Housing NSW zeroes community garden
The community garden in Woolloomooloo was really starting to look good, with over 100 local participants, seedlings bursting forth to greet the coming spring, and local kids directing their tagging and art skills away from the streets onto the garden walls. Then Housing NSW evicted them with only four days’ notice.
Yes, a new site was being sought with the help of Council, but in the meantime everything on the 30m x 35m site had to be gone by 7am on Monday, July 20, or else be bulldozed by contractors. The blunt letter threatened that anyone found on the site after that date would be charged with trespassing.
This presented the gardeners with a dilemma as they had nowhere to store such a large garden – so the eviction effectively doomed the popular project.
An email battle broke out between Housing NSW, which owns the site but has left it vacant for decades, and Carl Kneipp, who has been working to establish the gardens for some years. He set up and incorporated Greening Woolloomooloo Inc. to provide a legal structure for the voluntary project and won a grant of $5,000 from Landcare and support from the City of Sydney.
Mr Kneipp queried the stated intention to begin excavations when no Development Application had been lodged, and the bureaucrats claimed the gardeners had never been authorised to occupy the site – even though Housing NSW had previously stumped up $1,500 for a set of large rectangular pots for the project. They remained on the site for some months until they were stolen by two men and a truck after Housing NSW had left the fenced site unlocked, says Mr Kneipp.
Only two weeks before the eviction notice, Clover Moore MP and Minister for Housing David Borger had checked out the garden on a walk through Woolloomooloo.
The alarm went out and distressed locals descended on the site to save whatever plants and materials were moveable. Mr Kneipp called a site meeting on Friday, July 17. Three Council officers turned up, as well as the project’s pet possum, but no-one from Housing NSW was able to make it – ironically pleading short notice.
High-profile local artist Rozee Cutrone also attended. She had been co-ordinating an art program in the garden aimed at engaging local youth, teaching them art skills and encouraging their efforts towards making a social contribution instead of antisocial tagging.
Centrepiece of the emerging gallery is a giant mural by Jarad Kelly, based on a C18 Japanese woodcut surrounding a modern, angular spraycan piece reminiscent of a flying dragon. Young locals practise on other walls, inspired by the Kelly piece, says Ms Cutrone.
Then came redemption, of a kind, after The City News asked Minister Borger for a comment. At 5.23pm on Friday, the following reply arrived:
“The commencement of work at 174 Dowling Street Woolloomooloo which was due to occur on Monday will be deferred until further discussions take place with key parties.
“Housing NSW is talking to City of Sydney to try and identify alternative sites for the garden.”
It seems a funding windfall from Kevin Rudd’s economic stimulus plan requires a large stock of new social housing to be built very quickly, hence the hasty decision to use the site and the sudden eviction.
While this is great news for Sydney with its spiralling housing costs, the gardeners had still not been told of the reprieve by Saturday afternoon. They were still frantically trying to find new homes for their plants and chattels when The City News informed them of the Minister’s intervention.
Deputy Lord Mayor Marcelle Hoff, who is out of town, sent an advisor to the site meeting.
“I’m pleased to see that the Minister has deferred the eviction,” she said. “We at Council are certainly doing all we can to support this community and help them save their garden.”
There are no plans to re-house the possum.
by Michael Gormly
