Acknowledgement of Country//

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Earlier this week, Spike and Priya visited the Hoddle Street public housing estate and spoke with resident Sim, who has been living in one of the towers for 7 years. In this interview, Sim reflected on last week's announcement by the Victorian State Government that all 44 public housing towers in the Greater Melbourne area have been slated for demolition and redevelopment in the coming decades. Sim spoke about how the announcement was delivered to residents and discussed the stress and uncertainty this has caused.//

Last week we caught up with Izzy Brown, a public housing walk-up resident, local community organiser and artist, to talk about the launch of the Resident Frequency Recording Studio out of the Hoddle Street public housing towers' community centre. We heard from Izzy prior to the announcement that the towers were to be redeveloped, so today we spoke with her again about what this announcement means for various communities and local culture at the estate.//

On Tuesday, Spike and Priya also caught up with Christopher Sprake, Community Development worker at The Wellington, a community organisation that services the Wellington Street public housing tower. Chris was able to briefly speak about the public housing redevelopment announcement from a community worker perspective, noting the lack of information provided to both residents and workers by the Victorian Government either before or immediately after Victoria's Housing Statement was made public.//

Louisa Bassini, Acting Director of Legal Practice at Inner Melbourne Community Legal, joined us to speak about the implications of the Victorian government's public housing tower redevelopment plan from a community legal sector perspective, and shared some information about the rights of public tenants. Inner Melbourne Community Legal is the service that represents clients on the North Melbourne, Flemington, Kensington and Carlton public housing estates. Louisa previously represented clients being relocated from the Abbotsford St and Walker St estates as part of the Public Housing Renewal Program and has worked on housing and tenants’ rights issues for about 15 years.//

Professor Libby Porter and Dr David Kelly, housing researchers based at RMIT's Centre for Urban Research, joined us in the station to situate the Victorian Government's public housing tower redevelopment plan within a longer history of scholarship and independent evaluations of previous processes of public housing renewal in Melbourne, presenting a critical analysis of the process and its impact on public housing estate communities, the roll-back of government provision of housing, and the ripple effects in the broader landscape of tenancy in the state. Libby, David, Priya and colleagues Dr Iris Levin, Dr Liam Davies and Professor Kate Shaw published an explainer breaking down last week's Victoria's Housing Statement - you can read it here.//