Housing activists gathered outside 82 Wentworth Park Road, Glebe, on October 15, where the demolition teams had started work on eradicating the relatively new public housing block.
They condemned NSW Labor's decision to demolish it, when more public housing would be a solution in the housing crisis.
Speakers included Denis Doherty and Emily Valentine from Hands Off Glebe, Remy Lebreton from the University of Sydney SRC, Karyn Brown, a long-term public housing tenant and Soolin McCauley, who has recently experienced homelessness.
Rachel Evans, Action for Public Housing and Socialist Alliance activist who MC'd the action, told 鶹ý the demolition is a “travesty”.
“Labor in NSW and Victoria are on a push to privatise and are demolishing a range of estates in NSW and Victoria. They are going for at least seven major estates in NSW.
“It makes no sense given we are in a housing crisis and the solution is more public housing,” Evans said, adding the commodification and privatisation of housing “got us into this crisis”.
Lebreton told GL it is “unacceptable” that these homes were being demolished and said Labor should instead fix them and make them available for those in need.
Doherty and Valentine described an alternative plan which would include “infilling” the property with more apartments behind the building, thereby increasing the number of available units.
Brown said public housing was being sold off to boost developers' profits. She said Labor should build more public housing and leave existing housing as it is.
[Join the at Marrickville Town Hall on Sunday October 26.]
