Sydney Becoming An Enclave For The Rich

[icyfroth]

Selling the social housing in Millers Point is tantanmount to social cleansing. Do we really want a city that can’t make space for people on low incomes?

The O’Farrell government has decided to rob from the poor to give to the rich.

In a city with a growing problem of housing affordability, Wednesday’s decision to sell off 293 homes in Millers Point is a heavy blow – and not just to the 400 plus residents who will be evicted.

One of the blocks of apartments being sold was built in the 1980s. It no more needs to be sold for high-income housing than any of the other apartment blocks in metropolitan Sydney where people in social housing homes live.

All social housing tenants in inner-city properties are now put on notice. If the value of your home goes up, the government is going to put you out of your home when there’s a dollar to be made.

This is tantamount to social cleansing.

The Millers Point community survived the plague, the depression and war. It is shameful that it is government that will destroy this proud and strong neighbourhood.

For most of the 20th century, state governments and their bureaucracies have purposely neglected the maintenance of these historic homes – proving to be irresponsible and uncaring landlords.

The former NSW Labor government took that neglect further and began using 99-year leases to put social housing in private hands.

Now the current government says the neglect is so bad, and the expense to maintain homes in Millers Point is so great, that it’s time to sell.

In the property development business this tactic is known as “demolition by neglect”, and it’s shocking to see successive governments resort to these tactics.

Sixty properties were left to deteriorate without tenants in Millers Point, despite a desperate need for housing – there are 55,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in NSW.

Evicting 400 people with no clear plan to create new homes for them just adds strain to an already overburdened system.

The fate of Millers Point should give all Sydneysiders pause for thought. Do we want to live in a city that cannot make space for people on low incomes?

We need more social and affordable housing in the inner-city, not less, or Sydney’s famous egalitarianism will be destroyed.  The inner-city will become an enclave for the wealthy.

New models are needed to preserve and increase social and affordable housing. In the UK, housing estates have been successfully redeveloped using a mix of social, affordable and private housing, private housing providing cross-subsidies for the social and affordable housing.

Affordable housing schemes in Greater London deliver up to 50% new dwellings, whereas urban renewal schemes in inner Sydney rarely achieve even three per cent.

It is vital the government retain social housing in the inner city, particularly in places like Millers Point, where there are established, supportive and well-serviced communities.

A city that turns into nothing more than an enclave for the wealthiest people might seem rich in dollars, but it would be poor in every other way.

From Here

Good you for speaking out, Clover!

It's disgusting our governments are aiding and abetting foreign raiders to buy up our properties and assets and make us tenants in our own country.

[polocross58]

Only have a couple of minutes, but it was my impression that in Britain, local councils provide social housing

So I searched online and there's this.  Loads more online of course

' Social housing is let at low rents on a secure basis to those who are most in need or struggling with their housing costs. Normally councils and not-for-profit organisations (such as housing associations) are the ones to provide social housing

http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/Improving_social_housing/what_is_social_hous...

Clover needs to put ratepayers' money where her mouth is

City of Sydney has endless millions in the kitty. In addition, City of Sydney is landlord to some of the highest exposure/highest rents in this city, which itself is one of the most expensive cities in the world

How much social housing does City of Sydney council provide -- anyone know ?

[polksaladallie]

I heard a discussion about public housing in The Rocks area.  Is this the same area?   I heard that the people have two years to vacate, and that a huge number of millions of dollars gained from the sale will be used for public housing elsewhere. 

What is your opinion of single dwellers in three bedroom houses etc being asked to leave in order for families on the waiting list to have a roof over their heads.  I understand the anguish of those people who have been there forever, but I also saw a segment where some were deliriously happy once they moved into brand new units.

[nero_bolt]

OOhhh icy they are selling them so they can use the funds to reinvest in more public housing. How would you like them to find the funds to do that? 

The government will sell 300 public housing properties at Millers Point, The Rocks and Gloucester Street, saying maintenance costs and rent subsidies are too high and the proceeds will be reinvested into the social housing system. It is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tanya Plibersek’s husband, NSW bureaucrat Michael Coutts-Trotter, who will oversee the relocations, was more realistic. He said the sales in a “very, very expensive area’’ would free up funding for more social housing…

Public tenants in Millers Point receive annual subsidies of $24,832 compared with $8067 in Campbelltown in Sydney’s southwest.

No wonder many in Millers Point were not inclined to save for a deposit on a home elsewhere… Some of its pensioner tenants pay $96 a week for Opera House views when the market rate is $655. 

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover] Moore claims the government is robbing the poor to give to the rich. To the contrary, all taxpayers, including those who spend hours commuting on Sydney’s woeful public transport and the 57,000 people waiting for public housing, have been cheated by an arcane and inefficient housing system in dire need of reform. That’s unfair.

[lakeland27]

 i think they should let time in the case of pensioners be the basis for eviction. when they die sell them on the open market and (hopefully) re invest in more public housing  sell them on the basis of natural attrition. the government has no place making these people worry about change because of a whim and a wink and a nod to a developer mate(s) .

[polocross58]

Today, the media reported that one of the families in the building had lived there for SIX generations

SIX generations

By now, they should have got together the deposit for a home of their own, imo

As to single dwellers taking up 3 bedroom housing commission places, I worked with a woman a few years ago whose mother had lived for decades in a three bedroom house in Ashfield.  She'd raised her two children there.  Her children were at that point aged 56 and 48 years of age

One of the children, male, owned two investment properties which he rented out.  He also owned a home of his own

The other child, female aged 56, lived in a social housing house with her one adult son who at that time was earning $1500 per week in the auto industry.  The woman had lived in the house since it was brand new.  It had four bedroom.   Her other three children had left home years ago --- and lived in new townhouses of 3 bedrooms each with their children.  Those townhouses were social housing

So now we return to the matriarch who lived alone in a 3 bedroom house in Ashfield -- a house she'd occupied for 3 or 4 decades.  The social housing people visited her several times to say they had a brand new aged-care unit set aside for her.  It had just been built.  Nurse would visit x-many times per week.  Special needs built-in from scratch such as ramps, rails around bath, etc.  Mini-bus to call to take residents shopping etc. several times per week.  Sounds perfect for a lady in her 80s, doesn't it ?  And for peppercorn rent as all she had was her aged pension

The old woman refused each time to move, even when told there were families with several children on the waiting list who needed the 3 bedroom house she'd lived in for over half her life at taxpayer expense

Why wouldn't she leave the house and move to the new unit, I asked her daughter.  It was because her adult son with the rental properties had all his excess furniture etc. stored at his mother's place.  Repeat:  this guy had a home of his own and was drawing rent from his two investment properties, but he was too tight to pay for storage for his excess furniture.  So you, the taxpayers, paid for his mother to occupy a 3 bedroom house near schools which needy families with children desperately needed

And the social housing people let her get away with it

But there's more.  The old woman's 50-something daughter who lived alone with her adult son (30) in a taxpayer funded 4 bedroom house she'd occupied since brand new more than 30 years before --- didn't even pay to have her stove fixed when it broke

Who pays for your stove when it breaks? Who replaces your hot-water system when it conks out? Who fixes your roof when it leaks?  Who replaces your worn carpets?   Well, move into social housing and you'll never need pay for any of that again.  Because the 50-something woman who lived in a four bedroom social housing place with her one adult son was working and getting cash in hand at the same time she was being provided free money from you, the taxpayer.  Yet when her stove broke, she got her adult daughter (lived in social housing new townhouse) to stay at her mother's place when the social housing people sent men around to install a new, free stove.  And the adult daughter told those men that her poor mother was at the hospital

Me, I think it's disgraceful.  Taxpayers don't mind helping out, even though there are less paying tax due to ever increasing unemployment.  But the system is and has been rorted well and truly by those who whine about how tough life is

How tough can life be when you live in a free house with multiple spare rooms?

And how stupid and irresponsible are the social housing people (paid by taxpayers) for letting that mercenary old woman remain in a full sized house in order she'd have room to store her adult son's surplus furniture?

It needs to be tightened up -- a lot

So above we have three generations of bludgers living the easy life while you and I go out to work to support them and their leisure.  Meanwhile, genuinely needy families are still living in shipping containers out on unserviced blocks miles from shops, schools and hospitals 

[nero_bolt]

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@polocross58 wrote:

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Excellent post, thank you, and there is part of the problem in a nut shell.

🙂

[freddie*rooster]

Just wondering if the social housing in Millers Point and the sudden need for social cleansing has anything to do with the James Packer development at Barangaroo?

[freddie*rooster]

There is always someone who know's someone living in Public Housing who knows someone who told them about someone who does the wrong thing. For each one of these people doing the wrong thing I guarantee there are 10 doing the right thing caring for the housing they live in as if it were their own.

[spotweldersfriend]

Developer = crook.