Kevin St Alder: I still call Bondi home

Bondi gets under your skin. The ocean breezes, art-deco architecture and remnants of working class culture mixed with coffee, bohemians and beer.

Traditionally, the stretch of sand has been a bastion of egalitarianism, which John Pilger calls Australia’s version of the holy Ganges in India. A sacred place that’s hard not to call home

For many, that’s getting harder: rents are 30 per cent more than the Sydney average, owner-occupiers are increasing, and housing stress is typical. Itinerant houses are being demolished for luxury apartments. The money’s moved in.

Since his teenage years, Kevin St Alder’s seen Bondi change. He owned cafes in the eighties, and worked voluntarily at the beach’s public school in the nineties where his daughters attended. A community stalwart, he was part of the lobby group Friends of Bondi Pavilion.

Now he’s fallen on tough times, he calls the backside of the pavilion home. He’s been homeless for eight months and shelters there. Some of his neighbours in this makeshift squat – equipped with entertainment systems and libraries of books – have been there for eight years

“Nobody wants to be homeless and you can’t be proud of it but you can have a certain amount of dignity in the way you hold yourself,” St Alder said, in the midst of a legal battle to stay in Bondi.

“Homelessness is a community issue – the Bondi community should look after Bondi’s homeless. We’re sending a clear message to local governments you cannot move your homeless along.”

The pavilion’s homeless were threatened with eviction by Waverley Council, and were represented pro-bono in suspending that action before Supreme Court. The group now has the council on contempt charges for failing to comply with that order, alleging eviction action by a council ranger.

St Alder has stormed a council meeting and a State Parliament conference demanding answers. Ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Sir Laurence Street, is now mediating in a case that strikes at the heart of Australia’s compassion in an urbanised world, and the right to call an area home.

The case re-convenes before the Supreme Court on August 27.

Waverley Council is one of the few local governments with an affordable housing program. This is limited, procuring only 33 apartments between 1999 and 2006.

Mayor Sally Betts said social housing was a State Government issue.

“It’s not a council issue, and social housing is for people who are in desperate need, and fulfill lots of criteria. But the desire to live specifically in Bondi is unrealistic.” she said, adding that she’s received extra complaints about the behaviour of the pavilion’s homeless.

But St Alder’s stand is not merely subjective.

“A percentage of housing in the area should be low-cost, for the disadvantaged,” he said.

State Environmental Planning Policy 10 (SEPP 10) aims to protect low-cost housing in an area but some call it a ‘toothless tiger’. The policy states that concurrence between local and state governments should be reached before major works on low rentals take place. If they do, alternate accommodation should be found for struggle-streeters attached to a community.

Ignorance of this policy, and the ongoing battle with Bondi’s homeless, implies that low-income earners aren’t a part of the new Bondi. The times, they are a changin’.

The case is now in mediation, and the homeless will drop contempt charges against the council if negotiations with the Department of Housing to find these men accommodation are successful.

In the meantime St Adler and his neighbours will shield ocean breezes and huddle in blankets on winter nights. Most will wake up shivering before sunrise, and take a morning walk to warm themselves up before the showers open inside the pavilion. They’ll curse their luck and wish they had a buck.

At midday, they might find themselves on Bondi Beach, Australia’s great equaliser, where everybody is under the same sun.

There’s something about Bondi. Councillors have to ask themselves whether the old Bondi is worth protecting, or whether it should be moved along.

– By Matt Khoury