Housing activists took to the streets in Glebe, Gadigal Country/Sydney, on July 5, to show opposition to New South Wales Labor’s demolition plans for public housing sites.
The windows at the 30-year-old public housing units at 82 Wentworth Park Road, Glebe, have been boarded up and the site fenced off in preparation.
Activists told the rally, organised by Action for Public Housing (A4PH) and Hands Off Glebe, that public housing should not be demolished, especially during a housing crisis.
The 82 Wentworth Park Road site was occupied in June 2023, pressuring NSW housing minister Rose Jackson to promise that the site would remain “100% owned and managed public housing”.
As Rachel Evans, from A4PH told the protest, Jackson lied. “She promised no privatisations [and] no-sell offs, and now the site is about to be demolished.”
The new development will reportedly include 43 community housing apartments, which, while cheaper than market-rate housing, are run by charities and non-government organisations.
“This is privatisation by stealth of public land, which will benefit developers,” Evans said. “The waiting list for public housing has grown from 56,000 in June 2024 to 67,000 now.”
Linda Casey Kennedy read out a letter from former tenant Carolyn Ienna: “When I moved in, the government told me it would be for life … and then they moved me out two years ago.”
Ienna said when she heard she was to be evicted, she tried to contact Jackson, but was ignored. She said there were “three deaths related to relocation notices”. “Human beings need a roof over their heads, not stuck living in a park, suffering.”
Dennis Doherty, from Hands Off Glebe, said the group does not oppose new housing but that “it must be public housing”.
“We are not a NIMBY [not in my backyard] group,” he said, explaining that Hands Off Glebe had commissioned an architect to draw up an alternative plan for refurbishing the site and boosting the number of public housing units. Labor, however, rejected it.
Karyn Brown, a long-term public housing campaigner and resident of Waterloo, condemned Labor for its push to replace public housing with private and community housing.
Brown pointed out that dozens of homeless people sheltered under the tram bridge in Wentworth Park, across the road from the boarded-up estate. “That place has been sitting empty for 18 months; those people could’ve been living there.”
Other speakers included: Aron Khuc, University of Sydney (USyd) student welfare officer; Jim McIlroy from Socialist Alliance; Judy Deacon, mother of Jesse Deacon, who was killed by police at the Franklyn Street public housing estate in 2023; and USyd disability officer Remy Lebreton, who read a message from Greens MPs Jenny Leong and Kobi Shetty.
“For years we’ve seen the sell-off, destruction and underinvestment in critical public housing,” Shetty and Leong’s message said. “There was a deliberate strategy of demolition by neglect, so [the government] could justify selling off public housing properties and claim they were too expensive to fix.”
The crowd marched to Glebe Markets, where Evans, and housing activist Isaac Nellist, encouraged shoppers to support the defend public housing campaign. “Public housing is the best solution to the housing crisis and skyrocketing rents,” said Nellist, a renter and Socialist Alliance member.
The group then marched through the streets to the Wentworth Park Road site, where they discussed plans to save public housing estates at Cowper Street and Franklyn Street in Glebe.
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