Statement: The Save Public Housing Collective condemns the lockdown of Public Housing in Melbourne
The Save Public Housing Collective (SPHC) condemns the hard lockdown imposed 4 July by the Victorian Government on residents of public housing in North Melbourne and Flemington. The COVID19 global pandemic requires a public health response, not a punitive reaction. We oppose the use of police to hold 3000 members of our community in detention.
A plentiful supply of well built and maintained public housing in Victoria would help keep everyone safe – especially during a pandemic. Instead, successive governments have failed to build public housing, and have failed to adequately maintain and repair existing housing. The Andrews Government is instead selling public housing and has manifestly failed to undertake any preventive or community health-based measures in Victoria’s large public housing estates since the pandemic was declared.
The action of this Government blurs the lines between incarceration and housing. The justification that the action is required for public health shows a government stuck between two responses: abandonment or punitive policing. This is a false choice. A care-based response that centres the wellbeing of public housing residents is both necessary and possible.
We find this to be yet another expression of the Victorian Governments’ war against the poor and public housing residents. People who live in public housing in Victoria are more likely to have been impacted by poverty, racial injustice, mental illness, severe trauma, homelessness and domestic violence. Units on these estates are often over-utilised because of the history of state disinvestment in public housing. This heightens the risk of domestic violence and will impose particular burdens on women. The hard lockdown imposed in this way on these communities is therefore discriminatory, unjust and unnecessary.
We need better public housing, more public housing and an end to this punitive public housing model.
The Save Public Housing Collective demands:
Withdraw police and replace them with a health and social support workforce
Engage with representative groups from each building to establish a consultative process to manage the lockdown
Allow residents to leave home for work, exercise, shopping and medical issues (Stage 3)
Ensure services, support and transparent monitoring of likely related health and wellbeing issues including: domestic violence, mental health incidents, police intervention and arrest rates, and addiction-related issues.