By Cher Tan
In 2020 the Walker Street public housing estate in Northcote was demolished. Most of the land – the parts that look out over the Merri Creek – was handed over to developers to be sold, with a section retained for social housing. It was a controversial decision, and one which has now been documented in a new film Things Will Be Different which follows two of the last residents to vacate.
When the documentary begins, we meet Najat – a single migrant mother of four whose last name is not given – and William Gwynne. “We were campaigning for two years to try and stop the government from knocking down the estate,” Gwynne tells this masthead. “I’d only been there for three years when I got the notice.”
L-R Celeste de Clario Davis (filmmaker), William Gwynne (activist and documentary subject), Lucie McMahon (filmmaker)Credit: Justin McManus
In 2017, the Victorian state government introduced a policy called the Public Housing Renewal Program (PHRP), which states that it will redevelop 11 public housing estates around Melbourne. The redevelopment entails a relocation of all residents, as well as the entering of a contract with a private developer to demolish buildings and rebuild new homes, the majority of which will be private apartments, with some managed by a community housing provider in partnership with the developer.
This program has seen opposition from the public and activist groups, in particular the Save Public Housing Collective (SPHC), especially as residents have been forced to leave their long-term dwellings – some after as long as six decades – or put on waiting lists that take years to be approved.
The film comes at a time when Australia’s housing crisis is particularly pronounced. Capital city housing is considered among the most unaffordable in the world and rents have reached a record high with the median weekly cost now at $627. Last month, Anglicare released a Rental Affordability Snapshot which states that there are fewer than 300 rental properties available for those on minimum wage, the lowest in the 15 years the charity has released the report.
A lack of access to social or affordable housing underpins the current crisis. Compounded with the cost of living increases, progressively more people are finding themselves experiencing houselessness, with the current number at 122,000, according to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s inaugural state of the housing system report. A particular detail stands out: social housing has declined from 5.6 per cent in 1991 to 3.8 per cent in 2021. The PHRP isn’t the only government program impacting social housing – a plan to demolish all 44 high-rise public housing towers across Melbourne has led to a legal fight.
Filmmakers Lucie McMahon and Celeste de Clario Davis themselves grew up in public housing, with the latter having lived at Walker Street herself in her teens. When McMahon heard about the state government’s plan, she felt called to action and attended meetings at the SPHC where she met de Clario Davis, who ended up joining the crew as the film’s director of photography. There, McMahon also met Libby Porter and David Kelly, researchers at RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, who became executive producers on the film.
“When we joined up, Libby and David were saying that they write all this academic research, but it’s not accessible. A film might be a powerful thing to add to the mix of information available in terms of campaigning against what’s going on,” McMahon says.
Things Will Be Different began shooting in 2019 and took four years to finish. In that time, McMahon notes, “the [housing] situation had gotten worse”.
In the no-frills documentary, the audience sees Gwynne and Najat going about their day-to-day lives, the close neighbourly relationship between the two residents palpable. The trust established with de Clario Davis and McMahon, whose voices can be heard in the film, is decidedly poignant. There is a particular sense of quiet anguish in Things Will Be Different, as we hear Gwynne and Najat express their doubts and concerns about the fracturing of the social fabric of the estate, as well as worries about their future, with Najat particularly concerned about the impact on her four young children.
In one scene, as Gwynne packs up to move, he solemnly explains, “Imagine someone comes to your door and says they’re going to move you: you know that the neighbours you’ve come to be comfortable with aren’t going to be your neighbours any more. [...] the doctor and community services are all dependent on your local area – so you lose control over the conditions of your life.”
While Walker Street residents are guaranteed a “right of return” to the estate once it is redeveloped (the completion date is currently estimated to be in late 2024), it will involve living among those in private housing under what is described as a “salt and pepper” model in previous redevelopments. A study conducted by Flinders University researchers Kathy Arthurson, Iris Levin and Anna Zierch in 2015 of the Lygon St public housing redevelopment indicated that tenants’ wellbeing were often affected in what they called “state-led gentrification”, especially as private and public housing residents are segregated by separate entrances and carparks.
Gwynne expresses the displacement and gentrification process simply: “If you put someone with the flu next to people who haven’t got the flu, that doesn’t make their flu go away, you know? The minister’s retired, the premier’s retired. It’s a different Director of Housing. The project manager at Walker Street was different every year. Everyone has scattered and left. There’s no continuity, no memory.”
Things Will Be Different will be screening at events across both Geelong and Melbourne from May 12.
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