A Year in the Life of the Anti-Displacement Movement

Key events in the anti-displacement movement in the Mission district of San Francisco in the late ’90s. Extracts from the full article.

Writings on the Walls

The posters of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project (MYEP) was one of the visible signs of opposition in 1998. Below, left, we see the first of several posters MYEP — advocating vandalism of expensive cars — wheatpasted around the neighborhood. On the right, social commentary on an abandoned Mission district factory wall.

blight2 myep

July 27th: Party Crashing at the Armory

armoryEikon Investments, the firm that proposed a dot-com office remake for the Mission Armory, staged a party for the Internet business set, served by white-coated parking valets, and addressed by Da Mayor. Activists from MAC and the Digital Workers Alliance crashed the party.

September 21st: Occupation of BigStep.Com Offices

bigstepThe first influx of dot-com office development had been in the Northeast Mission Industrial Zone. The Bay View Bank Building was the first major incursion into the heart of the Mission — the Mission Street corridor. The Mission Street and 24th Street corridors are the main commercial and cultural heart of the Latino community in San Francisco, and many of the small businesses in these commercial strips are marginal. For example, produce markets are a common site in the Mission. A study of these markets by MEDA showed that only 16% had enough revenue to qualify for mortgage capital to buy their buildings. This puts them at the mercy of the current rental market. The incursion of high tech firms into this commercial district threatens to drive rents through the sky, as landlords drool at the prospect of much higher revenue per square foot.

The first major invasion of high-tech firms into the Mission was the takeover of three floors of the Bay View Bank Building by BigStep.Com — a firm that provides e-tailing services and tools for small businesses. The Cort family, who had bought the building, used asbestos abatement as the excuse to evict two dozen community serving entities from the building — immigration lawyers, nonprofits, etc. Luring BigStep.Com was the sign that the Corts needed that their strategy of “flipping” the building would work. MAC maintains, however, that this takeover is illegal. Zoning for Mission Street limits any one entity to no more than 6,000 square feet — the equivalent of one floor. This is to maintain the office space in the Mission for smaller community-serving entities. To “enforce the law” (which the Planning Department has failed to do), MAC activists occupied the offices of BigStep on Sept. 21st, to present their case directly to employees. About 20 activists were arrested by police. A banner was also draped on the outside the building (photo at right).

November 30th: Zing.Com Blockaded

blockade

Richard Marquez, left, and Renee Saucedo, speaking, are among the MAC members blockading the doors to Zing.com.

At 11:30 AM Mission Anti-Displacement Coaltion members “moved in” at the live/work building illegally used as office space by Zing.Com (an online photography firm), at 17th & Bryant Streets. Furniture and padlocks were used to block all the entries to the building. After more than two hours Zing management finally signed a complaint and the police arrested a dozen MAC members blocking the doors. The blockaders were enthusiastically supported by over a hundred people from the Mission Anti-Displacment Coalition and the Day Laborers’ Program, which has its makeshift hiring hall one block away.

As with the BigStep occupation, MAC was demanding that the city enforce existing laws. By converting a 48-unit live/work building to office space, the city loses out on the fees that office developers are required to pay for affordable housing and childcare, as well as losing the 48 units of housing.

 

 

State Government ban on pollies meeting at housing estates lifted

THE STATE Government has scrapped its ban on political meetings on housing estates after the threat of legal proceedings.

671458-atherton-gardens-flatsLast month the Department of Human Services brought in bans on political meetings in common areas, doorknocking and political messages on noticeboards.

But the DHS spokeswoman Ruth Ward confirmed the guidelines were now being revised.

“In the interim, there is nothing restricting external parties from holding meetings in community facilities on estates,’’ Ms Ward said.

Ms Ward did not specify whether the government would remove bans on doorknocking and messages on notice boards.

The reversal comes after the the Human Rights Law Centre took action on behalf of two tenants of the Fitzroy Housing Estate.

Law centre executive director Hugh de Kretser wrote to the DHS and Housing Minister Wendy Lovell saying the bans unlawfully limited human rights.

“There is a strong case that aspects of the policies breach residents’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly which are protected under Victoria’s Human Rights Charter,’’ Mr de Kretser said in a statement.

Socialist Yarra councillor Stephen Jolly welcomed the revision of the rules, which he said were brought in following a successful community campaign against development of private housing on Richmond and Fitzroy Housing Estates.

“This was an outrageous attempt to stifle political dissent. We need a Minister who will work with tenants to improve public housing, not work against them,’’ Cr Jolly said.

State Labor member for Richmond Richard Wynne has also been a strident critic of the ban.

Ms Lovell has been approached for comment.

Action/Response, movement to counter gentrification

From ABC.

At 6pm this Friday and Saturday night the standard flow of commuters and locals drifting between restaurants and bars on Errol Street, North Melbourne, will be interrupted by a twitching, turning, falling mass of dancers in a series of satellite performances.

r1090557_13054952

The work in total is Action/Response, part of Dance Massive 2013, whose program has featured distinctive contemporary dance works around Melbourne this month.

Action/Response presents new performance works by a cross-disciplinary bunch of artists made in response to two written texts that describe everyday movements ¬– actions that also serve as metaphors for understanding the world. Curator of Action/Response Hannah Mathews describes this iteration – ‘Turning’ and ‘Falling’ – as her own response to living in a dense urban area and a desire to offer people an opportunity to pause and reflect.

“North Melbourne is becoming more and more gentrified. I wanted to see something here, just as it is now, something that will cause passers-by to stop and think about their everyday actions and their movement through the place.”

Mathews corralled 20 emerging and established performers to create the work (including Daniel Crooks, Alicia Frankovich, Nathan Gray, Bianca Hester and Laresa Kosloff). But first she needed something they could respond to and build the work from. In collaborating with writers Ramona Koval and The Age’s Chris Johnston, Mathews settled on the actions of turning and falling.

In describing the writing of the text ‘Turning,’ Koval says she approached it like she was herself moving on “some celestial dolly camera from out in the galaxy to coming right in to what happens on earth.” Koval’s early training as a scientist is evident in the text with its telescopic and then microscopic perspectives, ranging from planets turning in orbit, down to strands of DNA, that ‘turn and turn about an axis, like a twisted ladder, coding all of life.”

“The more I read the more I remembered,” says Koval, “I began to think the whole world is about turning – turning around the sun, the sun turning around our galaxy. And I thought why don’t I start there.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by microscopes and telescopes,” she continues. “The idea that there was an instrument that could make you aware of a world that you had no knowledge about…It’s also a little bit metaphysical. There are things that can go on in your world and you are not aware of them unless you are able to see a little bit closely or feel or pick up vibes or something.”

Peering through Errol Street shopfronts and then out onto the street, passers-by may chance to see something of themselves, ‘Turning on, turning off, turning over, turning round’ or ‘Falling in love, falling down, falling apart.’ Everyday actions reflected back, some banal, some beautiful.

Berliners Are Waging a War Against Gentrification

From Vice. I hate Vice but the article is a good overview of what’s afoot.

It’s been 23 years since the Berlin Wall was demolished, and now the bulldozers are back. This time, however, no one’s clapping. When word got out that a developer was planning to build a luxury apartment complex right on top of the preserved section of the wall (known as the East Side Gallery), 6,000 people showed up to block the demolition crews, proving that irony is still alive and well in the city that, 23 years earlier, was campaigning to have the wall destroyed.

For a while, the public outcry seemed to work. Protests continued, petitions were signed, local artists spoke out in indignation, and David Hasselhoff even married the wall in protest, which, surprisingly, isn’t the weirdest thing he’s done in his professional career.

The developer in question, Maik Hinkel, was apparently surprised at the response and assured Berliners that he would work with the city’s mayor to find a compromise. But last Wednesday, under the cover of darkness, Hinkel broke his promise and removed eight meters of history forever. The worst part? Hoff never even got a chance to honeymoon 😦


Police guard the East Side Gallery. Photo by Ash Clark

Formerly preserved sections of the wall have been taken down before, but it’s never sparked such a huge reaction. Most of the protesters I spoke to were less concerned with the wall itself than with the super expensive apartments that were replacing it because these days the word on every Berliner’s lips is “gentrification.”


Protesters near the wall. Sign reads: “Berlin is not for sale.” Photo by Nina Hüpen-Bestendonk

It’s no secret that Berlin is changing. Nowadays, on a Sunday morning, the distant thud of the Berghain’s sound system gets drowned out by the nasal chatter of American exchange students drinking lattes in cute, authentic cafés.

And the phrase “Silicon Allee” (Berliner Allee is, funnily enough, a street in Berlin) pops up more and more frequently, sitting nicely alongside “Silicon Roundabout” and “Silicon Forest” in the growing list of cities lucky enough to obtain their own version of California’s favorite tech metonym. Housing prices have risen more than 32 percent since 2007, and while the Wall Street Journal calls it a “melting pot of talent,” and that fine-art lecturer you’re sometimes forced to hang out with calls it “the place to be.” But not everyone is so excited.


Pro-hipster poster by the Hipster Antifa Neukölln group. The top line reads, “Gentrify our neighbourhood—more bars—more wifi—more organic markets.”

The anti-hipster rhetoric has become so prevalent these days that it’s even prompted pro-hipster advocacy groups to counteract some of the prejudice. (Is being anti-anti-hipster the new hipster?) Hipsters get so much of the blame because they’re what academics call “middle gentrifiers”—artistic types who flock to the cheap rent and subsequently make the area seem trendy to listings magazines who think that video-art installations in dirty squats equal cool, pushing up the rent and forcing out the established community (in this case, largely Turkish) who’ve lived there for years.

It’s the same story from Dalston to Neukölln, with exactly the same signifiers: kebabs and dance music are the face of 21st-century European gentrification.


A “not for sale” sign outside the Køpi 137 squat.

Unlike London, however, this is a city that values its mietrecht—its tenants’ rights—and it refuses to go down without a fight. Most people see gentrification as an unstoppable force, but Berlin might be the first city that actually has a chance to effectively challenge that preconception.

Two weeks before the first wall demo, 500 people gathered to protest the eviction of a family who couldn’t afford their rising rent. They left 15 cars burned and ten police injured. Similar protests have been happening almost every week for the past two months, and one this Tuesday got particularly violent. It’s difficult to pinpoint why more intense protests are kicking off now after years of increasing rent, but it’s safe to say that the backlash is getting visibly more violent.


The Køpi 137 squat remains in place, despite attempts by police to evict its residents.

On the frontline of the debate are the squatters. For a while, people thought they were doomed, but in a city where even senior citizens will squat their retirement home to prevent its closure, a blanket downfall of squatters seems unlikely.


Cuvry Brache is a “free space” that won the right to exist despite attempts to develop the area. People camp there in tents and hold festivals in the summer.

The squatters’ existence is a bit of a paradox. Those taking residence at Køpi 137 and the Cuvry Brache squat in the Kreuzberg district know that gentrification threatens their existence, but they also know that their existence encourages gentrification. The more radical squats that exist in Kreuzberg, the more appealing that Kreuzberg seems to middle-class art students and the developers that inevitably succeed them.

Their solution to this vicious circle of hipster-driven gentrification is to surround themselves with graffiti saying stuff like “No tourists, no hipsters, no yuppies, no photos” and chasing you with dogs if they see you pointing a camera toward them. In fact, the only way I managed to get photos was to go when the squatters were forced indoors by a foot of snow.


A teepee home at Cuvry Brache.

Those who aren’t squatting are protesting against the oncoming pileup of gentrification. I went to one demonstration held by residents of subsidised housing in Kottbusser Tor, an area in central Kreuzberg. Even though their accommodation is meant to be social housing, it’s becoming increasingly unaffordable.

“Every year we get a letter from our landlord raising the rent by 13 percent per square meter,” Matthias Clausen, one of the protest’s organizers, told me. “It’s like a countdown before we have to leave. That’s what gentrification feels like for my neighbors and me.”


Residents at Kottbusser Tor protesting their increasing rent. The sign reads, “Our neighbors are here to stay! Including those on benefits.”

Matthias continued: “We’re demonstrating because of the high rent that we can’t pay. We live in social housing, so our rent is subsidised and yet it’s still too much for our neighborhood, which is one of the poorest in Berlin.”

I asked him if many of his neighbors were being evicted. “Yes,” he responded. “Five or six letters of eviction are sent out every day in Berlin. We’ve managed to prevent many of them, though.

“New Berlin depends on the foundations of the old Berliners. Students and artists come here for the cheap rent, and that cultural avant garde destroys itself because they drive up prices. A lot of my friends feel bad for living here because they feel like they’re part of the problem, but it isn’t just an automatic process of the free market. There are individuals who are investing, who are driving up the rent, and there are ways around this. There are people making decisions and the process of decision making is something we can influence.”


More protests against increasing rent. The sign reads, “Stop racist exclusion! Not just in the real estate market!”

And Matthias has a point. Around half of Germany’s voters are renters, and with the federal elections coming up in September, politicians will be forced to address the issue. The Pankow district is already imposing a ban on luxury modernizations, while Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor, has proposed reviving Germany’s low-income housing program that was left behind in the 60s.

The destruction of the East Side Gallery might seem like a death knell for old Berlin, but that isn’t necessarily the case. The important thing is that so many people demonstrated against it, and that more and more protests are happening every month. As the issue starts to reach its boiling point, the world should keep its eyes fixed on Berlin because it may just provide the first real solution to the gentrification that’s been sidelining heritage and bulldozing history all around the world.

The Perverse Effect of Street Art on Neighborhood Gentrification

From Le Monde.

The most memorable graffiti and wall murals are often demolished by the force of urban real estate development projects.

The Perverse Effect Of Street Art On Neighborhood Gentrification

Graffiti in Paris’ 19th arrondissement

PARIS – In the New York City burough of Queens, 5 Pointz is considered a graffiti mecca. An open-air museum where urban artists can paint freely – but only for a couple more months.

5 Pointz is scheduled to be demolished next September, to make room for two 40-story high-rises with breathtaking views across the river of Manhattan. Swimming pool, yoga room, pool tables… Gentrification at its most luxurious.

The list of mythical urban art sites (mosaics, graffiti, stencils, collages…) that have been demolished keeps growing. Berlin’s legendary Tacheles squat, a former mall occupied by artists for over 20 years, was closed last summer. The same thing happened in 2011 to Paris’ Piscine Molitor, an abandoned swimming pool complex nicknamed the “white ship” that became a popular spot among Parisian graffiti artists.

All these freewheeling artistic sites are doomed for the same reason: urban areas are the perfect candidates for lucrative real estate transactions.

Paris’ Piscine Molitor

Street art has always represented a dilemma for municipal authorities. On one hand, they make a point of fighting against graffiti-related “vandalism,” while on the other hand encouraging “artistic” practices. The difference between vandalism and art is not always easy to tell…

In Paris’ 20th arrondissement, “the city created a specific training course for staff in charge of cleaning the walls, to teach them to distinguish between random tags and graffiti art,” explains Bruno Julliard, deputy mayor in charge of culture. But most of the time, cities don’t bother with the distinction and simply ban what they consider to be an illegal appropriation of urban space. In France, spray-painting a wall is punished by a fine of up to 1,500 euros – more if the graffiti is on a public building. It costs cities a fortune to remove tags and street art works  – 4.5 million euros a year in Paris.

Still, graffiti and street art are inseparable. Both are created in a “highly codified space” where “transgression is a driving force,” explains Tarek Ben Yakhlef, an artist and author of one of the first books on graffiti in France, published in 1991. Urban art uses people’s emotions and imagination to convey universal messages.

“Street art must interact with the public in a natural, spontaneous and creative way,” explains Nicholas Riggle, a philosophy PhD candidate at New York University writing a dissertation on the intersection of aesthetics and moral psychology. The forms of street art we know today are the legacy of different movements, including graffiti, which emerged in the 1960s in the United States.

Marginalized at first, it made its appearance on American subways in the 1970s, before arriving in Europe ten years later alongside hip hop music. Famous artists emerged in Paris: “Jerome Mesnager, Mosko et associes (Mosko and associates), les Musulmans fumants (the smoking Muslims), Miss.Tic or Blek le rat – who inspired Banksy. They were very present but at the same time buried in the mass of graffiti that invaded the city,” says Ben Yakhlef.

But little by little, the gentrification of urban areas gained momentum and “broke the social fabric,” says graffiti artist Da Cruz. Luxurious buildings flourished everywhere, driving rent prices through the roof. The arrival of rich people caused the poorest residents to leave. Part of the street art scene denounced these urban transformations.

In Berlin, rents in the eastern part of the city have increased by 90% between 2000 and 2012, according to German newspaper Der Spiegel. The reason for these huge price hikes is “properties sold to an international clientele,” says Bastian Lange, a consultant for the Berlin research center for urban development, Multiplicities.

A vibrant avant-garde culture

This is where street art comes into play: “It helped show that gentrification isn’t always a good thing that the neighborhood should accept without protesting,” says Winifred Curran, associate professor of DePaul Chicago. A point of view shared by graffiti artist Da Cruz, a staunch defender of the working-class identity of Paris’ 19th arrondissement, which he had to leave five years ago. “When I was spray-painting, I tried to raise awareness, or at least to accompany the changes. What else, aside from color, can bring people together better? You can’t fight against bulldozers, but you can have an impact on what people are thinking before, while it’s happening and after.”

Although street art mostly denounces gentrification, it also sometimes plays a role in it. Artists have extensively used poor neighborhoods as a space of expression. The problem is, when a neighborhood attracts artists, it quickly becomes trendy and popular because “it’s the sign of a vibrant avant-garde culture,” says Nicholas Riggle. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a creative place? Against their will, by their mere presence, these artists have unwillingly transformed these neighborhoods … And indeed the rich did flock to these neighborhoods – in Berlin, and New York’s Soho or Chelsea. “But there are also new arrivals who come with an open mind and a good energy,” says Da Cruz.

Berlin’s Tacheles squat

This is why, at first, municipal authorities and real-estate developers are not opposed to artists taking over working-class districts. To the point of actually helping them financially, “provided they can attract a certain class of population,” says Winifred Curran – allowing them to “sell” the neighborhood later.

“It’s the same problem all over the world. People tolerate us, people are happy for us to come in during this transition period before a neighborhood is rebuilt.  We are the city’s colorful Band-Aids,” says Da Cruz.

Street art is an efficient way to bring “cultural assets to a neighborhood that didn’t have any,” says Curran. But things can go south quite quickly. Authorities prefer to have a Guggenheim Museum instead of a graffiti squat. They are reticent to finance street art, but they change their mind when an artist becomes famous. The situation becomes schizophrenic when there are “laws that punish street art severely,” while at the same time “the cities commission artworks to these artists, museums expose them and galleries sell them,” says Ben Yahklef.

Other cities have understood, however, that they could use street art to their advantage. First in line is Berlin, which has become a major tourist destination in Europe. “We work for the system, let’s face it,” Da Cruz admits, although he says he has “realized over the years the importance of explaining what we do.” This is why last summer, together with fellow graffiti artists Marko 93 and Artof Popof, Da Cruz decided to organize street-art themed walks in the working-class suburb of Pantin northeastern Paris.

Unfortunately, sources of funding are few and far between. “It plays a minor part in financing contemporary art,” Julliard confesses. “When we do commission street art, we need to negotiate with local residents first. It is not always easy to get them to understand that we are talking about work of art – some are downright hostile.”

But things are changing. In 2009, thanks to a petition, a giant rabbit painted by world-famous street artist ROA was saved from being erased from a wall in Hackney, northeast of London. And in 2015, a new project is slated for in central Paris: a 1,500 square meter space dedicated to hip-hop urban cultures to include recording studios, dance battles and street art.

Belgian street artist ROA’s rabbit in Hackney

 

Gentrification masks areas of need

From the Age

Emily Wright owns a busy cafe on High Street, Northcote, and has noticed a big change in the area’s demography since she took over Palomino three years ago. ”It’s a change in residents,” she says. ”There are a few less students and artists and things but there are lots more families because there are nice big homes in the side streets and space for kids.”

She and her husband, a professional sales manager, moved into the area in 2005 because it was close to the city and a ”great developing area”.

A Fairfax analysis of census data shows that several municipalities in Melbourne’s inner north and west are less disadvantaged than they were five years ago relative to the rest of Australia.

The Bureau of Statistics’ index of socio-economic disadvantage indicates a decrease in disadvantage in municipalities of Darebin (which includes Northcote), Maribyrnong, Moreland and Whittlesea.

The Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) combines a range of indicators of disadvantage to rank areas.

Through a combination of new housing developments and gentrification of existing suburbs, parts of these municipalities have attracted a different type of resident from their traditional working class populations.

However, these areas are still disadvantaged compared to many municipalities in metropolitan Melbourne.

Darebin and Maribyrnong have shown the most significant drops in disadvantage over the past five years but the improvements were not evenly spread throughout the suburbs of the municipalities.

And that’s what bothers Darebin mayor Tim Singh Laurence. In charge of applying for Commonwealth funding, Cr Laurence keeps a watchful eye on the municipality’s SEIFA data. The problem, he says, with analysing disadvantaged data across a city like Darebin is that there are huge discrepancies in employment and income among people who live side by side.

Cr Laurence believes gentrification in Northcote has statistically pulled the level of disadvantage down across the municipality, despite the poorest in suburbs such as Reservoir and Preston experiencing no improvement.

Monash University demographer Bob Birrell says the Northcote area is being transformed by the influx of new people.

”Professionals are moving into those areas and people who were there before, including migrants and some working-class people, are gradually being squeezed out,” he says.

Cr Laurence says the perception of Darebin as home to many of the state’s struggling families has been altered. This can have unfair results on services, he says, citing the recent announcement that the Legal Aid Victoria office in Preston will be closed later this year due to ”significant demographic change”. ”It’s sort of a case of which neighbours make you poorer?”

Demographer Glenn Capuano, of id Consulting, says Yarraville in Maribyrnong is another area undergoing gentrification.

”Yarraville, in the space of a generation, has gone from a poor, working-class area to one of the most desirable areas of Melbourne,” he says.

In Whittlesea, the decrease in disadvantage has sprung from new developments in Mernda and South Morang, while fortunes of more disadvantaged areas such as Thomastown remain unchanged.

What is gentrification?

From Tom Slater’s “What is Gentrification?” – a good intro to understanding its processes.

At the southern end of Wandsworth Common in South London is a street called Bellevue Road. Twenty years ago, it was quiet street lined with shops serving a long-established working class population. Local residents would greet each other in the bakery when buying warm rolls, or talk about the weather and their families whilst the butcher next door cut some luncheon meats. In the evenings there would be quiz nights in the pub, where those who worked long hours at nearby Wandsworth Prison could forget about the demands of their jobs and chat to the landlord about football, politics or a recent television documentary. Many people knew each other on a first name basis and were happy to be living so close to the open space of the Common, where their children could spend hours watching the frequent trains hurtle towards Clapham Junction, or keep out of mischief in a game of cricket or football before spending their pocket money on a sweet assortment from the local newsagent. The entire area wasn’t a space waiting to be ‘discovered’ – it was a place which hadn’t changed for years, a home which had become inextricably entwined with each resident’s identity for generations.

bellevue6  Read the rest here.

 

Door-knocking and public meeting bans for politicians at public housing estates

From the Daily Telegraph

POLITICAL candidates have been banned from holding public meetings at public housing estates in a free-speech crackdown critics have labelled “Stalinist”. 066964-public-housing

Under the crackdown, which began last month, door-knocking public housing tenants has also been forbidden.

Yesterday, staff from the Brotherhood of St Laurence, which manages access to meeting rooms at several inner-city housing estates, were forced to cancel a meeting in Fitzroy at which State Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews was to address residents.

The ban was made on the orders of the Department of Human Services under new rules that came into effect last month.

Yarra Councillor Stephen Jolly, who has spearheaded a campaign against a state government push for private development on public housing estates, also has had meetings cancelled at a Fitzroy estate.

Opposition Housing spokesman and former housing minister Richard Wynne fell foul of the crackdown last month, when he was banned from door-knocking an estate in Richmond.

Mr Wynne’s office, which had booked the April 24 meeting at which Mr Andrews was to speak, was yesterday told by email the meeting was cancelled “due to a policy update just received from the Office of Housing, which states that political candidates, parties or representatives are not able to book facilities on the estates”.

Cr Jolly described the ban as “Stalinist”, saying the Office of Housing was acting “more like prison warders than landlords”.

“Why should public housing tenants have fewer rights than the rest of us?” he said.

“It’s like North Korea – it’s restricted democracy. Where is it going to end? Are they going to tell them what TV stations they are going to watch?”

Office of Housing spokeswoman Ruth Ward said access for members of political parties to open-space areas or foyers on high-rise public housing estates has been restricted for some years, though she acknowledged “this guideline has not been consistently applied in the past, and this current revision and reinforcement is the Department’s effort to rectify this”.

But Mr Wynne said any suggestion the ban had been place for several years was “completely false”.

The ban has also been questioned by Brotherhood of St Laurence chief Tony Nicholson, who said he would be seeking clarification of the rules from the Department.

Unions to lobby Napthine

From The Age

A coalition of powerful building unions will launch a campaign urging the Napthine government to build more public housing to reduce waiting lists and create jobs.

The group, which includes the CFMEU and ETU, is preparing a submission for Premier Denis Napthine that outlines unused government-owned sites in inner-city Melbourne that could be transformed into public housing.

CFMEU state secretary John Setka said the campaign would tap into community concerns about public housing waiting lists, a slump in construction and derelict ”bomb sites” across Melbourne.

”It creates a lot of work for construction workers, it gets the economy going a bit and it reduces the public housing crisis,” he said. ”It’s a win-win situation for everyone.”

At least three government-owned sites including the former Gas and Fuel Corporation site at the corner of Smith Street and Alexandra Parade, a large block that houses the Kangan TAFE in Cremorne and land at the back of Richmond Town Hall, have been identified by the unions as potential locations.

”You can understand a government being reluctant if they have to go in and spend $20 million on a parcel of land and then another $20 million – but this is a situation where you they already have land, and in some situations buildings,” Mr Setka said.

Trades Hall secretary Brian Boyd said unions would make public housing ”a big issue” in the lead up to next year’s state election.

”All our anecdotal information suggests our public housing stock is not matching demand,” he said.

”The other issue we have associated with this is the bomb sites around the place – some are good locations for public housing.”

He said the unions were seeking advice from architects and engineers and would present the state government with a formal cas.

”We have had a bit of a slump in the building industry because the state government has not been generating infrastructure. Rather than being negative about it, we thought we could identify these sites as potential locations for public housing developments.”

Last month, the state government backed away from a contentious plan to overhaul Fitzroy and Richmond public housing estates and introduce an equal mix of public and private developments. This followed fierce opposition from the community and Yarra council.

Housing Minister Wendy Lovell said delaying the plans – which must be completed as part of Commonwealth state agreement – would let the government focus on a master plan for Horace Petty Estate in Prahran where there has been less community opposition.

The number of households on Victoria public housing waiting list increased by 685 to more than 37,000 in the December 2012 quarter.