The View from the Flats

Melbourne’s 44 public housing towers are being demolished. Sally Olds speaks to the residents about the government’s plan.

The judgement is scheduled for the Supreme Court at 10am on Friday, April 4th. The entrance hall off Little Bourke Street is almost entirely taken up by a security conveyor belt, a body scanner, and the attendant operators and guards. As there is nowhere to wait inside, the queue spills down the stairs and onto the street. Ahead of me is Barry Berih, wearing a grey coat and holding a large takeaway coffee. He is the plaintiff of the case (Public Housing Towers Group Proceeding: Barry Berih v State of Victoria), a youth worker and a long-term resident of the Alfred Street public housing estate in North Melbourne. He’s standing with his lawyer, Louisa Bassini: tall, dark-haired, sombre. Behind me, I recognise Rachael Dexter, a journalist at The Age who has been reporting closely on public housing, and Gabrielle de Vietri, the Greens MP for Richmond and the party’s Spokesperson for Public and Affordable Housing. De Vietri is wearing black plastic disc-shaped earrings, which have lettering on them; one disc reads “PERSIST, RESIST, EXIST” and the other says “SOVEREIGNTY NEVER CEDED.”

We’re here, in part, because of Victoria’s former premier Daniel Andrews: “Dan” to his supporters, “Dictator Dan” to his detractors, and “Dandrews” to his more ambivalent constituents. In September 2023, days before he retired from politics, Andrews announced via a televised press conference—the hard hat and high-vis stayed firmly on during the segment—that all 44 of Melbourne’s public housing towers would be knocked down and rebuilt. “Our [towers] are old, they are out of date, they are crumbling, they need to go,” he intoned, laying nasal emphasis every few syllables. This is how most residents learned about the fate of their homes. Berih is representing 479 households from North Melbourne and Flemington in a class action brought against the State of Victoria, the Minister for Housing, and Homes Victoria, the government body that oversees public housing in Victoria. The tenants have argued that the State failed to consult them on the decision and that their human rights were overlooked throughout the process. They want the slated demolition reviewed, this time with proper consultation. As part of this, they want other options besides demolition—including upgrading the existing buildings, which experts have argued is not only feasible but cheaper, less disruptive, and more environmentally friendly—considered publicly and transparently. Today, we’re going to learn the outcome of the 14 month-long case.

I take a seat in Courtroom 3. It’s a small room that resembles a church, all honeyed wood and long pews, several of which are taken up by public housing residents. At the front, the lawyers sit around a large rectangular table. Half of them have their backs to the bench, facing their fellow lawyers instead, as though they’re breaking bread at a dinner table. When Justice Melinda Richards emerges we all stand up. Then many of us perform uncertain, pogo-ing half-squats, pre-empting the command to sit, before we’re given the official instruction.

Justice Richards begins to speak. She reads her judgement from a distractingly large laptop, a metallic brute with, I swear, an A3 sized screen. It takes me a while to attune to the legal language. A few minutes in—“...no realistic possibility that Homes Victoria could have made a different decision…can only be done by demolishing and rebuilding…”—I realise that the tenants have lost. Berih’s case is dismissed. A lawyer for the State stands up and tells the judge that they will be seeking costs from the plaintiff. At first, I think I’m misunderstanding what I’m hearing. Labor wants a public housing resident to pay for dissenting to public housing policy? Surely not. But I overhear the duo in front of me whispering about it. It’s true. We get back on our feet, the judge leaves, and we file out. The whole thing is over in fifteen minutes.

Except that outside, on the pavement, the debrief is just beginning. Many of the residents here today are Vietnamese, with English as their second language. There was no translator in the court, so many of them don’t yet fully know what transpired. Conferring with this mostly older crowd are two people in their twenties or thirties: R-Coo, who has long black plaits, and Hristijan, who is tall and wears wire-framed spectacles. Both are housing researchers, activists, and former public housing residents. The lawyer, Bassini, outlines the judge’s ruling and R-Coo translates it to the residents, who grow increasingly distressed as they learn more. After a lengthy discussion, R-Coo passes on a message from the residents to the media: “They accept the judge’s decision but they don’t agree with her. They don’t want to move, and will keep fighting.”

Out of the scrum, Gabrielle de Vietri climbs up onto a step and hugs the air, making gathering motions. She gives a rousing speech, earrings swinging. “When the bulldozers come to knock down the buildings, we will be there to stop them,” she orates. “We will stop this project from happening. And we do that by staying strong together.” Her sudden ascension to the soapbox strikes a slightly odd note. For one, until R-Coo steps in to translate again, many of the residents don’t follow these proclamations; for another, it’s an awkward reminder that even the most staunch politicians—de Vietri has been outspokenly pro-public housing—are still politicians, and that grandstanding is part of the game. (It’s an election year, after all, and housing is the central issue.) One of the residents, upset at the verdict, yells periodically, “Don’t support Labor! Don’t anybody support Labor! Vote Greens or Liberal!” “No, not Liberal!” someone tells her; the two talk things over during the rest of the MP’s speech.

*

In early March, while the judge was deliberating on the case, the government made another surprise call: the redeveloped North Melbourne and Flemington sites will not include any public housing. Instead, at Flemington, there will be a mix of “affordable” and “community” housing. At Alfred Street, there will be 300 community apartments and 500 private ones. The private dwellings will be a mix of market and affordable housing, though the ratio of each has not yet been announced.

The above has been widely reported already, though if you aren’t across housing policy (and even if you are), you will likely find it difficult to parse. It’s worth delineating what each of these categories—public, community, and affordable—mean in practice. Everyone currently in the towers in Melbourne is a public housing tenant. Public housing is the most secure form of tenure available to renters. Public tenants are often given unusually long leases—they may stay for decades, whole lifetimes—and rent reviews happen twice a year to ensure that the tenant is neither paying too much nor too little. The exact amount of rent is capped at 25% of a tenant’s income.

Community housing is managed by not-for-profit Community Housing Providers (CHPs), like Launch Housing, a large, wraparound housing and support service. Rents are generally capped between 25-30% of a tenant’s income, though this can differ between CHPs, who are allowed to set their own benchmarks (for instance, some CHPs calculate their rents at 75% of the market rent). Leases are fixed-term and vary in length—five-year leases are common—and can be renewed if all conditions are met. Unlike public housing tenants, community tenants are also eligible for Rent Assistance, 100% of which is paid to their housing provider. And, as registered charities, CHPs don’t pay GST, meaning they have a potentially larger kitty to use on services, maintenance, buying more property, or paying their CEOs a healthy salary.

Then there’s “affordable” housing, the vaguest of them all. These dwellings are also owned and managed by CHPs, but are more likely to have higher rents than community rentals—for instance, it’s usually 75% or 80% of market rate, or some percentage of the renter’s income. “Affordable” is often incorrectly used as an umbrella term interchangeable with social housing (itself an umbrella term covering public and community housing) when a) someone doesn’t really know what they’re talking about, or b) they wish to obscure precisely what kind of social housing is on offer.

The philosophy underpinning the redevelopment of the towers is known as “social mix.” The idea is that by breaking up public estates and replacing them with hybrid private-community developments, socio-economic outcomes for public tenants are improved. How? Perhaps through the positive influence of their betters, whose well-mannered children and labradors are meant to somehow compensate for below-poverty-line benefits, lack of decent-paying jobs, under-resourced hospitals, etcetera. Through “mixing,” the poor will supposedly finally ascend to the middle-class. Beyond that, the rationale is not clear. The government has not provided any robust arguments—in the form of citations, studies, publicly hashed-out debates—for the efficacy of social mix. I’ve written about this before; you can read my column on Nightingale Housing for a more comprehensive critique. While reporting that piece, I interviewed urban geographer David Kelly, who got interested in Nightingale because he saw that its use of social mix was the model by which the State’s public housing stock was being overhauled. This observation has proved extremely prescient. What’s more, we’re getting social mix without Nightingale aesthetics and ideals, and without even the existing towers’ mid-century, airy, modernist ones—in disrepair though they may be. Sad, black-glazed-window new builds are springing up across Victoria. Flimsy skyscrapers shoot up over Woolworths, a token strip of Lomandras edging the perimeter.

The Alfred Street tower in North Melbourne is already about half-empty. Its tenants are being moved on to new properties, some of which are public, some of which are community. When the rebuild is complete in the projected six years’ time, they can, if they wish, return to the site of their former home. If they return as community tenants, they will pay higher rents and have less secure leases. More likely, those residents will be pushed out permanently, as happened with the Kensington estate redevelopment in the 2010s, after which only about 20% of previous residents returned. I’m reminded of an ominous quote from a Labor councillor who, in 1957, spoke out against the forced relocation of some elderly, inner-city residents to the suburbs: “If they take them out to Broadmeadows they are taking their lives.”

*

A couple of days before the ruling, I spoke to the lead plaintiff, Barry Berih, over the phone. Berih was born in Australia to Eritrean parents and has lived at Alfred Street for most of his life. He’s still there, despite the tower emptying out around him. Growing up, he remembers get-togethers during Ramadan, community festivals, hanging out with neighbours. Now in his early thirties, he runs a community organisation called Young Australian People, which supports public housing residents, and he has become a kind of unofficial spokesperson for his fellow tenants. This came about during the COVID pandemic. In July 2022, the North Melbourne and Flemington towers were locked down—at Alfred Street, residents could not leave their apartments for 14 days—without warning, or with only the warning of a Dan Andrews televised press conference, though the first many people heard of it was when police swarmed the estate. Berih was interviewed in the aftermath, advocating for the State government to formally apologise. They refused.

Fourteen months after that came the demolition announcement; 44 public housing towers across Victoria were to be knocked down. Residents began approaching Inner Melbourne Legal Centre with complaints about their rights being breached, again, or just seeking help figuring out what was going on. The State has said it held 32 workshops with renters across the estates to develop a document called “Our Communities: Our Values,” which guides Homes Victoria’s engagement with the community (“diversity + inclusion” and “respect,” read some of the subheadings). But the first of these consultations took place in December 2023, after Andrews’ announcement. Residents never had a say over the bare fact of their homes being demolished. And although there have been other meetings and informal conversations between Homes Vic and residents on the estates since then, many have not found this to be a useful or welcoming process. Berih says Inner Melbourne Legal gave them better, more comprehensive information than the government did.

“They don't actually talk to us directly,” Berih told me. “That's it. That's the issue.”

Recently, the Social Housing Regulation Review—a mammoth investigation into social housing, commissioned by the Victorian government—came to much the same conclusion. The report was delivered to the State government in 2022 and only made public in December 2024 after a motion, raised by the Greens, passed in parliament. The overwhelming message of the 213 pages is that social housing tenants do not have meaningful input into the conditions of their own housing. Tenants are often not aware of their rights, and are hesitant to make complaints out of fear of eviction or other negative repercussions. There are no formal, industry-wide cultural safety standards for Aboriginal tenants, making housing the exception to the rule among the “human services.” Whatever scarce resources exist are allocated to services that tenants don’t really want, and actually useful or desirable services—tenant associations, maintenance groups—go un- or under-funded. Berih told me that a lot of government money goes to organisations who do a patchy job, at best. Why don’t tenants have a say in who gets hired? Better still, he suggested, they could form their own maintenance and cleaning groups, and get that funding to do the work themselves.

The situation is depressing. It gets even more bleak when you realise these issues are not just five or ten or even twenty years old, but that they cycle through the entire history of public housing in Victoria. In the mid-twentieth century, State policy centered around what was called “slum reclamation” or “slum clearance.” “Slums” were areas of privately-rented or owned houses judged to be beyond repair, many of them in the inner-north suburbs that today attract orange wine guzzlers and ironic cowboy-boot-wearing private school lads. Once identified as slums, the government purchased the properties from the landlord or owner-occupier, assisted with re-housing the residents, demolished the houses, and built public housing on the site. Many of the 44 public high-rises were built on these cleared areas. The writer Tony Birch has described the impact of having two of his childhood homes demolished in the 1960s clearance programs, first on Drummond Street in Carlton, then in Fitzroy. He went from living within a few blocks of his grandparents and great-grandparents to living in one of the Richmond towers, where he knew nobody.

The Richmond estates themselves were built on a cleared “slum.” The aftermath of the clearance is outlined in a useful case study in a book called New Houses for Old: Fifty Years of Public Housing in Victoria 1938-1988 (page 158—I got a copy from the library, if you want to follow along). In the late 1960s, about 140 households living on Highett Street were moved from their homes. About a year later, 83 households were traced to new locations and interviewed extensively. Of these, 56 households had been outright owners of their homes, while the others were either renting or paying off a mortgage. Post-relocation, only 14 households were able to buy another home. The Housing Commission’s compensation often did not match the money residents had put into their old homes—many of which they had renovated—and was not enough to buy a new one. A majority of households had moved out of Richmond, and were now travelling further to school and work. Less people walked, and more caught trains and trams. Highett Street had been home to many Greek migrants, but they were in the minority in their new neighborhoods, and longed to return to their old community.

Now, the cycle continues. Like the Housing Commission, Homes Victoria continually promotes the value of new housing over the old, and expresses disbelief that many residents prefer to stay put rather than move into their hygienic modern redevelopments. During this era, residents would often learn that their neighborhoods had been marked for demolition via newspaper reports, much like the televised bombshells today. Today, as then, public protest and dissent from locals has attended every phase of the program. Perhaps the most striking lesson from the recent past—that residents will fight for the community that they, not the government, not architects, not bureaucrats, not developers, have built over decades—also seems to go unheeded.

*

Outside the Supreme Court, a Maxi Cab pulls up. I am invited to ride back with a group of public housing residents to their home in one of the Richmond towers. We pile into the van and R-Coo hands out a single ginger lolly each to Hristijan, the eight residents, and me. They are all members of a group called 44 Flats United (44FU, pronounced “eff you”). Formed and led by current and former public housing residents, 44FU have two main objectives, neither of which have been altered by the outcome of the legal case: to ensure that no resident is left worse off because of the government’s plans to demolish their homes, and to fight against the demolition of all the estates. This includes the towers and the grounds around them, which contain playgrounds, community centres, and gardens. It’s not yet clear if the government intends to knock down everything on each estate, but, given that this is the plan for Alfred Street, it seems likely to apply to the other sites too. As we bump along in the cab, we speak in a mix of English, and, with R-Coo translating again, Vietnamese. There is a lot of dire conversation about Homes Victoria. Nobody here has any love for Homes Vic. The residents tell me that staff from the relocations team have been standing in the lobby, intercepting people as they arrive home, and pressuring them to sign relocation consent forms on the spot. (Berih said similar things were happening at North Melbourne.)

Many people had signed the form without understanding it or knowing what they were agreeing to. Some were worried that if they didn’t sign, they’d be left homeless. Some residents want to move into a nearby new build, but, despite asking, have not been considered for it. Others were informed they would be given two options for new housing, but not what would happen if they refused these two options. This is how the system works: two choices, and then you are removed from the Priority Access List—the register that bumps you up in the queue for social housing. What does that mean in practical terms? Again, the residents don’t know.

“There have been so many groups sent to talk to us,” says Lin, who is wearing a white visor that says “SPORT.” “One group says A, one group says B, one group says C.”

The cab pulls into a long driveway snaking up to one of the towers. We assemble at a picnic table in a communal yard area out front, a regular gathering place for the group, who meet up every fortnight to eat together. There are some barbecues, as well as a shelter overhead, a metal ping pong table, and a small garden. From their capacious handbags, the ladies produce meat and bread rolls, which they assemble efficiently then pass around. I accept a roll and am also handed a sweet dish of rice and coconut. Lin talks about how hard it is to make ends meet on her pension already. Thi, who is wearing a black-and-white windbreaker, is telling me that she’s worried about finding work again (she’s a carer) if she’s relocated somewhere too far from her current job and has to resign. “I’m an old lady, English isn’t my first language—if I lose this job, who’s going to hire me?”

Lin tells me that there are, of course, problems in the tower. She shows me a photo of human feces on the floor in the laundry, and a full rubbish bag on top of one of the machines. She says she has seen people shooting up heroin on the estate multiple times. But none of this is an argument for breaking up the community; it’s an argument for better support. Also, the building has been in disrepair for some time now. It’s often difficult to get things fixed and replaced. In the cab, the residents told me they suspected their homes have been in what’s known as “managed decline.” “For more than a decade,” a resident named TK had said, “whenever there’s an issue in the building, when something needs to be maintained, they haven’t fixed it. I believe this is intentional to justify demolishing the towers and privatising them.” On this matter, the government’s actions have also been contradictory. The picnic area we’re in now and the ground floor lobby were only redeveloped last year. Why use up all those resources just to raze the whole thing a few years later?

Lin takes me to the block’s communal veggie garden. Inside is a football-field sized space divided into plots and alleyways, like a plant village, built around a central shelter big enough to accommodate a massive table and a red-brick pizza oven. Two women are at the table picking the leaves off a mound of herbs. Lin says she and her friends often hang out and drink coffee here in the afternoons. “We have a good life here,” she says. Colourful chairs dot the walkways. I am awed by how lush and healthy everything looks—it’s the most impressive communal garden I’ve ever seen, and that includes CERES. Lin shows me her plot, which she says has taken her about a decade to cultivate. On a wooden structure overhead, she has a canopy of bitter melon, and underneath, a big, crackly lemongrass bush, a few varieties of mint, plentiful chillies, and still more plants I can’t identify. Lin hasn’t heard whether or not this garden, like the garden at Alfred Street, will be demolished. She hopes that it will be preserved for future residents to enjoy, even if she’s not among them. When we rejoin the others, R-Coo passes me some leaves. I crush and sniff. There’s the fish leaf, which smells exactly like the ocean, and makes a great vegan substitute for fish sauce, and the fart leaf, which smells like—well, you know. Lin and another gardener harvest a bunch of chillies and spring onions for me to take home. “All organic,” Lin says, serious but also half-joking, as if spruiking wares to a discerning consumer.

R-Coo drops me at Queen Vic Markets. As I stroll around buying fruit and vegetables, it strikes me that the group at the Richmond tower have what many people can only dream of: family and friends in close proximity; huge green spaces; their doctors, hairdressers, children’s schools, and workplaces either on site or a short walk away. Private rentals work against this kind of convenience and community. Renters try to strike a balance between their daily haunts, their people, and their bank accounts, but most often have to prioritise affordability, accepting a twenty or thirty minute or hour long schlep to get to their bestie’s place in exchange for a working oven and decent rent—and that’s only until the lease ends, at which point they’re often forced to sever all their new roots and strike out again.

At Richmond and the other towers, the community has evolved over decades. It’s intricate, complex, and tight. It makes a mockery of the “community” you hear about in government pamphlets. These will apparently be “vibrant, integrated mixed tenure communities which create greater opportunities for health, employment and education,” according to one release, an achievement facilitated by “introduc[ing] private housing at each estate.” But if the goal really is social mix, pulling down the towers is counterintuitive; they are what make gentrified suburbs like Fitzroy and Carlton genuinely mixed-income areas. Notably, it never seems to go the other way. The government has not, for example, decided to seize the leafy Carlton North blocks containing Florian, Opera, CLAY, Senserrick, and the Lee Street Farmer’s Market and forcibly engineer a new community of 70% poor people and 30% rich.

What will the city be like once the old public housing residents have scattered and re-made what’s left of their communities elsewhere? Well, certain parts of the inner-north offer provisional answers to this question. Opposite one of the condemned estates in Fitzroy, there is a warmly-lit, convivial, bustling wine bar. In typical Melbourne style, it’s a small plates joint where students and artists on either hospo wages or their parents’ coin rub shoulders with the properly moneyed. It’s a nice place, welcoming, though it does feel a little strange that its closest neighbours never go there. In ten years time, this may be just one of many charming shop fronts on the street. You could be sitting behind any one of these yellow-lit windows, drinking a martini, looking out at more of the same.