“We want them here”: pain over public housing loss lingers

Late last year the Victorian Government announced it would invest more than $36 million to build a new vertical primary school on land being redeveloped as part of its Public Housing Renewal Program in North Melbourne.

It was a development from the previously proposed “education facility” on the site that would function as an expansion of the existing North Melbourne Primary School.

But for a number of residents living around the site, the inclusion of a school or education facility was felt as adding insult to injury: it made it harder to oppose the redevelopment of Abbotsford St estate, which they said was not a “renewal” of public housing but a “sell-off”.

Jan Lacey, Meredith Kidby, Marlise Brenner and Annie Rivera all live in the immediate vicinity of the site and have been part of “Protect Abbotsford Street Estate” alongside public housing residents.

Their opposition to the renewal program revolves around a few key points:

• The difference between social housing and public housing
• The “selling-off” of the previously publicly owned land
• A net loss of rooms on site
• The treatment of public housing residents and the “breaking up of a community”

All of them agreed that the effect of including a school “took the edge out of the opposition”.

“We’re quite aware that the North Melbourne Primary is very under pressure, people don’t want to disagree with stuff just for the sake of it,” Meredith Kidby said.

“It did definitely take quite a bit of edge off the opposition – who is going to oppose a new school?”

Annie Rivera said the idea of the school was thrown in after the community expressed strong opposition to the renewal.

“The community was really up in arms,” she said.

“I think it pacified parents with kids at school. The concern for parents was the kids were studying in portable buildings because there is not enough space, and you’re building this development with 500 apartments, so it got to a crunch point.”

“Yes, there is a need for a new school in North Melbourne, no doubt about it. But you’re building this school a block away from a totally separate school and getting rid of public housing to do it.”

In response, a government spokesperson told North West City News: “The site of the school has been known for many years and we make no apologies for building it near social housing – so every kid, regardless of their background, has a great local school, close to home.”

Why social housing?

The public housing renewal program was launched in 2017 throughout 10 public housing estates. The Abbotsford St Estate in North Melbourne was one that was chosen to be entirely demolished and rebuilt, alongside estates in Northcote and Preston.

But residents said the name of the renewal program is misleading. The new housing will not be “public” – that is, owned and run by the state – but a mix of affordable housing dwellings run by the community housing sector, and private dwellings for middle- and high-income earners.

The state government uses the term “social housing”, which is an umbrella term that includes community housing, public housing and state owned and managed Indigenous housing.

The social dwellings that will be built on the North Melbourne estate will be run by the community housing sector.

Dr David Kelly, a research fellow at RMIT University, has written extensively on the renewal program. He said the differences mattered.

“The rent is higher, it’s 30 per cent of income. In public housing it’s 25 per cent. You can also be charged additional charges and if you’re eligible for rent assistance, community housing providers will take 100 per cent of that before it goes into your account,” Dr Kelly said.

He also said community housing providers could “cherry-pick” tenants.

The idea of public housing is that it’s unconditional. If you qualify, you get a place. Within community housing there are more conditions you need to meet and there’s also less oversight and regulation.

There is a federal body to regulate social housing, but Dr Kelly said it was not as robust as regulation for state housing, and they are less accountable.

“With the government you can issue ‘freedom of information’ requests, for example, but you can’t do that with private community housing organisations,” he said.

The state government has argued that the existence of “concentrated disadvantage” in large public housing estates supports the idea of a “social mix” of both affordable and private, higher income dwellings. But Dr Kelly said the idea of concentrated disadvantage was not supported by academic research.

Rather, the mix of affordable and private dwellings was based on the economic rationale for developers taking over the land for private tenancies.

Dr Kelly said the idea of “social housing” had been increasingly used by governments in Australia as they had moved away from providing public housing.

“We’ve had community housing managers for more than 50 years in Australia, but they’ve been small and niche and not-for-profit. But that sector has got bigger over the years partly because of government disinvestment in public housing,” he said.

“Government has seen an economy of scale that means they can offset risk and recurrent expenditure, place that on the community housing sector and get out of the business of doing public housing.”

According to Dr Kelly, as that process unfolded a term was needed that would capture a number of different tenure types. Social housing was a term long used in Europe and could fit the purpose of the “umbrella” term.

The renewal

The Abbotsford St Estate is being totally redeveloped through a public-private partnership with MAB Corporation and housing association Housing First.

The land is currently sitting empty. The public housing buildings were demolished last year but work is currently delayed by the presence of asbestos in the soil.

There were 112 public housing dwellings on the estate, which will be replaced by a minimum of 133 “social” dwellings and 170 private dwellings, according to the state government. The private housing component is meant to help fund the project.

But part of Mr Kelly and the local’s criticisms of the program is a net loss of rooms, despite the government’s assurance that there will be more social units than there were public units on the old estate.

“The old public housing dwellings that were on the site were predominantly two-, three- and four-bedroom dwellings. They’re replacing them with mostly one- and two-bedroom dwellings,” Mr Kelly said.

“The demographic make-up of the waiting list is, the archetypal person, is a white single male. The people being displaced are predominantly family households of colour. So, what you see is demographic shifts on the estates from mixed ethnicities and families to a more white, single demographic.”

The lack of family-suitable homes also poses problems for tenants’ right of return to the estates. Residents who were moved out of the estate have been told they will have the option of returning once the new units have been built.

The government spokesperson told North West City News that every resident would be given the opportunity to move back to the site once the project is complete, despite the development predominantly comprising one- and two-bedroom units.

The government has said that some of those dwellings would be “adaptable”: able to be combined to create three- and four-bed homes.

Jan Lacey, who has lived across the road from the estate for 40 years, said the removal of the tenants “broke up a community”.

“My daughter was 10 when we moved to North Melbourne and through her I met the families and they became play mates,” she said.

“There was a lovely old lady we met while door knocking on the estate setting up the Protect Abbotsford Street group that had some kind of dementia.”

“We learned later that because she was there and supported by her neighbours, she could happily live in the flats, but once she was moved out, she ended up in a nursing home.”

“People had informal childcare arrangements and all those things. It really broke up a community.”

Annie Rivera said she knew of public housing residents being relocated across Melbourne and even further.

“They’ve been scattered all over,” she said.

All the local residents spoken to by North West City News wanted to communicate that public housing is wanted by the local community, who didn’t see it as a burden.

“Maybe in some areas, people don’t want public housing. This is absolutely not the case here,” Meredith Kidby said.

“We want them here.”