On August 16th I posted a piece about the State Government decision to sell off the dock workers cottages which, as public housing, have been lived in for over a hundred years by rent paying tenants. The Government takes the view that now is the time to sell off these heritage listed cottages which have considerable harbourside views. That there is a huge thirty-odd storey casino under construction a few hundred metres down the road is, no doubt, completely coincidental. The argument, which is a cogent one, is that the price the Government would get for these flats would be sufficient to build five public houses in Western Sydney.
You will recall this photo that I took.
The young man was going to email me with his address, but he never did. I was going to attend the street picnic, but I never did. Eventually, today I took two A4 prints for them down to their street and went into their corner cafe. The owner said that if I couldn't find them, he would keep the photos and give them to them later. The street was quiet, and they weren't there, but there was a removals van. One of the movers said that the old lady was Bridget, and that he had known her for years. She had moved out last week, but he said that he could give the photos to her.
At that moment a well-ish dressed lady from the Housing Department asked if everything was OK, and she also offered to get the photos to them both. She said that she had managed to house three of the neighbours near to each other, though of course, NOT in Millers Point.
She further said that some of them wanted to go, but I couldn't help thinking that those who wanted to go, could go anyway. That's called free will. The sadness, the crime, is the forced eviction of people who want to stay in the houses where in a few cases they were born.
I could quite see the logic of the Housing Manager who would be getting five new units of housing stock for every old unit of housing stock sold, thus increasing rental income considerably, and I thought of a member of his staff sending out carefully drafted letters to all the tenants. It would probably be less than a day's work.
I, thankfully, live in a house owned by Marg and I, so I can't imagine what it must be like, when out of the blue you receive a letter which says, "Sorry, but we don't want to let out our house to you or to anyone, when your agreement expires in six months."
Your shops, your schools, your ways to work, perhaps even your jobs, will change; so will your dentists and hospitals; your GPs and pubs; your trains, your buses; everything in your life will, for better (hopefully), or worse, change completely. Just one letter, yet it will change your life.
So goodbye, young man; good luck, Bridget. Take care. Have a good life. Wherever they've put you.
