Waterloo Public Housing Residents Handed Eviction Notices

Dozens of residents from Waterloo South public housing estate have rallied over the weekend after being handed eviction notices giving them six months to “relocate”.

Homes NSW delivered notices to 147 residents on Thursday 27 February, informing them that their homes will be torn down as part of “Stage 1” of a $4 billion redevelopment plan. The state government intends to replace the 750 public housing properties with 3000 new homes, half of which will be private.

Residents have been fighting against the change since 2015.

“Waterloo South is our home and we don’t want our community to be destroyed by government’s hellbent on privatizing housing and land,” said Karyn Brown, resident of Waterloo South public housing estate and Action for Public Housing spokesperson.

“Our communities are not for sale. We are in a housing and environment crisis. The last thing the government should be doing is evicting us, putting us in another home someone else could be living in, then demolishing perfectly liveable homes when we need to save and salvage finite resources.”

In 2023, NSW Labor ran a “Hands off Waterloo” pre-election campaign, with local Labor MP Ron Hoenig sending letters to Waterloo tenants telling them they could “stop the sell-off of the Waterloo Public Housing Estate” and “protect” their homes by voting Labor.

Despite this, the plan is still going ahead, with the government being awarded the contract for the first stage of the project last August.

Housing Minister Rose Jackson told the Sydney Morning Herald that the evicted residents would be able to return to the new housing estate, with 70 new units above the new metro station set to be completed this year.

Residents label move as “developer greed”

Greens housing spokesperson, Newtown MP Jenny Leong, said the change wasn’t something communities were calling for.

“Our communities don’t need more expensive apartments that few can afford to rent, let alone buy: our communities need more public, accessible, and genuinely affordable housing.

“Razing an estate that is currently 100% public housing and replacing it with a watered-down mix of public, community, and market housing while the public housing waiting list blows out to more than 63,000 households is completely unconscionable.”

The eviction notices informed residents that they would be provided with a “Relocation Officer” to help them move “to another home in the local area, or [their] area of choice”, but residents say the issue is bigger than themselves.

“This proposed demolition shows the government only cares about developer greed and privatising public lands, not about solving the housing crisis,” said Brown.

“There are 63,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in NSW. You demolish public housing and it takes 10 years to build something in its wake.”