the street and tell me I haven't changed since I was a baby. Living outside this community now I can fully appreciate how unique that experience is anywhere, let alone in Sydney today.

The letter which was handed to my mother last week said that attempts would be made to relocate her "close to family and friends".  I am my mothers family. I would welcome her anytime but she does not want to leave her home. Not because it is in a street has recently been deemed a desirable location (when 30 years ago most did not see its virtues) but because it is her HOME. Much as we love each other, My mum does she does not want to move. Her friends and support networks are in the Millers point community, her heart is there, her past  and her memories are there and she has always seen her future. As do many others with deep connections to one another and to the area. The human impact cannot be underestimated.

How many people know their neighbour these days? How many would give them the keys when they go away? They do in Millers Point. People here care about each other. They attend the funeral when a member of the community passes away. A good many came and celebrated my 1st AND my 21st birthdays in our backyard. They know the older members who need a helping hand or should be checked on if they haven't been seen on their daily walk. If an young community member is courting trouble, elders of the community will engage them or their parents and express concerns. Until the local corner store was sold as a private residence in the last few years the owners would run a tab if someone forgot money for milk or offer some of their home made falafel for you to try. Millers point is a community in the true sense of the word. Community does not mean people who live geographically close to one another. It is something which evolves over time if nurtured and it certainly cannot be manufactured or constructed.

New residents to the community have told me in the park that they are thrilled to have such a welcoming and supportive community. Indeed many have expressed that they have moved here because of this. Miller Point truly is, as the state heritage register described it, a ''living cultural landscape'' with ''an unusually high and rare degree of social significance''. I can tell you this as I was fortunate enough to grow up in this community, observe the changes over the last 30 years and now visit it regularly with an outside perspective.

Miller's Point is the type of community I think most people would want their children to grow up in and their parents to grow old in. A community spirit born of continuity and time. The Millers point community can, and has evolved. From the earliest public housing and Maritime workers accommodation, it has become a mix of corporate real estate, private and social housing. My understanding is that this integrated model is now widely recommended to prevent social housing area becoming socially depressed.

Surely the largely long term and often elderly residents should be treated with more compassion and respect than is being shown. Equally a community without youth has no future and this should also be considered. The significant economic benefits of true community, and the burden this removes from social resources should be supported, allowing our city to become more viable, integrated and community minded. Millers Point is an integrated social success. It should be recognised, celebrated and not destroyed.

 

Resourced: http://landlordwatch.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/millers-point-letter-to-editor.html 

Time for Strategy: Part 1

If you have been hiding under a rock, you might have missed the announcement that the NSW Liberal Government's is selling high-value properties on Sydney's harbour front - Millers Point, the Rocks, and Dawes Point. Public housing tenants, many of whom are elderly and disabled, are being evicted from their homes.

The NSW Liberal Government says it is going to reinvest moneys into public housing. We call bullshit. We think this is the beginning of the end. It is going to sell off its housing stock until there is nothing left. This is consistent with its user pays philosophy. The Liberal Party does not believe in having a safety net. It thinks individuals should pay whatever the market dictates. On another level, the sell-off is about class warfare. If the NSW Government succeeds, the working class will be pushed out, and well-to-do professional types will take over. Property developers are hovering, and they have much to gain. This is a struggle important to all tenants, including public housing tenants. 

 

The tenants are fighting back. The resistance is mounting. To win, they must have a strategy for success. But first, we must first ascertain what strategies the NSW Liberal Government have in place.

1. Divide and conquer - I think they are relying on the strategy of 'divide and conquer'. The media has reported that evictees will have to endure  a cruel lucky dip process for their new homes. The power of these tenants lie in their collective force, and they should resist ploys that seek to divide them.

2. Campaign of misinformation - The NSW Liberal Government went about its task in a misleading and deceptive manner. Minister Pru Goward highlighted the issue of social housing subsidies. This gave the impression that taxpayers' money was paid to tenants. Completely untrue. As the NSW Brown Couch pointed out - tenants pay rent to NSW Housing, not the other way around. By and large, I think the media has backed the residents. A plethora of articles about the sale have been published. I don't include the Daily Telegraph, it's not really a newspaper anymore. More of a blow horn for vested interests. Residents have a powerful tool at their disposal. They can rely on the media to combat deliberate untruths and falsehoods. Social media will also play an important role. The residents have a Facebook page, and a blog.

3. Class envy - The NSW Liberal Government expertly manipulated Sydney's class envy. It played into the middle classes' ambivalence about social welfare, and the deservingness of welfare (well-being?) recipients. Some of the comments on social media have displayed a degree of anger and bitterness I have never seen. Make no mistake, this manoeuvre was deliberate. We think all Aussies should have access to affordable and appropriate housing irrespective of ability to pay. There's only one way to combat ignorance, and that's education. In a fair society, we help people who can't help themselves.

5. Framing - Minister Pru Goward tried to frame the sell-off as a fairness issue. When she made the announcement on 18 March 2014, she said, 'I cannot look taxpayers of NSW in the eye, I cannot look at other public housing tenants in the eye, and I cannot look at the 57,000 people on the waiting list in the eye when we preside over such an unfair distribution of subsidies.' I almost puked when I heard her say this. I would like to know how much political spin doctors were paid to sell this decision. See how she manipulates perceptions of truth when she refers to looking people in the eye. The residents don't think the decision was fair. There was no consultation, no procedural fairness. And really, it is their feelings that matter. It is their homes, and their lives.

4. Exhaustion - The government is well-resourced and formidable enemy. Last year, Holdfast Bay Council evicted 40 permanent residents from Brighton Caravan Park. Only recently, the residents announced that they were backing down, and calling a halt to their legal battle. They were worn out. They had suffered physically, emotionally, and financially. The government knows that many of the residents don't have the wherewithal to handle a protracted fight. They are counting on it. They know people need stability. The tenants are going to need, not only financial support, but emotional support as well.

The tenants must also make a realistic appraisal of their strengths and weaknesses. As I intimated above, many of the tenants are elderly and/or disabled and don't have fantastically strong coping skills. On the other hand, many of the tenants are of the working class and are used to fighting for their rights. Some of the tenants are retired members of unions like the CFMEU. The weakness can also be turned into a strength. The government won't look good if it forcibly evicts residents from their homes. I can see it now - 'Sorry Mr Police Officer, can I please grab my walking frame before you throw me in the paddy wagon!'. On the other hand, the residents of Millers Point form a strong collective. They are organised and they don't want to lose their homes. As this is close-knit community, they have a base to work from. Stronger together, as the saying goes.

It is my view that the residents have reasonable  to good prospects of success. In the next instalment, I will look at potential strategies and tactics the residents can use to protect their homes.

Resourced: http://landlordwatch.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/time-for-strategy-part-1.html  

Millers Point Public Housing Evictees Forced to Endure ‘Cruel’ Lucky Dip Process to Find New Homes



Barney Gardner of the Millers Point, Dawes Point & The Rocks Public Housing Tenants Group.Source: News Limited

 Lucky dips are usually ­associated with children’s parties and fetes but, for the public housing evictees of Millers Point and surrounds, this is the newest system in place for their ­relocation.

   

Each Tuesday, residents are advised of vacant properties elsewhere in Sydney and then, should they chose to apply for that property, a ballot draw is held on Friday to select the ‘lucky’ tenant who will move.

“Family and Community Services has launched an ­initiative named My Property Choice, which provides Millers Point residents with additional relocation ­options,” a FACS spokesman said.



https://www.facebook.com/millerspointsaveourhomes

The housing lucky dips have taken place at the Sirius block.Source: News Corp Australia



 “Under the existing process, residents nominate a preferred area where they would like to relocate, and FACS works with them to find a suitable property in that location.

“With My Property Choice, tenants are given an opportunity to inspect properties outside their nominated area, but may be suitable for their needs.

Alex Greenwich: Housing sell-off is ‘social cleansing’

Residents: Government lacks compassion

“If there are several tenants interested in the same property, a ballot is held.

“The first My Property Choice event was held last week and interest was ­received on all six of the properties shown.”

https://www.facebook.com/millerspointsaveourhomes

A sign of defiance on a Millers Point terrace.Source: Supplied

City of Sydney councillor Linda Scott said the new lotto system was an outrageous way of determining housing.

“Needless to say, this ­uncertainty on top of the pre-existing upheaval is being seen as cruel beyond belief,” Cr Scott said.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Is the treatment of Millers Point evictees cruel? Tell us your thoughts below

One resident who experienced the ballot was Millers Point, Dawes Point and The Rocks Tenants Group convener Barney Gardner.

He said this lotto-style ­relocation was targeted at residents in the Sirius building, but about 30-40 tenants from the area attended the showing last Tuesday.

 

Residents are fighting for their homes.Source: Supplied

 

“When we went up there (to Sirius) they had a large screen connected to a computer set up in one of the common rooms,” he said.

“And then they’d show sort of a slide show of each property.”

Mr Gardner said for each property residents were ­presented with all the key stats such as number of rooms, aspect, a map of the area with local services and transport.

“I picked up a few faults in some of the properties,” Mr Gardner said.

“The housing officials were all really polite and nice … but what I think is most frightening is why have people moved out of these places.”

Reference For More Details and leave a comments:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/city-east/millers-point-public-housing-evictees-forced-to-endure-cruel-lucky-dip-process-to-find-new-homes/story-fngr8h22-1226924145621

Millers Point Residents Struggle for Justice

Elderly residents in Millers Point have been reluctant to use non-profit transport services since the government’s announcement that public housing properties in the area will be sold.

Henry Wittaker · Wednesday, May 7, 2014 #savemillerspoint

The manager of South East Sydney Community Transport, Jane Rogers, said ridership has fallen by half in Millers Point in the last month because elderly residents are extremely worried about being relocated from their homes.

“This has been extremely distressing for the 29 elderly people we serve in Millers Point,” she said. “The government hoped to treat this like an old band-aid, pull it off fast and it might hurt but at least it will be quick. This feels more like an amputation without anaesthetic.”#savemillerspoint

On March 19, Minister for Family and Community Services, Pru Goward, announced the government’s plans to sell some 293 high-value public housing properties in Millers Point.
#savemillerspoint
One of Jane Rogers’ clients, Debbie, has lived in Millers Point off and on since she was 17. Her father ran the local butcher shop for 30 years. She has lived in a house in Millers point for 18 years with her son. Her father, who also lives in public housing in Millers Point, requires full-time care from Debbie following a recent fight with cancer. Living so close to her father makes taking care of him possible and she is afraid of what may happen to him now.

“I’m fighting because I want to stay,” said Debbie. “The community here is very strong and I feel safe here but I’m still willing to move if there is a decent home.”

But, Debbie’s relocation officer has told her there are no options that currently fit her needs and she will have to wait.

Patricia Corowa moved into a house in Millers Point in 2012 after 26 years on the Housing NSW waiting list. She had been homeless and lived in condemned buildings and tiny private apartments.

When she finally saw her home in Millers Point she thought she would spend the rest of her life there. But at 10am on March 19 a letter with the heading “Moving to A New Home” was delivered to her door. Since then she says she has been left frustrated and disheartened by a string of no-show
appointments with her relocation officer and increasingly impersonal letters from Housing NSW.

The 500 residents of Millers Point are being moved to the top of the waiting list for public housing, but this means that the 57,000 people already on the list will need to wait longer. There are currently no proposals for how the money from the sale of the Millers Point properties will be used to provide new housing stock.

The government is now facing a great deal of criticism over its handling of the community at Millers Point regarding this decision.

http://www.southsydneyherald.com.au/millers-point-residents-struggle-for-justice/#.U3nOws-KDIU

Read More Stories, go to click on the link: http://www.southsydneyherald.com.au/tag/millers-point/#.U3tGws-KDIU
#savemillerspoint


We Don't Want To Lose Our Homes Say No To Social Cleansing

 

Smokin Joe Mekhael is THE MOST ELECTRIFYING MAN IN DANCE MUSIC TODAY!

We got to meet Smokin’ Joe Mekhael (He made national headlines and gained international fame when he set the Guinness World Record for the longest DJ set in history!)  #savemillerspoint

Congratulations on Your Guinness World Record Smokin’ Joe Mekhael #savemillerspoint

                        Smokin Joe Mekhael holder of  Guiness Book of Records longest DJ set in history#savemillerspoint

 

#savemillerspoint

#savemillerspoint
                                           Smokin Joe Mekhael

National Trust Blasts Government's 'Unfortunate Mindset' on Heritage

Pulled down: the Darling Harbour Convention and Exhibition Centre. Photo: Edwina Pickles

Story by: Leesha McKenny Urban Affairs Reporter

The National Trust has blasted the state government for appearing to return to an "unfortunate mindset" where Sydney’s heritage is allowed to be swept aside in the pursuit of profit.

The trust’s NSW president, Ian Carroll, used his address at its annual heritage awards on Wednesday to highlight the peak body’s concerns for the future of Millers Point and to criticise what had already become of Darling Harbour.

Mr Carroll said despite securing listings on the trust’s register, Darling Harbour landmarks such as the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre and Chinese Garden of Friendship ‘‘have either already been lost or are potentially under threat’’ amid the billion-dollar redevelopment of the area.

‘‘This indicates how quickly we are willing to sweep away the important heritage of only three decades earlier, contrary to basic conservation ethics, and on the assumption that new is always better – or at least more financially viable,’’ he said.

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Mr Carroll said it had been "government practice" in the 20th century to remove old buildings to make way for new development, and ‘‘we seem to be now returning to that unfortunate mindset’’.

He drew a comparison between threatened redevelopment of The Rocks in the 1970s and the recent government decision to sell off the public housing in Millers Point.

‘‘The wholesale disposal of 293 properties as presently announced will, in the trust’s view, lead to pressures from developers to purchase, demolish and redevelop swathes of this unique, oldest surviving suburban area in Australia,’’ Mr Carroll said.

The area's heritage protections could be switched off if a developer were able to convince the government its proposal for Millers Point was a state significant development, he said.

The trust instead supports gradually replacing the public housing tenants, as their properties become vacant, with new owners committed to preserving the building’s heritage.

The state's new Heritage Minister, Rob Stokes, who was in the audience for Mr Carroll’s speech, was not prepared to comment about any of the trust’s concerns about Millers Point.

‘‘I’m happy to talk about this, but I really want to think through and digest what he’s had to say," he said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/national-trust-blasts-governments-unfortunate-mindset-on-heritage-20140514-zrcmx.html#ixzz31jOkuttl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

Elly Michelle Clough is a publicist and writer.

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

Residents Rally for Public Housing Meeting

Friday, 11 April, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Millers Point and The Rocks: cold hard facts

Thursday, April 3, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

'Cowardly' act forces Millers Point residents to move

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

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

               

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Greenwich Interview on the The Project about Millers Point

Millers Point Public Housing to go

 Friday March 21, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

Nicole Hasham State Politics reporter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another City Landmark Gets The Brush-Off

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

 

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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