The housing struggle is a tug-o’-war between those who profit and those who pay. Over the last quarter century, this battle for the so-called “privilege” of shelter has accelerated and intensified.

After World War II, the Housing Commission built and leased thousands of public homes with rents capped at twenty-five percent of household income. The introduction of public housing was a huge working-class victory. But over the years, Governments withdrew from the ideal of universal housing. By the new millennium, an existential threat loomed for public housing.

In 2000, with the world’s eyes glued on Cathy Freeman, Sydney’s homeless were dragged out of sight. The CBD was “cleansed” for the cameras; undesirables herded off to crisis accommodation. As Cameron Murray argues in The Great Housing Hijack, this could never happen in a country which had eliminated homelessness by implementing comprehensive public housing infrastructure, like Singapore.

Corporate intoxication with Sydney after the Olympics set off a tsunami of rent hikes and evictions. House prices skyrocketed. Gentrification transformed suburb after suburb. Landlords, big and small, made moves to cash in their housing stock. First on the chopping block was Aboriginal housing.

In 1973, the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC) won a grant to purchase houses in Redfern, known as “The Block”. This was a temporary victory, however. Everything changed in 2004 when the police murdered a local teenager named TJ Hickey, setting off what became known as the Redfern Riots. In a twisted, punitive response, both Labor and the Coalition agreed to bulldoze The Block.

In turn, the AHC announced the Pemulwuy Project which would replace Aboriginal housing with lucrative student accommodation. Resistance campaigns persisted for thirteen years. Eventually, a protest encampment led by Wiradjuri Elder Jenny Munro, lasting over 400 days, forced the AHC to commit to safeguarding Redfern’s Aboriginal housing.

Unsurprisingly, the housing situation worsened with the 2008 financial crisis. Homeless students took matters into their own hands, and a group called the Student Housing Action Collective occupied empty terrace houses owned by the University of Melbourne for five months. When University of Sydney students were also discovered squatting in an abandoned residential college, they barricaded themselves inside and hung protest banners, until riot police evicted them.

Around 2014, the NSW Government announced the privatisation or demolition of many inner-city public estates. Resident action groups emerged and organised rallies, while others tried the parliamentary route by establishing the short-lived Housing Action Party.

When public housing had heritage value, the chorus of anger swelled. The NSW Heritage Council and the Australian Institute of Architects advocated strongly against the planned demolition of the Sirius building. Given its location overlooking Sydney Harbour, it is no wonder the Government jumped at the chance to sell. It took a thousand-strong rally and a CFMEU green ban to stop the demolition, but with a $150 million price tag, the public tenants were relocated and the building was sold.

Heritage-listed public housing was also for sale at Millers Point. Gentrification had transformed the working-class wharfie area into a high-ticket suburb. Thousands attended rallies in opposition. The Maritime Union of Australia was a reliable ally and the CFMEU implemented a green ban. Some former residents returned to squat in their empty homes while others disrupted the auctions. Things took a dark turn when one of the last residents, who had been scheduled for relocation, committed suicide.

By 2018, the Millers Point sell-off was over. The end sum: $608 million – funds that were promised to be reinvested in public housing. And yet, seven years on, it’s difficult to pinpoint any new housing developments that are genuinely public.

It is easier to point to the many public estates facing the same fate. In 2013, the Hands Off Melbourne’s Estates (HOME) campaign successfully saved public housing in Fitzroy, Richmond, and Prahran — despite a Government crackdown on their right to organise. From 2018, resident-led campaigns also defended public housing in Preston, Brunswick West, Northcote and Ashburton. However, only the Ashburton campaign was successful.

Around 2015, there was a new villain: private highway developers. Dwellings located on the planned routes of Sydney’s WestConnex and Melbourne’s East-West Link were vacated. With perfectly good, publicly owned houses sitting empty on Bendigo Street, Collingwood, the homeless decided to move in. The Homeless Persons’ Union spent eight months organising rallies and mutual aid for the new residents. The police shut down the Bendigo Street occupation, but every homeless person involved was offered social housing.

The homeless were also fighting on another front: the CBD. Melbourne City Council had proposed a by-law to effectively criminalise rough sleepers. In response, the homeless disrupted White Night, the City’s most cherished annual event. With the streets swarming with people, the homeless converged at the State Library, chanting and sharing their lived experiences, with banners reading “Homelessness is not crime!”

Sydney’s homeless resisted a similar attempt to evict them from the CBD. Martin Place became a protest camp for most of 2017, filled with tents, a free clothing service, and a street kitchen. All the homeless from “Tent City” were offered social housing, though some chose to stay on the streets as they viewed it as the cleaner and safer option.

In 2020, thrown into lockdown, tenants were rightly concerned about how they would afford the rent. The unprecedented situation required an unprecedented action: a nation-wide rent strike. Within weeks, the Government announced an eviction moratorium and rent relief.

The #RentStrike2020 didn’t end there. Organisers used the momentum to create a radical tenants’ union driven by solidarity politics and direct action, the Renters and Housing Union (RAHU). In just five years, RAHU has occupied vacant properties, started a protest encampment, and picketed public housing demolitions.

The pandemic saw an explosion in online organising. A TikTok account posting dead-pan reviews of substandard rental properties went viral. Jordan van den Lamb, the creator of @PurplePingers, went on to compile a database of vacant houses, which he encouraged people to squat. For this, he was called a “disgrace” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

For the Labor Party, the destruction of public housing couldn’t happen fast enough. Under their leadership, despite an outcry from residents, estates at Glebe and South Eveleigh joined the queue for demolition. Sixty-eight-year-old Margaret Kelly, from Melbourne’s Barak Beacon estate, refused to leave her condemned public home for months, before it was demolished. In 2023, the Victorian Labor Government announced plans to bulldoze all forty-four public housing towers. Residents quickly formed 44 Flats United (44FU), resisting on all fronts — in the courts and on the streets.

It is no secret that our prime minister grew up in public housing. This is a part of his brand — a strategy to win votes. While he slips in working-class lingo at press conferences, behind closed doors he has been authorising the wholesale destruction of public housing. But the answer to the housing crisis is public housing. Tonnes of it. As much as we’ve had in the past, and more. The Labor Party wants to appear to be fighting for this future, but they’re not.

It’s the people on the frontlines of the housing crisis that are leading the charge.

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Image: A section of the Wellington Street Housing Commission high rise apartment building in Collingwood, Victoria (Wikimedia Commons).