This was published 11 months ago
Footscray in flux: The suburb showing the symptoms of profound demographic shift
As inner-city dwellers move in and new developments go up, the face of Footscray is changing.Credit: Jason South
It’s a balmy summer evening in Footscray. Tattooed hipsters sip craft beers and scoff takeaway burgers in the alfresco area of one of the latest venues to sprout along the Nicholson Street mall.
Barely 10 metres away, an army of community volunteers running the weekly soup kitchen have no time to enjoy the warm weather. Pushing trolleys filled with groceries, they race up and down the pedestrian street handing bread, meals and fresh produce to more than 400 people in need.
Apartment developments along the Maribyrnong River.Credit: Jason South
Around the corner in Maddern Square, two dozen people listen to music, yell and drink themselves to oblivion next to the bodies of two men passed out on the lawn. Barely a block away sits the dilapidated site of the Franco Cozzo furniture showroom, soon to become a brewery and music venue.
These scenes encapsulate the battle for Footscray – where gentrification, a windfall of government investment, anti-social behaviour, crime and entrenched disadvantage compete in a tense tug of war to shape the future of the inner-western suburb.
Traditionally an industrial and working-class suburb, successive migration waves turned Footscray into the heartland of multiculturalism it is today, where Vietnamese restaurants co-exist next to halal butchers and shops selling African wares.
The gentrification wave that transformed areas in the inner-north like Collingwood, Fitzroy, and Brunswick spared large swathes of the inner-west, preserving Footscray’s character as an industrial melting pot.
But first-home buyers, young professionals and families have been lured by cheaper housing, thousands of new apartments slated for development and a pipeline of government infrastructure projects, accelerating the reshaping of the suburb.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics backs anecdotal accounts that the ground is shifting.
As new developments go up and trendy venues open up, the character of Footscray is changing. Credit: Joe Armao
“You know people and I certainly do who have moved in because they couldn’t afford Fitzroy or Brunswick or Collingwood or whatever,” said Patrick Fensham, the Victorian president of the Planning Institute of Australia. “It’s sort of the next frontier.”
For the first time in several generations, the majority of Footscray’s residents were born in Australia – a departure from the suburb’s status as the arrival point for migrants looking to settle in Melbourne. The median age of locals has also increased, a sign that professionals and middle-aged couples with smaller families might be replacing migrant families with multiple children.
However, Fensham said the most startling sign of the suburb’s changing face was the increase in median household incomes – from below the Victorian average in 2016, to above it by 2021. “It’s definitely seen an influx of wealthier households,” he said.
The new face of Footscray comes from inner Melbourne
At Railway Reserve near the Victoria University Nicholson Street campus, a mix of new and old residents welcome the first day of summer with a picnic on the grass. Performers entertain the crowd while a man dressed in colourful silk robes puts on a juggling show nearby.
Among those browsing the popular market are young parents Carley and Jesse Ocean, who recently moved to neighbouring Seddon from Richmond and are considering buying property in Footscray.
“It’s pram central, lots of young families, good schools, green space, access to nature, to Williamstown Beach,” Carley said.
Carley Ocean and Jesse Ocean with their baby Rae. The couple is considering buying property in Footscray.Credit: Joe Armao
The couple is among a wave of Melburnians flocking west because of its cheaper housing stock, rich offer of Edwardian and Victorian homes, family feel and proximity to the CBD. Footscray was the third-cheapest place for home buyers this year with a median house price of $920,000.
The couple was also encouraged by the state government’s billions of dollars worth of investment in Footscray, including a new $1.5 billion hospital set to open in 2025 and more than $120 million into local schools to cater to the suburb’s exploding population. Resident numbers are forecast to double in the next three decades from 17,131 in 2021 to 41,943 by 2051.
The Maribyrnong City Council has approved more than 2400 new apartments and 28,000 square metres of commercial floor space for construction, as property developers turn to old factories, vacant land and other dilapidated sites like a disused bowling club in McNab Avenue as project sites.
Member for Footscray Katie Hall, a Labor MP, said the state government was investing in the suburb “like it’s nobody’s business”.
“Every day you can go into Footscray and experience a new culture, and it’s a place of constant transition. Maybe the period of transition currently happening is one where other people in Melbourne have discovered our secret,” Hall said.
Mai Chung and her partner Nick can’t afford to live in Footscray.Credit: Joe Armao
However, some business owners and residents fear the influx of new arrivals is pushing rents and property prices up, pricing out long-term locals, and changing the diverse fabric of the suburb.
Mai Chung said most residents from Vietnamese backgrounds had moved to more affordable areas like St Albans and Sunshine. Chung, who herself is Vietnamese and grew up in Footscray, said she no longer could afford to live locally and had moved to Altona. “It’s definitely very hipster now with all the new bars and restaurants,” Chung said.
Fensham said Footscray’s industrial character would likely prevent it from gentrifying to the same degree as inner-northern suburbs like Fitzroy and Collingwood, but that retaining a diverse property offer with affordable and public housing would be key to retaining the suburb’s diversity.
Politicians, developers and councillors looking to revamp the area will also have to contend with Footscray’s entrenched disadvantage and anti-social behaviour which has pushed some traders in central Footscray to the brink of quitting.
A man and a woman drink and smoke on the streets of Footscray.Credit: Jason South
Life in fear and rampant vandalism
As the soup kitchen volunteers pack away trestle tables and crates, a rowdier crowd begins to congregate in Maddern Square.
Traders along Nicholson and Paisley streets said it is often after dark when most theft, break-ins, public defecation, drug-taking and fights take place. If Footscray seems seedy during the day, just wait until sundown, they said.
Le Ngo, who runs a tobacconist on Paisley Street, had a metal gate installed outside her business after vandals ram-raided her shop several times. She said finding people overdosed on the footpath had become a weekly occurrence.
“I have to keep an eye out because if I hear screaming I need to shut the door,” she said. “People are scared to come because they don’t feel safe.”
Ngo’s feelings are echoed by other business owners in the heart of Footscray, who said they feared for their safety as a result of escalating violence and crime gripping the suburb.
Police have launched a series of proactive initiatives to tackle the problem, but data from the Crime Statistics Agency shows the move has failed to curb offending, with crime rates at their highest level since 2017.
Assaults in the suburb have soared to a nine-year high. Property damage and drug offences have also spiked. Robberies are one of the few offences that have significantly dropped. Burglaries are also down, but not by much.
Some traders have hired private security or rostered additional staff to deal with substance-affected people, while others have stashed weapons, such as metal barbecue skewers, under the counter to fend off prospective attackers.
Littlefoot Bar owner Stuart Lucca-Pope said Footscray was on a meteoric rise until COVID-19, but that the economic fallout of the pandemic caused more anti-social behaviour and crime and stunted the growth of the suburb’s buzzing hospitality industry. At least one venue in nearby Chambers Street, Baby Snakes Bar, has decided to shut shop after a series of violent attacks on its owner, Mark Nelson, and the bar staff.
Littlefoot Bar owner Stuart Lucca-Pope. Credit: Joe Armao
Cem Cayrak, who has owned a butcher shop on Nicholson Street for almost two decades, said his customers were too scared to come to the street and were choosing to have orders delivered instead.
Fellow butcher Saddique Ahmed, who runs a shop a few hundred metres up the road from Cayrak on Nicholson Street, said delivery drivers refused to offload orders early in the morning, fearing potential attacks. Ahmed said he and his son were forced to stand guard outside the shop to reassure drivers.
Famous Halal Meats owner Saddique Ahmed says he fears for his safety.Credit: Jason South
“A lot of customers have left my shop because of this situation. They don’t feel secure,” Ahmed said. “Especially in the last six to nine months, the situation has become much worse.”
When The Age visited the suburb several times over the past four weeks, it inadvertently stumbled upon a drug deal in broad daylight. Large groups of people yelled and drank in Maddern Square, a notorious drug-scoring spot, and a man with a broken arm urinated in one of the laneways nearby.
Ahmed, who migrated to Melbourne from Bangladesh, said he never expected to feel unsafe in Australia.
Ngan Tran and her husband Vu Lam opened a bottle shop in Footscray after moving to Melbourne four years ago. They said they felt let down by the police.
Speaking through her daughter Daisy, Tran said drug-affected people tried to steal from the shop daily. In March, a man charged at and punched Lam in the face after he caught him stealing for the second day in a row.
Police came to the shop and spoke to the family after the incident, but Tran said nothing appeared to have been done to apprehend the man.
Vu Lam was recently assaulted by a substance-affected man at the bottle shop he runs in Footscray.Credit: Jason South
The couple now rosters two staff members each night, one to serve customers and another to keep watch at the door. But they worry that won’t be enough to protect themselves from another attack. “We are immigrants … we just want to run our business and have a good life,” she said.
They want additional police officers in the area to deter criminal activity – a view supported by most traders who spoke to The Age – and a streamlined process to report crime, particularly for those with limited English skills.
Inspector Paul Morgan, the area commander for Maribyrnong, said detectives from the local crime investigation unit had executed more than 30 warrants and arrested more than 60 people since October.
“Our uniform police are patrolling the Footscray CBD at all hours. Our proactive police are visiting schools almost every day. Our detectives are conducting a variety of operations and arresting offenders weekly,” he said.
Hall, the local member, acknowledged the increase in crime and community concerns about safety. Hall said she had met with Police Minister Anthony Carbines and local traders in September to devise a combined police and mental health strategy to reduce crime in the new year. However, for traders like Lam, Tran, Ahmed and Cayrak, help can’t come soon enough.
Filling the gap with hope for the future
Inside a commercial kitchen in Albert Street, staff pull steaming trays of cinnamon scrolls and pastries out of a large oven.
To the untrained eye, Nan’s Bakehouse might look like one of myriad trendy cafes that have popped up in the suburb. But those who have met owner Phil Gaby know the small, busy bakery does much more than serve lattes – it fills a gap in the community Footscray is desperately screaming out for.
In addition to selling baked goods to customers, the business provides food and support to struggling families and rough sleepers. The cafe also employs young people who are on the autism spectrum and struggling with mental illness.
Phil Gaby opened Nan’s Bakehouse with the idea of helping those less fortunate.Credit: Jason South
Gaby was looking to get out of the hospitality business when he had a vision for Nan’s Bakehouse. The business was inspired by his deceased mother, who used to take in and feed people doing it tough without making a fuss about it.
“She would just help people and that was the whole concept that we had to do this business,” Gaby said. “It was to help people, and it couldn’t be monetary, which is the opposite of what they tell you to do in business.”
The cafe is now helping hundreds of families and individuals a week.
Efforts like his might be the key to helping Footscray modernise for the future without leaving too much of the past behind.
Gaby believes he is filling a void left by the state government, the local council and the police, who he claims have lost sight of how to forge relationships with people on the streets and provide effective support.
It hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Gaby, who grew up in Footscray, comes to work most days to find faeces and syringes scattered on the front step and has had to remove drug dealers too. But his efforts to build trust have paid off. When he forgot to lock the business one night, a rough sleeper who regularly came for help guarded the premises to ensure no one broke in.
“Council was more concerned about what we were doing here with a wall and outdoor furniture than what they were doing with the homeless and crime problem in the local area,” he said. “You can’t just come and arrest people – you have to actually have a relationship.”
Footscray residents might already be helping shape the suburb’s destiny – at the polls. At the last Victorian election, incumbent Hall held off a 13.9 per cent swing to the Greens candidate Elena Pereyra.
The historically safe Labor seat is, for the first time in 100 years, back in play.
Pereyra, who hopes to run in the next state election on the issues of housing affordability and maintaining Footscray’s cultural and socioeconomic diversity, said young voters could help her flip the seat Green.
“I think it’s really exciting for people of the west that it’s not [a] safe [seat],” she said.
Locals hang out in Nicholson Street mall.Credit: Jason South
At a local government level, Maribyrnong City Council has had its own shift. Its first Victorian Socialist candidate, Jorge Jorquera, was elected in 2020. The council also has two Greens councillors and the remaining four councillors including the mayor are Labor members.
Long-time resident, community advocate and Greens member Pierre Vairo said he would be running in the October 2024 council elections asking for more bike paths, sustainability measures and affordable housing stock in the area. “The area has really changed and it’s been taken for granted for too long,” he said.
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