By Cara Waters
Residents of Melbourne’s public housing towers have told a public parliamentary inquiry they have been coerced into relocation by the Allan government and do not wish to leave their homes.
“These demolitions don’t feel like progress, they feel like erasure,” Reem Yehdego told the Inquiry into the Redevelopment of Melbourne’s Public Housing Towers on Tuesday.
Ruth Eyakem, a resident of the Racecourse Road housing towers for more than 20 years, spoke at the parliamentary inquiry. Credit: Chris Hopkins
In 2023, the government announced the demolition of the 44 high-rise public housing towers, and the process of relocating many of the residents has begun.
Yehdego said Homes Victoria had been coercive in the way it dealt with her and other residents of the towers.
“Sometimes they would offer a house and before even allowing them to look at it, they would say you need to accept it before we show you,” she said. “The relocation officers would say if you don’t accept this offer we don’t know what will happen next.”
Public housing residents were told they had a deadline of September to relocate.
“As soon as we got the letter, a lot of us were scared and anxious,” Yehdego said.
Yehdego said the public housing towers are located in areas that were not seen as safe in the past, but the communities there have made them safe.
“Now they are becoming gentrified so the government and developers are seeing it as a cash grab,” she said. “But these are our homes, I can’t see myself living anywhere else.”
Under the plan announced by then-premier Daniel Andrews in September 2023, days before he left office, 44 high-rise public estates across Melbourne will be razed.
The properties will be leased to private companies for 40 years and rebuilt with a mix of community housing (comprising properties aimed at people on the housing waiting list that are owned, developed and maintained by not-for-profit organisations) and private rentals run by consortiums.
No traditional public housing will be rebuilt, except at two red-brick towers in Carlton for which the federal government has committed funding.
Ruth Eyakem has been a resident of the public housing towers in Flemington for 20 years and told the inquiry that residents did not want to move.
“Please leave this public housing as it is,” she said. “We are together and feeling home and supporting each other and community … now all of a sudden, they come and separate us everywhere. That is a big mental issue for us.”
Public housing towers in North Melbourne and 43 other locations are set for demolition. Credit: Chris Hopkins
Eyakem said the housing to which the government wanted to relocate residents was “like a students’ dorm, not a home”, and was small with no space for dining or to gather as a community.
Another resident, Katherine Ceballos, told the inquiry that the new homes to which families were being relocated were too small.
“Our families are large, our children are tall,” she said. “We are marginalised, we are put in a jam-packed box and presume this is what we want, they came in like Willy Wonka with the golden ticket.”
Ceballos said people living in the towers were being relocated to Melbourne’s outer suburbs where transport options would be limited for many of them who cannot drive.
“People are being asked to leave the centre of Melbourne and go to Woop Woop,” she said.
Ayan Mohamud is a former resident of the towers and said the communication by Homes Victoria with residents was “abysmal”, with residents finding out from flyers posted on walls or from the media that they were to be relocated.
“Our community is not asking much. They want to know how and why and when they can move back,” she said.
Another resident, speaking through a translator, told the inquiry that he had been “forced to move” and relocated from the public housing towers to community housing.
“A lot of the residents of the public housing did not know that they had the option of returning to public housing,” he said. “A lot of the residents of the community housing thought that where they were going was public housing.”
The resident said the community housing was not the same quality as his previous home and was more expensive to live in as he had to pay for utilities.
“I fell sick during the move,” he said.
The resident told the inquiry he did not want to move but was told he had to move by September otherwise the relocation would be at his own cost.
The public parliamentary inquiry will resume on July 1.
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