United Nations (UN) Blasts Labor’s Tower Demolition Agenda
The Age’s coverage of this damning report from the UN’s special rapporteur on housing sheds a light on everything that’s wrong with the Labor Government’s agenda to demolish our 44 high-rise estates: the severing of communities, the impact on older and vulnerable residents, the inadequacy of the redevelopments to cater for the near-sixty thousand households languishing on the waiting list — the replacement blocks will only provide one thousand extra units for that cohort. The majority of the rebuilds will comprise so-called ‘affordable’ housing and private market rentals which offer investment opportunities for the big end of town.
The Government’s refusal to release the 146 documents held under ‘cabinet privilege’ which purportedly validate the demolition rationale remains a smoking gun – what are they hiding? Meanwhile, Homes Victoria has responded to this decisive report with the usual robotic talking points: the claim that the buildings no longer meet modern building codes is farcical as we are informed by well-credentialled architects that 80% of Melbourne’s buildings would fail on this benchmark.
The report notes how this forced displacement of 10 thousand people violates the international human right to housing, a right which is still largely absent from local human rights legislation. It's crucial that the Victorian Human Rights Charter enshrines the right to housing as a fundamental human right, and backdates this right so that public housing residents cease being pawns in a game of human Monopoly where they’re always the losers.
The UN report should serve as a wake-up call: the Save Public Housing Collective appeals to the Victorian Council of Social Services and other key welfare and housing NGOs to publicly oppose the tower demolitions instead of regarding them as a ‘fait accompli’ whilst merely calling for better consultation. Furthermore, all concerned stakeholders should jointly campaign in order that housing as a human right is legislated without further delay.
