NSW Police stormed the public housing protest camp at Waterloo Estate on June 19 at 6am, forcibly removing residents and dozens of community members, and arresting one.
One person has locked themselves on to one of the trucks delivering the demolition equipment.
Public housing residents and supporters began a community camp-out outside homes slated for demolition under the controversial stage 1 of the Waterloo Estate “redevelopment” on May 24.
The protest was guided by Waterloo tenants opposed to the demolition. It resisted NSW Labor’s efforts to knock down the homes of 750 public housing tenants for more than three weeks.
Sixty police entered the site and forced people, including tenants, and tenants of Aboriginal Housing at The Block in Redfern, to move.
Grant Donohue, a public housing tenant representative of the Marton Building in the Waterloo Estate, said the government is “not fulfilling its obligations to refurbish these houses and maintain the buildings”.
“We need to invest in new public housing, but why knock down perfectly sound homes that are only 50 years old?
“These buildings could be easily refurbished —especially in a housing crisis. It’s silly that they’re going to put a wrecking ball through these homes.
“This is about public housing keeping a roof over the heads of people who are suffering and who desperately need it.”
Karyn Brown, a Waterloo public housing resident for more than 30 years, said while whole families are living in cars the government is demolishing public housing.
“Homes NSW are treating us tenants and housing activists in the Waterloo Encampment as if we are a danger. We are here to protect the rights of tenants.”
Brown said Homes NSW’s letters to residents about “relocation” is a furphy.
“It just means being put at the top of the ever-increasing waitlist for public housing. 2030 is too late. Public housing has always meant security and dignity, and housing minister Rose Jackson has taken both of those things away from us.”
Suelin McCauley, a spokesperson for Action for Public Housing and a public housing tenant in Surry Hills said: “The NSW government knows that the demolition of Waterloo is shameful, that is why they had to send 60 police in the dark.”
She condemned Chris Minns’s “authoritarian tactics to fast-track the destruction of public assets for private profit”, saying it will worsen the housing crisis and “funnel wealth to the billionaire class”.
“It’s an obvious abuse of power by NSW Homes and NSW Police. The community campaign to defend public housing is only going to ramp up after this.”
The public housing land in Waterloo South that Homes NSW is about to demolish is 12 hectares, Action for Public Housing activist Andrew Chuter told Green Left. It has an estimated market value of $1.3 billion. “Some 70% of this value will be privatised. That is about $1 billion.
“In return, the public has been promised 200 extra units of ‘social housing’, run privately, but further subsidised by the public. But this means the public will give up $5 million for each of those 200 social housing units.
“It’s a good deal for the developer company Stockland, but it is a bad deal for the public,” Chuter concluded.
[Sign the Action for Public housing petition to save Waterloo Estate here.]