Since getting notices just before Christmas that nearly
2,400 residents will be cleared out of Waterloo, public housing tenants have
been disturbed and angry. Now they are preparing to fight back and started their
campaign on Saturday April 23 at Waterloo Green. Despite driving rain and wind a sizable crowd
turned out to hear local tenants, Jenny Leong MP and representatives from other
public housing areas in the inner city who have been similarly affected by the
NSW Government’s social cleansing policy.
Millers Point and Glebe representatives told of the
insensitivity and bullying by government agents as they threaten and ‘persuade’
people to move away from familiar areas and people. Both areas have suffered people being hospitalized,
suffering heart attacks, and even some suicides and deaths. have occurred. Brad Hazzard, the Minister for Social Housing,
should be renamed Health Hazzard, they said.
Public housing is not a commodity, the rally was told, but
an asset that performs a special role in supporting people with health and
other problems. In the towers surrounding Waterloo Green and further afield
people look after one another. The Waterloo community has grown like this over
decades but now the NSW Government is ripping it apart.
Jenny Leong, the Greens MP for Newtown, assured the residents
that those who wanted to stay would find a firm supporter and friend in
her. She would do all she could to fight
the eviction and destruction of the community by the Baird Government.
The Government regards the people of Waterloo and other
public housing tenants as just pawns to be moved around to make way for profits
and private developers. But speakers at the picnic insisted that residents are
treasures, people who have contributed to building Sydney.
Public housing tenants are former teachers, soldiers, TV
cameramen, migrants, refugees, indigenous people the
list is long. People who have emerged
from these towers include talented footballers and academics.
Imagine Mr. Baird’s mother being moved to a suburb where she
did not want to go! Yet it is somehow OK to treat the tenants of Waterloo as
pawns to be moved to Ulladulla, Wilton or Katoomba.
The recently formed Waterloo Public Housing Action Group is leading
a fast growing fight back. The picnic was the first of more events intended to
show the people of Sydney that Waterloo residents have a right to live in their
city! They will not allow anyone to drive
them from the city they built.
A petition has been started and a protest song is already up
on you tube. Everyone is being urged to like the campaign’s new facebook page.