Opinion
My neighbour took his life rather than face homelessness. Will Sydney bother to notice?
Sue Williams
Freelance writerWARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
We lost one of our neighbours the other day. He climbed over the balcony railing and threw himself from the top floor of his apartment building onto the ground below.
He’d been in that unit for 23 years and was a regular sight to all of us living in the little cluster of towers in Sydney’s Kings Cross, as he sat on a chair on his open balcony, watching the world go by.
If allowed to slowly become an area to which only the wealthy can aspire, Kings Cross will lose its allure.
But last week, the world no longer passed by; it stopped right at his door. His nine-level building of 35 cheap rented studios, he learnt, is about to be torn down and redeveloped into a flashy new one of just 12 luxury three-bedroom apartments. He was set to be evicted, and homeless.
The last time anyone saw him, he was tearing the development notice off a wall by the lobby entrance, and ripping it up in anger, frustration and despair.
This is the real face of the housing crisis: a middle-aged, lonely man, battling to survive on a low income, who felt he’d run out of options. This neighbourhood was his home, everyone he knew and everything he did was here.
But, increasingly, these old affordable blocks inhabited by lots of predominantly single people and young couples are being replaced by upmarket new ones that offer far fewer homes, designed predominantly for wealthy downsizers.
In our area of the eastern suburbs alone, as well as the building just by mine, another developer plans to knock down a block of seven apartments to create a single house, while a third proposes to replace a building containing 20 homes with one offering just five – much more highly priced – apartments. And there are rumours of many more “net housing loss” projects on the drawing board in the ’hood.
At a time when so many people are searching for places to live, and for modest homes that are affordable, how can this be allowed to happen?
A number of local councils are now trying to implement new planning rules where development applications have to either increase density, or at least preserve the current number of homes. The City of Sydney is one which has received approval from the NSW government to put its “Dwelling Retention” planning proposal on public exhibition, which would prevent development from reducing the existing number of apartments by more than one dwelling or 15 per cent of dwellings, whichever is the greater.
We can assume, then, that the current stampede of DAs to knock down old blocks with lots of small units and replace them with far fewer new and much more profitable apartments is a brazen bid to beat the deadline on coming changes.
This is an appalling trend. We’re currently critically short on homes, with a Grattan report finding that we have only around 400 homes for every 1000 people, and the federal government’s pledge to build 1.2 million in the next five years already looking astonishingly unachievable.
Moreover, a new Anglicare study has just revealed low-income Australians are facing the worst crisis in history, with one in five renters in rental stress deemed ineligible for assistance. Meanwhile, Australians are facing all-time high rents, according to the latest Domain Rental Report, and record low vacancy rates in Sydney and Melbourne.
So, knowing we urgently need more homes, and especially affordable ones and more social housing, how could we possibly agree to allow towers of cheap units to be smashed down and glossy ones of just a few sleek apartments being put up in their place?
Kings Cross in particular has always been a refuge for single people of all ages, with a real community feel, and cheaper housing existing cheek-by-jowl with fabulous multimillion-dollar penthouses. That absolute mix of demographics and incomes has always contributed to making the Cross such a dynamic, interesting and eclectic place to live.
But if it’s allowed to slowly become an area to which only the wealthy can aspire, then all that will be lost – especially as downsizers frequently leave their places empty to spend time in their other homes in the country or coast, or to travel overseas.
Sydney, and especially its inner suburbs, has to remain a city that welcomes singles and strugglers – who might not survive elsewhere – just as much as they welcome couples, families, and people on all income levels. Otherwise, we’re all going to be much the poorer, and more people like our mate over the road are going to run out of options, and of hope.
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Sue Williams is a Sydney-based freelance journalist, author and travel writer.