8 min read
Investigation
The Soul of the Block: the changing face of Redfern
From four ramshackle houses to a $140 million empire, the Aboriginal Housing Company should be a monument to Blak success, but it's the subject of controversy.
Published 18 June 2024 5:04pm
Updated 20 June 2024 3:10pm
By Michael Carey, Dan Butler
Source: NITV
Image: The Block, as it once was, has been transformed by the multimillion dollar developments undertaken by the Aboriginal Housing Company.
The inner Sydney suburb of Redfern is as synonymous with urban Aboriginal life as it is with Blak resistance.
Amongst its streets and terraced houses, universally known as the Block, some of the country’s most enduring and effective Indigenous organisations were born.
One of them was the Aboriginal Housing Company: founded more than 50 years ago, the AHC began as nothing more than a few ramshackle buildings and a dream of affordable homes for Blak families.
Fast forward to today, and the AHC is still in Redfern, along with the recently completed Pemulwuy development: a multi-million dollar project combining gleaming new houses and a high rise that dominates the skyline.
It should be a monument to Indigenous achievement, but instead it’s the subject of controversy.
The development saw the loss of 80 per cent of the area’s original inhabitants, and with its expensive price tag, some have questioned whether, somewhere along the way, the soul of the Block was sold.
Building a dream
Every morning, Pemulwuy’s towering student accommodation complex casts a shadow over Everleigh and Louis Streets, the Block’s boundaries.
It was there, in 1973, that young and charismatic law student Bob Bellear saw an opportunity to address Redfern’s homelessness crisis, setting in motion the AHC’s creation.
“Fifteen Aboriginal people were arrested in an empty house, and they were taken to Redfern Court and charged with trespass,” says Kaye Bellear, Bob’s wife for 41 years before his death in 2005.
“Bob decided that he would try and find somewhere where these people could be housed.”
The Jarowair South Sea Islander man found four unused, and uninhabitable, houses on Louis Street.
Using his connections in the building, electrical and plumbing unions, Bellear and the community set to work restoring the Redfern terraces.
“They made those houses liveable,” Kaye told Living Black’s Karla Grant.
Buoyed by their success at squatting in those four homes, Bob Bellear led a delegation to the new Whitlam Labor government in Canberra, and secured a grant of $500 thousand dollars.
Using it to buy four houses at auction, the Aboriginal Housing Company, the nation’s first such collective, was born.
Bellear, who would go on to become the first ever Aboriginal judge, had three objectives for the new company.
“He wanted people on low incomes to have housing there, particularly people on social security benefits … and single parent families,” says Kaye.
“He wanted a protected place for Aboriginal kids to play.
“And Bob wanted somewhere owned by the Aboriginal community that was in the centre of the biggest city in Australia, so people could not push Aboriginal people aside.”
The changing face of the Block
For almost all of the AHC’s 50-year history, Michael ‘Mick’ Mundine has been its CEO.
He has seen it grow from those four initial houses to the $140-million dollar complex it boasts today.
That change hasn’t been without its struggles, or controversy.
The early hopes of the 1970s gave way in the 80s and 90s to the scourge of drugs and crime in Redfern.
There were criticisms as well that Mundine had begun to neglect the properties and the people. Some locals said he was rarely seen in the area, only occasionally driving by, sometimes with developers.
Despite millions from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ATSIC, the houses continued to decay.
The proposal to commercially develop the block first arose in 1997, with Mundine leading the charge.
There was significant community pushback against the idea, which required the eviction of existing tenants, and the demolition of their homes.
There was dissent from within the ranks of the AHC as well, but with membership limited to 100 people, critics say Mundine stacked the board with supporters, purging those who argued, like Jenny Munro.
“We weren't allowed to have our membership renewed for years,” she told Living Black.
“Because we'd openly defied them and said, ‘there could be a better way, another way of doing the housing programme down there.’”
When pressed on the AHC’s limited membership, Mundine has a direct answer.
“Well that's true because … we have too many members,” he told Living Black.
“It’s very clear in life, members can, when they vote, they can outvote you.”
Beloved local figures like Joyce Ingram, the unofficial mayor of the Block, were forced out; in 2004 her house, a meeting place and sanctuary for Redfern’s troubled, was the last on the Block to be demolished.
New millennium, new identity?
By 2004, the Aboriginal Housing Company had been given 10s of millions of dollars, but was accused of letting homes fall into disrepair. Source: AFP / GREG WOOD/AFP via Getty Images
Some $30 million dollars had been given to the AHC, but the houses were derelict and by Mundine’s own admission, the company was broke.
The situation desperate, he decided to foster a relationship with a property developer called Deicorp, and in 2014, they revealed their plans for the Block.
New, affordable housing in the area was to be funded by leasing out, for 99 years, a multi-story student accommodation tower, which would become the Pemulwuy Project.
An artist impression of the $60 million redevelopment known as the Pemulwuy Project in The Block. Credit: PR IMAGE
“That building enabled the delivery of a debt free, no mortgage attached… affordable housing precinct, and the commercial precinct.”
Requiring more space than AHC had control over, Sydney City Council facilitated the plan by giving them a valuable strip of public land along the railway line for the token sum of $20.
Ann Weldon, another former AHC member who believes she was expelled for opposing the development, criticised the giveaway.
“They've given over a 99-year lease to a company that's not owned by Aboriginal people,” she told Living Black.
“You're looking at more than three generations of Aboriginal people that won't have direct ownership of what we fought for to get.”
'We've staked our claim'
Wiraduri Elder Aunty Jenny Munro (centre) led protests against the Pemulwuy development. They feared for the character of the Block. Credit: Cole Bennetts/Getty Images
In 2019, the original approval was modified and a new agreement signed with City Council requiring 110 beds out of the tower’s 520 for Indigenous students at a concessional rent.
According to Ms Tituila, only 10 Blak students currently occupy the building.
Familiar faces from the old days are also a rare sight these days: 80 per cent of the Block’s original residents, evicted to make way for the development, haven’t returned.
Ali Golding is one of them.
“I don't think Elders can afford to live back on The Block,” she told Living Black.
“I can’t. My daughter, Victoria … was gonna come back. She looked at the rent and said, ‘No. Too much.’”
For Ms Golding, the changes the Block has seen are heartbreaking. She says it’s not what it once was.
“Where's the kids playing in the park? That's what broke me.
“Where's the mum and dad with the Vegemite and peanut sandwiches and a billy can of tea, you know?”
Ms Tutuila rejects accusations the Block has become unaffordable, pointing to the AHC’s three-tier system of rentals.
“The social income, obviously, is general,” she said.
“The middle tier income is still quite low, on your average.
“But those higher levels actually help offset [that] so we can actually create more of those social houses.
“All the other properties outside of Pemulwuy that are owned by the AHC are all social housing.”
Though she has had serious disagreements with the AHC, Ann Weldon says the continuing Aboriginal presence on the Block is a testament to Blak resistance.
“We've staked our claim and it's here to stay. I hope that it does stay, that the powers that be, that have a 99-year lease, don't take possession.
“You've got generations of people that lived there as children, that are now adults that live there.
“It's wonderful for that to happen.”
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