Residents vow to fight government push to quash public housing commission class action

Awil Hussein is at home in his comfortable North Melbourne apartment with his two daughters, Fatima and Aisha.

It’s the school holidays, outside it’s pelting down and Hussein, like many parents with kids home for the holidays, is desperately trying to come up with new things for his playful daughters to do on a bleak Melbourne day.

Awil Hussein with his daughters Fatima, 6, and Aisha, 4.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Hussein, though, has another type of stress also hanging over his head: the imminent destruction of the public housing estate he has called home for the last 23 years. It’s a place that he loves.

“It’s very safe to live here and there’s a really good community atmosphere too,” says Hussein, of the tower where he and his girls live, in Sutton Street, North Melbourne, and the adjacent tower where his mother lives, in Alfred Street.

His mother’s tower is among the first of three to be demolished under the state government’s plans for the high-rise housing estates dotted all over inner Melbourne. Once those three are gone, the rest will gradually follow.

“That community, that’s what’s going to be destroyed,” says Hussein, a community advocate and the president of Melbourne Somali Community Inc. “There is a really great sense of belonging, particularly for the elderly people that live in these buildings.”

The tower at 33 Alfred Street, North Melbourne, will be one of the first demolished under the state government’s plan. Credit: Chris Hopkins

Hussein says his apartment was upgraded not too long ago and while it lacks cooling, it is otherwise a perfect place to raise a family.

In September, then-premier Daniel Andrews promised that all the public housing towers would be razed and rebuilt to fit three times as many residents on the sites over the next 30 years. Soon after, a class action was filed in the Supreme Court by a community legal centre acting on behalf of residents.

That class action sought to scuttle the demolition plan, with the lead plaintiff arguing the redevelopment would adversely affect the human rights of thousands of tenants.

On Tuesday, lawyers acting for the Victorian government and Housing Minister Harriet Shing will go back to the Supreme Court and attempt to have that class action struck out - or “de-classed”, as it’s technically known.

The government said last September that the 44 public housing towers “fail against noise, sustainability, waste and recycling, bedroom area dimensions, room depth, ventilation, private open space, accessibility and minimum amenity standards”.

And they argued that if housing authorities did only critical repair and maintenance works over the next 20 years to apartments in the towers, it would cost $2.3 billion.

About 30,000 people would live on the estates to be demolished and rebuilt by 2051 under the plan – with 11,000 in social housing, about 1000 more than occupy the towers now. The remainder would be private apartments, with an unspecified number of so-called “affordable” housing tenants.

But Inner Melbourne Community Legal, the law centre that is working with residents to bring the class action to court, said the attempt to quash the case was more about secrecy than it was serving the community.

“It is [an] attempt to maintain secrecy around the government’s decision to demolish [the] towers and deny residents their opportunity to understand whether their rights have been properly considered,” the legal centre said in a statement.

In a writ filed in the Supreme Court in January on behalf of residents in both the Flemington and North Melbourne public housing estates, lead plaintiff Barry Berih said the government had made the decision to raze the buildings “in a manner that was incompatible with human rights”.

“Public authorities have failed to properly consider their rights throughout the process,” Berih’s writ said.

Inner Melbourne Community Legal, acting on behalf of the residents, has also argued that Victoria’s state Cabinet did not have the authority to make the decision to demolish the towers.

The legal centre’s managing lawyer, Louisa Bassini, said the entire process has occurred without transparency or procedural fairness.

“The public housing estates aren’t just bricks and mortar that belong to the state government. The towers are home to 10,000 Victorians and their rights matter. The Victorian government should not prefer expedited and secretive decision-making ahead of proper consideration of peoples’ rights,” she said.

The writ filed in the Supreme Court by the community legal centre also challenges the state Cabinet’s authority to greenlight the tower demolition plan. It argues that such a decision must be made by the Housing Minister, Harriet Shing, and by the state’s housing agency, Homes Victoria.

“The decision to demolish ought to have been undertaken by the Housing Minister or Homes Victoria in a manner consistent with the established legislation, in consultation with the communities affected, and with reference to the Charter [of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act],” Ms Bassini said.

The demolition of public housing and subsequent sale of the land that housing once stood on to the private sector is the subject of a new documentary to be released next month at the Setting Sun International Film Festival, which runs annually in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Things Will Be Different is a documentary that follows two residents in their final months living in the now-demolished Walker Street public housing estate in Northcote.

The estate was knocked down and most of the block, which overlooks the Merri Creek, given to developers for sale.

Public housing is demolished in Northcote in 2020.Credit: A still from the documentary Things Will Be Different

The state government has never divulged the deal with developer MAB, or what proportion of profits from the sale has gone back into the public housing sector. A new building on one corner of the site will be constructed for the disadvantaged, with 106 social housing units (the old public housing estate had 79 units).

Lucie McMahon is one of the directors of Things Will Be Different, and said there were many similarities between what was unfolding at the North Melbourne and Flemington public housing estates and what had happened in Northcote.

“What’s happening at Flemington and North Melbourne estates will displace people from their communities, their children’s schools and their workplaces and health care facilities. We saw this happen at the Walker Street estate in Northcote, and it has had really detrimental effects on the families involved,” McMahon said.

She said the redevelopment of Northcote had taken far longer than residents were promised, and it was still unclear whether they would ultimately be able to return.

Many had now established lives elsewhere and couldn’t face moving again. McMahon said alternatives to simply demolishing the high-rise towers should be found, “such as building infill housing on existing estates and renewing the existing buildings, rather than knocking them down and rebuilding”.

A Victorian government spokeswoman said redeveloping Melbourne’s public high-rise towers would be the largest urban renewal project in Australian history and boost social housing by at least 10 per cent, “delivering modern, fit-for-purpose housing that every Victorian can be proud to call a home”.

She said it would be inappropriate to comment further because the matter was before the courts.

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