'I feel on the verge of extinction': the battle for Sydney's Waterloo
Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney, which will be demolished and redeveloped in the coming years. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
A 1970s public housing estate in Sydney's inner city is to be redeveloped, causing its residents great stress. Here, they share with us their personal stories, their concerns and their hopes for the future
• Sydney's last stand: the residents holding out against gentrification
Words and photographs by Jonny Weeks
Main image: Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney, which will be demolished and redeveloped in the coming years. Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian
Tue 11 Jul 2017 19.40 EDT Last modified on Fri 11 May 2018 08.07 EDT
The afternoon sunlight bleeds through the Waterloo public housing estate, casting beautiful patterns across every facade. Overhead, pigeons and lorikeets fly through the sky, settling every now and then in the grand Moreton Bay and Port Jackson fig trees that line the parks. From a distance the songs of an outdoor religious service can be heard. Meanwhile an elderly woman using a walking frame trundles slowly by. There's tranquility in this neighbourhood, for now at least.
Within days the drilling begins: a new metro station is to be dug here as part of wholesale redevelopment plans for this precious, inner-city slab of Sydney. Never mind that few of the current local residents want or need the station – no doubt the new residents of Waterloo will.
This 19-hectare precinct is to be transformed into the densest residential landscape in Australia. The 30-storey twin towers, Matavai and Turanga, will be razed; so too the lower-rise apartment blocks Solander, Cook, Marton and Banks, as well as a number of other smaller properties . About 4,000 people will be moved on and 7,000 new dwellings will be built in a 70:30 mix of private and public housing.
All photographs by Jonny Weeks for the Guardian
The current tenants – the majority of them elderly, sick or vulnerable – were told the news just before Christmas in 2015. Eighteen months on they are still to learn when they will be evicted and to where or what type of accommodation they will be moved.
Promises have been made, albeit belatedly, that those who wish to remain in the area should be able to do so and that the demolition and construction work will be done in stages to facilitate a smoother transition. Nevertheless, the entire project is expected to take 15 to 20 years to complete, longer than most of its residents expect to live.
Many of the residents featured below are from the Waterloo public housing action group, a body of tenants and volunteers which is fighting the redevelopment. They want their voices to be heard. These are their homes, their lives and their futures. These are their stories.
"I feel like an animal on the verge of extinction; Waterloo estate is like an animal on the verge of extinction," says Catherine, a retired school teacher from Melbourne, as she gazes out at the view from her apartment midway up Matavai tower. "Who am I to the developers? I'm just a statistic. Oh, one of the 4,000 people who has to be moved to somewhere else. And maybe we'll die before they have to think about it."
Catherine moved to Waterloo in 2011 to look after her daughter and now shares her two-bed flat with Finnegan, a toy poodle, and Bobby, a Maltese shih tzu cross. Before moving to the area she had heard Waterloo was "a dreadful neighbourhood and nobody would want to live here", she says, acknowledging the estate's troubled reputation regarding drugs, "but it turned out to be very untrue".
"You can walk right through from one end to the other and everybody is very cheery and friendly. Having Finnegan helped when I first arrived because everybody loves him."
Catherine is a keen enthusiast of architecture, especially the works of Marion Mahony Griffin, who helped design the city of Canberra.
"When I go outside I love to look up at these buildings," she says. "If you look at them at all different times of day the shadows are different. And when you look at these windows, I know a lot of people don't notice it at first, but they're round at the edge and from a distance it makes it look like a film strip.
"I certainly think she [Mahony Griffin] would have been interested in the towers as architecture. I think she would think as I do: that the actual buildings are an example of a can't-be-repeated style of architecture and should be preserved.
"But the value of everything these days is what it's worth financially, so all those things that you can't put a value on must diminish. You end up with a very dreadful society, something like [George Orwell's novel] 1984."
Tee was homeless on and off from 1995 to 2002 before he moved to the Waterloo estate. "At that point I was just happy to get somewhere that was comfortable and, you know, I didn't fear for anything here," the 70-year-old says with a smile.
He was born in the US and was a model and a computer programmer before settling in Australia. He had mental health problems and ended up on the streets.
"I lived in Europe for about three years doing some runway modelling and photographs in Rome, Paris – various shows, not the real top ones," he recalls. "I didn't get paid thousands and thousands of dollars but I enjoyed that period.
"Then I moved back to the States, got my masters in accounting and got a job in Saudi Arabia programming their systems for the US and Saudi Arabian governments for 10 years. I had a babysitter for my son, a driver for me, I could fly free whenever I wanted to go. I was making so much money I paid off my house in five years.
"When I got here [Australia] I was doing really good but all of a sudden one day my mental health broke down and I ended up being homeless. I'd never had to deal with anything that tragic."
Having been helped into public housing, Tee says he feels settled living alone in the Waterloo estate. The prospect of being uprooted doesn't make him angry but he does want answers.
"What's the main reason for it? That's what I don't understand. Why? I don't know, I really don't. It's causing a lot of insecurity and that I don't particularly like living with.
"It's going to take me time to adjust, I know that. But that's nobody's fight but my own.
"All in all I'd just like to know what's going on. And the thing is, no one seems to know what's going on."
Peter thumbs his way through a thick A4 folder looking for the offending document – the one he received shortly before Christmas in 2015 which announced the redevelopment proposals. "Ah yes, here it is," he says, "the infamous letter from Brad Hazzard."
"We're really excited to tell you ... " he trails off, skimming the opening line with incredulity, reading again the letter from Hazzard, written when he was minister for social housing in New South Wales. "These are marketing types. They must have called up their marketing mates and said, 'How do we market this bullshit?,' and that's what they came up with!"
Originally from New Zealand, Peter emigrated to Australia in 1975 and moved into Waterloo in 2003. When he first saw his apartment on the 26th floor of Matavai, with its panoramic views over Redfern and out to Bondi Junction in the distance, he says: "I took one look at it and thought yes please."
His studio apartment is small but he's happy with his lot. "This is my top-level suite," he jokes. "But the main reason I like it is because the location is ideal."
Of course, he notes, "that's the same reason that those greedy vultures want the land. It's a prime location. They don't give a toss about the communities and the people living here.
"The problem with these urban planners is they have a map and a biro in front of them, they make little dots and get a ruler and join them up, and they've got a railway line. It's completely devoid of contact with local people."
"I was 28 when I had the operation," says Olivia, a transgender woman who shares her home in Solander with two younger men. "Half the community don't really know but I'm not going to lie and deny it because I'm not ashamed. I am who I am now. I identify myself as Olivia, my birth certificate states Olivia and it says female. I'm quite happy with that."
Olivia was raised in the country and says her family struggled to accept her transition but she's found acceptance in the Waterloo community.
"I've never had any threats since I've lived here. I feel safe whether the boys are here or not. But if we were moved out west I don't think we'd feel comfortable because of the problems they had out at Guildford – they had a lot of attacks out there."
Before moving to the estate 26 years ago, Olivia, who is of Irish, English, Mauritian and Aboriginal descent, worked in cabaret and travelled Australia "living like a gypsy".
"The first show I ever worked in was the Vanessa Lee show," she recalls. "It was a strip show and I was like the girl who was something different. Zaza Carlotta, that was my stage name. I remember the first time I did a strip I fell over my cape when I was doing Shirley Bassey's Diamonds Are Forever. It was embarrassing. Memories, huh?"
But, she says darkly: "There's not much to smile for any more. When you think about what they're doing to us. It does worry me.
"I've heard this news before, 10 or 15 years ago. I thought, 'It's a heap of hogwash, it's not going to happen.' But now after seeing these shops on the corner closing up I'm starting to believe it."
Late in the afternoon almost every day, hundreds of lorikeets converge on Lee's balcony. The 58-year-old emerges with a bowl of sugar water and bread, and a feeding frenzy begins.
"There's lots of birds down here like magpies, crows, butcher birds," he says. "It doesn't cost much to feed them. Billy is my favourite. He's the loudest, he's boisterous, he's the one that everyone complains about because he's the boss. I know him by his call.
"A lot of neighbours don't like it but I just feel sorry for the birds. Their habitat is being cut down everywhere," Lee adds, acknowledging the obvious parallel with the plight of residents at Waterloo.
Though not a member of the action group, Lee is open to the idea of preserving the estate. "When I had a flat inspection the other day they asked me if I would still like to live here now that I've recovered from a really bad fall. I didn't really think about it before but yeah, probably, it's not so bad.
"It's just a difficult question at the moment because we don't know what's going on. We don't know if this place is going to get flattened. I think it's in the 'too soon' basket to form an opinion on it."
Jason and Riley
"I didn't ask to become sick," says Riley as he reflects on his former career as an all-format tape operator. Living with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, the 45-year-old has little energy and has days where he's too tired to talk. But today, on the subject of redevelopment, he can hardly stop talking.
"With my illness I'm like a cat – this is my world in here," he says. "I can only go to the doctor, I might be able to go to the shop and maybe to the club for lunch once in a blue moon and that's it. There's no way I can live anywhere else if I can't walk to the places I need to go to.
"When you're younger moving out sort of doesn't matter. But I'm getting older and when you live somewhere you think is your home and you'll be there until you start pushing up daisies, and all of a sudden you're told you've got to move …
"Where are all these brand-new houses that they're moving everyone too? How much smaller are these places going to be? Is it going to be like a room in a boarding house?"
Riley's housemate, Jason, 46, is pragmatic: "We can't stop it but hopefully they'll listen to some of our ideas and get some people's needs into the planning. Our priority is we want everyone to stay in Waterloo. You can try, that's all you can do."
Masalo
Masalo's smile is infectious. She may be temporarily missing her upper middle teeth but that won't stop her from baring her emotions.
"I love people, I love family, I love children. Anybody," she says. "I've been here eight years so I've built friendships with people no matter what colour or background they come from. When my friends see me they go, 'Hi, smiley.'"
Originally from Samoa, Masalo moved to Waterloo after escaping a long, violent marriage.
"This a home sweet home for me. It's a shelter after what I've gone through in life. I'm still struggling now and then but I'm happy and free and this is me.
"It's a beautiful place to live in. We have space to sit down in the sun, to bounce a ball when my grandkids come, and I've got a little garden block down there because I'm an outdoor person.
"My grandkids love it. They say, 'Nana, can we go to your garden? Nana, can we go to your garden?' I go there most days. I grow celery, coriander, tomatoes, ginger, rosemary, parsley, lemon grass. I do a lot of cooking."
With Masalo's daughter living just around the corner, both are worried at how the redevelopment will affect their relationship. Indeed, the 71-year-old has a proposal for any politicians who support the demolition.
"I think it would be a good idea for the politicians to come and stay a week in our homes and see how they feel," she says. "Tell the prime minister to come and live with me, or we swap and I'll go over there and deal with parliament and he can do my housework!
"We are people, people with heart. We have value. We value ourselves. We're not animals."
When Chester moved to his 15th-floor apartment in Turanga he was so frightened of the height he spent the first few nights medicating himself with whisky and sleeping away from the window. Now he's perfectly content eating lunch and drinking wine while gazing out towards the city centre.
"I believe in improvement and progress but I don't see what's wrong with these buildings," he says. "The standard of this building is terrific. Whatever goes up is very unlikely to be as well finished as this.
"It just looks to me like social cleansing. I suspect they want to fill up the place with very rich students from abroad and give them a railway station. As far as I'm concerned any change with these hard-working buildings is connected with that railway line."
The 81-year-old has lived and worked around the world as a translator: Italy on and off for 15 years, then the UK, France, Portugal and latterly Brazil for 25 years. He returned to his native Australia in 2001 when the Brazilian export boom ended but says: "I regret coming back. Utterly. If I had any money I'd be out of here like a shot. I left a country that was a pretty decent place.
He adds: "The department of housing was set up to house people, now it's trying to make money. Maybe it'll be privatised like the buses."
In future Chester says he would prefer to live in a more mixed and vibrant community. "You don't meet many people in this building. It's a one-way waiting room before they pack you off to the crematorium.
"You never hear children's voices. There's no social life here for me. It's the opposite of the French quota system where they get so many people of one age band, so many singles, so many professionals, so many blue-collared [in every building]. Oh that's terrific."
"Never worthless," says Richard, when asked how he feels. "Nobody, not even a New South Wales government could ever make me feel worthless. I'm too strong for that. I'd never allow that to happen to me. But it's made a lot of people around here feel worthless.
"They [the government and urban planners] have lied to us or been misinformed and didn't know what the truth was. That's made me emotionally angry."
Richard is the chair of the Waterloo public housing action group. A former teacher and military veteran who served on two tours of Vietnam, Richard moved to public housing to care for his mother after having handed his financial assets to his pregnant daughter when her husband died in his sleep. He is as generous as he is forthright.
"People are in public housing by circumstance not by choice," he says. "There's a story with everybody here. There are many, many circumstances.
"The government see us as a drain on society because we're not contributing to the economy any more, so they say, but most of us have contributed taxes. I know I did, a hell of a lot of taxes. And if I look back in history a part of the income tax was increased to cover the cost of age pensioners – I'm wondering what happened to that percentage?"
Initially the action group campaigned vigorously to save the entire estate, but now Richard is more pragmatic. "I personally can't see any way we can stop it, short of another election very quickly to throw this mob out and put somebody in who's a little bit more compassionate towards human beings and less compassionate towards the big corporations.
"So what we have to do now is fight the winnable fight. If we can't stop it, let's go in there and knock down a few walls and make it a bit easier for us. Otherwise if you do nothing you get nothing.
"Whenever I draw breath I'll use every resource I can to negotiate a good deal and fight these mongrels.
"I don't want a consultation, I want a negotiation. The only person I have a consultation with is my local doctor and I don't have a choice in the outcome. In a negotiation two people can sit down both with an idea and they'll meet somewhere in the middle."
The action group, which meets on Tuesday afternoons, is attended by residents and volunteers from the wider community. All members have an equal say, whether or not they live in the estate.
Richard explains: "Collectively there's a lot of intelligence here. It doesn't matter if a person is 98 years old, listen to them carefully because they've got 98 years of experience in life and there's a lot of wisdom there. Give everybody a voice. I'm only the vehicle for everybody's voice."
Anna is one of Waterloo's longest-standing tenants. She moved here 45 years ago when Solander was newly built and is among a large community of eastern Europeans in the neighbourhood. Some fear they should not speak out about the redevelopment but Anna refuses to be cowed.
"So many people tell me, 'Don't say anything, they will put you in the jail, they will put you somewhere far away from Waterloo.' I say, 'This is not Russia, this is not communist country.' What I say is about my life."
Anna has been here so long she recalls when she had a view from her fifth-floor balcony – now the figs are so tall their canopies envelop it. "This tree was my size when I came here and look at it now," she says.
"I've been very happy here, of course. In the beginning there was the Salvation Army coming here in the car park. Every Sunday morning they had a band and we come on the balcony and we clap to them.
"In the buildings they used to deliver us bread and milk on the bench outside the door. Now they've covered up this. We used to leave the milkman the money and if the milkman is not there nobody would take the money. We miss this."
Having raised her child here as a lone parent, the 80-year-old wishes simply to live out her remaining days in the place she calls home.
"In the night time I can't sleep because I think, 'What will happen to me?' This is stress, upset, nervous breakdown, worry. We don't want much. We just want to be comfortable til we die. I just want to be in peace to live here. That's all that I want."
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