Public housing tower demolition plan is ‘ethnic cleansing’, says mayor

The plan to demolish Melbourne’s 44 public housing towers has been slammed as “ethnic and class cleansing” and a “land grab for developers” in explosive testimony at a parliamentary inquiry.

Yarra City Council Mayor Stephen Jolly, a former public housing tenant, told the inquiry on Tuesday that the state government’s redevelopment project was designed to hand over prime inner-city real estate to build “high-rises for rich people”.

“Fitzroy will be wall-to-wall rich people”: Yarra Mayor Stephen Jolly on Tuesday.Credit: Justin McManus

Under the state’s plan, announced by then premier Daniel Andrews in September 2023, the towers will be razed and the land leased to private companies for 40 years. The sites will be rebuilt with triple the amount of housing and provide a mix of privately run community housing and market rentals.

No traditional public housing will be rebuilt, except at the site of two red brick towers in Carlton for which the federal government has committed funding.

Critics say the plan will upend the lives of thousands of people for a mere 10 per cent increase in social housing units and transfer public tenants into the privately run community housing system.

Twelve of the 44 towers are in the City of Yarra, more than in any other council area.

“Everybody who’s rich, everybody who’s white in Fitzroy does not live in the public housing,” Jolly told the Legislative Council legal and social issues committee’s inquiry into the redevelopment of the public housing towers.

“Almost everybody who’s poor, almost everybody who’s a person of colour in Fitzroy lives in those ... high-rise towers.

“This is ethnic cleansing. This is class cleansing. If those towers go down, Fitzroy will be wall-to-wall rich people.”

While acknowledging the towers have serious maintenance issues and that some walk-up public housing in his area was beyond salvage, Jolly argued the government’s demolish-all approach to the towers was the wrong solution.

Jolly giving evidence at the inquiry on Tuesday.Credit: Justin McManus

“God knows there’s problems,” he told the inquiry, listing failing lifts and squatters sleeping in communal laundries.

“But our position ... is that bad public housing needs to be replaced by good public housing. We need to refurbish where possible.”

The state government has described the towers as “past their shelf life” and “not habitable” and estimated it would cost about $2.3 billion over the next 20 years just to maintain them in their current condition. But it has not released full costings for the entire redevelopment plan as a comparison point.

Jolly claimed the standards being used to condemn the towers were not applied to the private construction sector, in which he works.

Lennox Street estate in RIchmond, one of 12 public housing towers in the City of Yarra.Credit: Paul Jeffers

“Eighty per cent of private high-rise apartments in Melbourne ... don’t reach the minimum standards that have been used against the public housing towers right now as a reason for demolition,” he said. “What we do is we retrofit. We fix them.”

He pointed to a “massive program of retrofitting” at Fitzroy’s Atherton Gardens estate 15 years ago as a successful precedent.

Jolly, who was formerly a member of the Victorian Socialists but left the party five years ago and is now non-aligned, repeatedly butted heads with Labor members on the committee over the towers’ condition, accusing the government of forcing a hypothetical debate by refusing to release the cabinet documents that underpin the decision.

“The reason that we don’t actually know the answer [to whether the towers are salvageable or not] ... is that your government has not released the cabinet papers,” he said. “It says to me, when they don’t want to release the documents, that they’re scared ... because it doesn’t back up their conclusions.”

Responding to the testimony, Housing Minister Harriet Shing accused Jolly of deliberately misleading the community.

“We’ve been clear that social housing will increase across every site, delivering more homes for people on the housing waitlist - this includes boosting social housing by 39 per cent across the North Melbourne and Flemington sites,” Shing said in a statement.

“These ageing towers will not stand the test of time - we have to act now. Victorians deserve better than bandaids on 1960s concrete - that’s why we’re replacing these towers with more social homes that are light, bright, modern and accessible.”

The minister also took aim at the plan’s political opponents.

“The longer the Greens and Socialists try and block these redevelopments, the longer Victorians will be forced to wait for safe, secure, and modern housing.”

The state has repeatedly blocked attempts to have the documents released, including fighting off their disclosure during a recent unsuccessful class action lawsuit brought by tenants, which is now being appealed.

Jolly’s testimony was supported by fellow Yarra councillor Meca Ho, who grew up in the Richmond towers.

Ho claimed residents in the Vietnamese community were being misinformed by officials who showed up at their doors with no interpreter, giving them limited choices for relocation and warning them that if they didn’t accept, “we’re gonna put you anywhere”.

Last month, The Age revealed senior government officials were meeting with major superannuation funds to discuss “delivery models that would enable investment” in the towers two months before the plan was ever made public.

Yarrac Councillor Meca Ho, a former resident of the Richmond estate, speaking at the inquiry.Credit: Justin McManus

The Age also revealed the government was quietly buying private homes at market rates to accommodate displaced tenants, with agents directly soliciting home owners in Flemington and Kensington.

Demolition work has begun at the Elgin towers in Carlton, while residents in the North Melbourne, Flemington and Richmond towers are in the process of being relocated.

Yarra council is seeking a moratorium on the project, and Jolly issued a direct warning to the Labor government, threatening a massive campaign of street resistance and calling for construction unions to encourage their members not to work on the tower demolition projects.

“I just hate bullies,” Jolly said. “What we have here is the poorest people in our area ... for the government to ... demolish houses for the poorest people, the most vulnerable people in the area. That’s a form of bullying.”

Hearings continue next month.

Contact Rachael Dexter securely via ProtonMail (end-to-end encrypted) at [e-mail] or on Signal at rachaeldexter.58.

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