The Martin Place encampment that has become a symbol of the city's homelessness problem was all but swept from the streets on Saturday by Clover Moore's City of Sydney council, in part to make way for a property development.
Underneath banners advertising a charity CEO Sleepout ("Homelessness Doesn't Have a Postcode," the banners declare) staff employed by the council moved quickly on Saturday morning to remove rows of bedding and furnishings that had built up at the north-eastern end of Martin Place.
The removal of the camp came amid a tense morning of negotiations between the Council's director of city operations, David Riordan, and the organisers of what had become, over the past six months, a community of Sydney's homeless.
"I was a broken man when I came here three months ago," said Nigel Blakemore, one of the camp's residents. "Now I'm ready to take on the world, get back on my feet."
The council nominated two reasons for removing belongings that had accumulated across Martin Place from the Reserve Bank building.
One was the need for construction hoardings in front of a building site at 60 Martin Place. The second was that the accumulation of items had been deemed a "public nuisance" in materially affecting the "reasonable comfort and convenience of other uses of Martin Place".
Staff from both the City of Sydney, and Housing NSW were on hand on Saturday to emphasise alternative places of accommodation.
But some that had been sleeping out said Martin Place had become a more reliable option than government alternatives.
"If you take temporary accommodation through Housing, you end up getting further behind than what you were if you had stayed here," said Mr Blakemore. Temporary accommodation tended to last for five days, he said.
Jason Nichols who, with Sandra Sheldick had been living in Martin Place for the past six months, cited the same problem with temporary accommodation.
"After five days of TA, we're only going to hit the streets again," Mr Nichols said. "Every night we come here we feel like we're coming home," he said prior to the removal of the bunk bed he had been sleeping on.
One organiser of the camp, Lanz Priestley, said between 38 and 65 people tended to stay there overnight. "All levels of government should come to the party, if they were actually concerned about us, to solve the underlying problems," Mr Priestley said.
Another organiser, Nina Wilson, said they set up the encampment on Martin Place in response to safety concerns by women who had been assaulted while sleeping rough elsewhere. But that it was in Martin Place was also a factor.
"You've got all the parliamentarians and politicians across the road," Ms Wilson said. "You've got the Reserve Bank. It's in people's faces. We wanted people to see there is an issue with homelessness, and it doesn't need to be hidden, it needs to be fixed."
By Saturday afternoon, the majority of belongings had been removed to a council depot, and those that had had been sleeping there had been offered alternative accommodation.
A kitchen that had been set up outside the Reserve Bank building, however, looked likely to remain in place.
In a statement, Cr Moore said the council had worked with FACS to offer alternative accommodation to all in the area, as well as health services.
"The number of people who sleep rough in Sydney each night is very distressing," she said. "We need to work together to provide safe and secure shelter for all – one of the most fundamental human needs."