Podcast: Cheap shots and affordability under fire

A slightly shorter but more pointed podcast this week as Sue reports on plans to demolish two affordable-rent apartment blocks and replace them with one luxury block with fewer presumably high-end apartments.

City of Sydney have said “no” so the developers have appealed to the Land and Environment Court (LEC)– which held a kerbside hearing outside the site, the other day.

Apparently there are half a dozen other blocks of affordable homes in the Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay area – all marked for gentrification, and we’ve just heard it’s happening in Bondi too.

Now we know why there aren’t enough materials or skilled workers to build enough affordable apartment blocks – they’re all working on luxury pads for the privileged few while reducing the number of available homes.

Meanwhile Jimmy has taken serious umbrage at a report in the SMH Domain section which is a typical “neighbours from Hell” yarn. Which is all very well, but it’s not here in Oz and, he says, gives a completely false (and predictably biased) impression of living in apartments.

And finally, on her way back from the LEC hearing, Sue chanced upon a vivid example of how hard it is to find somewhere affordable to rent in Sydney.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

TRANSCRIPT IN FULL

Jimmy  00:00

I’ve been on my high horse this week.

Sue   00:02

What a surprise happens a fair bit, doesn’t it, Jimmy?

Jimmy  00:06

Uh, yeah. I just I read something in domain in the Sydney Morning Herald, Domain online, a story about the neighbours from hell.

Sue   00:14

Oh, yeah,

Jimmy  00:14

Which is a fairly common and recurring theme, but this one is a bit of a furphy. Now you’ve been sniffing around a development site, a development site, yeah, it’s not a development site yet. It’s, it’s two buildings

Sue   00:29

development site, I think.

Jimmy  00:31

And related to that, there’s a little kind of hotely type service department building near us that’s seems to be going on to residential accommodation,

Sue   00:43

That’s right, and there’s a huge crowd waiting outside.

Jimmy  00:46

Really okay. That is a lot for us to get on with. I’m Jimmy Thomson. I write the flat chat column for the Australian Financial Review,

Sue   00:55

I’m Sue Williams, and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, the age the AFR and domain

Jimmy  01:00

and this is the Flat Chat wrap.

Sue   01:16

So what’s this thing about noise?

Jimmy  01:17

Okay, so it was in the Domain, and it’s, you know, the neighbours from hell, and I’m having to move out and and it’s a very different take on the noisy neighbour scenario, which is somebody who’s clearly playing games on their computer and screaming and shouting. They’re probably wearing headphones, and they’re screaming and shouting at their computer when the something doesn’t work out the way they want it, and they’re up until three or four in the morning.

Sue   01:44

Oh no, and the neighbours can hear that?

Jimmy  01:47

Well, yeah. And the person next door, who’s written this thing on Reddit, that reliable source of information, says, you know, there’s no point in banging, he’s been on the wall, and they’ve obviously, the person’s got their headphones on, can’t hear him, or doesn’t care. So I looked at this and I thought, this is weird, because this person is saying, oh, people are telling him that there’s nothing he can do. And he’s been to the local council, and the local council say there’s nothing we can do. Just

Sue   02:14

That’s ridiculous…

Jimmy  02:15

Move house.

Sue   02:16

He lives in strata. There’s an awful lot he can do.

Jimmy  02:18

Yeah, but he doesn’t live in strata in Australia, as it turned out, I did a bit of investigation and discovered that this particular bit of click bait or fake news, or maybe a combination of the two, is taken from a Reddit post by somebody who apparently lives in the UK. But you would think from reading it, it was somebody in Australia. I mean, we have our share of neighbours from hell in this country, in this state. But what really upset me and angered me was the way that it was portraying the idea that if you live in strata, you just have to put up with it, because there’s nothing you can do

Sue   02:56

When in fact, you’re more protected in strata than you would be in a normal house.

Jimmy  02:59

Absolutely, for instance.

Sue   03:00

In that house I lived in that I grew up in, it is just a little terraced house in England. We could hear the neighbours everything they did. We could hear them arguing. We could hear them doing other things. We could hear the children playing. We could hear them going up and down the stairs, clattering up and down the stairs. We could hear their whole lives, really.

Jimmy  03:12

This is a terraced house,

Sue   03:21

That’s right, but in a strata building, there’s actually lots of things you can do about it,

Jimmy  03:25

Yeah. Because, well, that was the first thing this person could do. I mean, at three o’clock in the morning you can call the police, because the curfew, for want of a better word, for most local councils, is weird, like the local councils create the law that is set by the Environmental Protection Authority, but the police are empowered to enforce it. And if it’s, you know, after 11 o’clock during the week or midnight at the weekend and people are making noise, then police can come around and they do.  So that was one piece of nonsense in this story. And the other one was, they’re in strata, therefore they could complain to the strata manager or the committee and say, This person is far too noisy at night. Can you do something about it? The committee could issue a notice to comply, which is basically a warning that says, If you don’t stop doing this. We’re going to take you to tribunal, and we’re going to have you fined. The committee could also complain to the landlord and say this person is breaching our by-laws. You should do something about it. The landlord can then say, well, if they can prove the by-laws are being breached, that is a breach of your tenancy agreement.

Sue   04:14

they could kick them out,

Jimmy  04:40

 Kick them out. And as a last resort, you can get a court order, noise abatement order from your local court. And you just can you prove that there’s a noise problem, the local court issues a noise abatement order that says, stop making this noise. And if they ignore that, then they’re in real trouble. Because you can actually get jailed for that,

Sue   05:02

wow,

Jimmy  05:03

For ignoring a court order. It’s kind of like a crime,

Sue   05:06

Yeah? Well, that’s an awful lot you can do.

Jimmy  05:08

There’s a lot you can do. And the answer to this problem is, there are two answers to this problem. One is, don’t live in England, and the other one is, journalists should not be digging through Reddit feeds and making it look like these problems are in Australia,

Sue   05:26

Absolutely. I mean, we have enough problems of our own without bringing all the Britain’s problems here as well.

Jimmy  05:31

Well it is to me. And the reason I’m annoyed about this is because it’s just another cheap shot aimed at Strata. It doesn’t actually say they live in a flat, but if somebody says, you know, I banged on my wall and it was ignored, I think you can say that they’re safely assume their apartment, strata townhouse, maybe, but still strata and all above applies. So it’s just kind of cheap shot, you know, have a go at Strata. Nobody cares. Nobody lives there.

Sue   05:58

But it’s interesting. You know, when people wearing headphones? Are they being more noisy? And sometimes they are. I suppose a lot of people are wearing headphones now, lots of people wearing those

Jimmy  06:08

earbuds.

Sue   06:08

earbuds

Jimmy  06:09

But if you’re, yeah, if you’re wearing a game, if you’re a gamer wearing headphones, you might have a microphone so you can talk to other gamers who are playing the same game. You know, the other side of the world,

Sue   06:19

sure, but you wouldn’t necessarily shout, would you? Whereas sometimes you wear headphones and you watch soccer matches for Celtic and when they score, you shout. And I might be asleep in bed, because it might be on at 2am and it really makes me jump.

Jimmy  06:34

Yeah, I would do that where I was, whether I was wearing headphones or not. But do you remember back in the day when we when there was such a thing as record shops, and you would go in to listen to a new record, and oh, you wouldn’t, because you didn’t like music, but you would go in, I remember the first time listening to music on headphones, and there’d be somebody in there shouting at the top of the voice. “This is brilliant. This is really good”. People are going “Shush” because they could only hear the music and they thought they were having to shout over the top of it, yeah.

Sue   07:08

And it’s funny, because we both have hearing aids now, and we have a gizmo that we put on the television, yeah, and it signals the it makes the noise go straight into our ears,

Jimmy  07:20

Sound

Sue   07:22

Sound, so it’s absolutely silent in our lounge room.

Jimmy  07:25

Yeah, our cat’s very confused,

Sue   07:27

That’s right. She just can’t.

Jimmy  07:28

She wanders past the TV and looks at it and looks at us and goes, what are these humans doing now?

Sue   07:35

And it’s kind of quite amazing, isn’t it, really, because it’s much quieter in our place now, yeah, because, you know, we’ve got this thing channelling straight to us, whereas our neighbour, who loves watching cowboy and Indian films,

Jimmy  07:47

action movies,

Sue   07:48

yeah, Westerns as well.

Jimmy  07:50

Does she?

Sue   07:50

Yes, she does lots of shooting as well, right? And she’s actually quite noisy,

Jimmy  07:56

You only hear her. No, no, no, no, you only hear her as you’re walking past her front door.

Sue   08:00

Sometimes you can hear in her lounge room, but I don’t mind, because she’s really nice,

Jimmy  08:04

I never hear her because your office is near the lounge.

Sue   08:07

I got study in the lounge.

Jimmy  08:08

Yeah, and I didn’t know that,

Sue   08:09

I’ll complain. We should tell her to get a hearing aid.

Jimmy  08:14

I think she might be insulted at that headphone. Yes, when we come back, we’re going to talk about something much more serious, which is how the gentrification of a couple of apartment blocks is going to result in fewer places for people to live just at a time when we need more. That’s after this. So Sue you were at a very strange court hearing today.

Sue   08:42

Yes, it was an apartment building, and it’s a really, it’s a 1960s apartment. It’s kind of quite ugly, really, but some people really quite like it. It’s sort of modernist, brutalist,

Jimmy  08:54

brutalist yeah

Sue   08:55

 and it’s got 28 apartments, and they’re all one bedroom or studios, and a developer has proposed to knock it down and replace it with another building which is much bigger but has fewer apartments. Has just 22 apartments, but these are two bedroom, three bedroom, four bedroom apartments, and now this is just one of six buildings in the King’s Cross, Elizabeth Bay, Potts Point area where this is being proposed, they developers seem to be

Jimmy  09:24

what is being proposed?

Sue   09:25

Developers seem to be singling out these old, tired buildings, which are kind of tend to offer affordable accommodation, you know, one bedroom studios, and planning to knock them down, buying the apartments, or offering all the owners options on the apartments and they pay them, I think, 2% of the value, and they sign off and say they’ll sell them if they get enough agreement from enough people. And then they’re going to knock them down and then build these fabulous new luxury buildings with much bigger apartments, really, for the downsizer market, the cashed up downsizers who want two and three bedrooms, yeah, and nice views and things. Because these apartments are often in quite nice places in Elizabeth Bay and Potts Point and King’s Cross, and they sometimes even have, you know, glimpses or narrow views or corridor views of the harbour as well,  So this building, the developer applied for permission to knock it down. City of Sydney said no. So the developer went to the land and Environment Court to apply to have the City of Sydney decision overturned. And today they had this really interesting thing. I’ve never seen it before. They had an on site hearing. So

Jimmy  09:56

right  a court hearing?

Sue   10:38

yes. So everybody gathered outside. It was about 50 residents there who were all against this happening. They were all from neighbouring buildings. And there were seven people from the city of Sydney Council and seven people from the developers. And, you know, neither group spoke to the other group. And basically the commissioner presided over this hearing, and it was kind of like a formal court hearing, except we’re all crammed onto the pavement and into the road, and we had to keep breaking off and starting again whenever a truck went past, or we had to scramble out of the way of a car coming out of the garage. So he allowed seven people to talk about why they were against the plan, and then the commissioner went off to inspect some of the apartments and to check where they were going to lose their views or their solar access, that kind of thing. And then he was going to go back and see if he could mediate an agreement between the city of Sydney and the developer, which I would imagine is incredibly unlikely, and then it would go to a contested hearing. But

Jimmy  11:38

But I’m confused, because I looked this up, and the address is 21c Billyard Avenue. Is that right?

Sue   11:45

That’s right, and 10 Onslow Avenue.

Jimmy  11:48

But that’s two buildings?

Sue   11:49

Well, yes, it’s kind of like,

Jimmy  11:51

 like they’re back to back,

Sue   11:52

 yeah, that’s right.

Jimmy  11:53

If you, if you knocked them both down, you’d have a clear run through. That’s one street to the next.

Sue   11:58

Yeah. so it goes all the way from one street.

Jimmy  12:00

Are they replacing these two buildings with one building or two building with two buildings?

Sue   12:04

I think they’re replacing it with one building, but the building is going to be much bigger than the original buildings, like the curtilage is going to be much smaller.

Jimmy  12:13

 curtilage.

Sue   12:14

Yes.

Jimmy  12:14

What is that? What is that? This is a new word for me

Sue   12:17

Okay, so that’s the surroundings. Like, you know, when you have a McDonald’s mansion, you kind of a

Jimmy  12:23

McDonald’s mansion, a McMansion.

Sue   12:26

Thank you. And you kind of, you don’t have much garden, because you kind of take the building all the way to the edge. Well, these the residents are saying this building is badly designed, because it kind of goes not all the way to the edge, but it just means there’s very little public domain around the building anyway. There’s very little kind of

Jimmy  12:44

space,

Sue   12:46

space, and there’s not much room for planting, because there’s lots of trees on the site which will have to be knocked down, but there’s no room for to plant new trees, that kind of thing. And the bulk of the place, and the fact that it’s going to affect the views, well, allegedly, of all the neighbouring buildings, affect their access to sunlight, solar and they’re worried about all sorts of things. But one of the big things is that, you know, with with all these buildings where developers replaced, them with buildings with many fewer apartments, you know, all the people in King’s Cross, and they’re joining suburbs who work in hospitality, or who work in the hospital, or who are the firefighters, all those people who don’t really have an awful lot of money and need affordable housing. This is these are the kind of places where these live. You know, in these one bedroom and studio apartments, they’re not going to be able to afford $8 million for a three bedroom, fabulous new apartment. So where are they going to go? They’re going to have to move out of the area, and that’s a huge thing. We talked a couple of weeks ago about another building which is in exactly the same position, which is kind of a bit near us, where we used to see this man, sort of sitting on his balcony. And the other day, he climbed over his railing and jumped to his death because he was distressed that the developer was going to redevelop his building and he’d have nowhere to live.

Jimmy  14:05

Yeah.

Sue   14:05

So I think that’s that’s kind of really upset quite a lot of people. And you know, many of these people, they’re going to have to move out of the area because there’s no other accommodation for them. And many people say, Well, maybe this is the gentrification of this place. And Sure thing, but we want to preserve the diversity of the people who live here. I mean, it’s an eclectic place. We all love The Cross, yeah? And we want to make sure there’s still room for creatives and artistic people and poor people and rich people alike,

Jimmy  14:35

¥eah and obviously, the mood among the people at the court hearing was very much against the buildings. Did did you get

Sue   14:43

absolutely

Jimmy  14:43

did you get a sense of what the likely outcome is going to be?

Sue   14:47

Oh, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it, really. But there were 132 objections to the building received by council, and there were 15 letters in favour of the building, but one of the residents alleged today in the court case, so we can repeat her allegation that 14 out of those 15 letters supporting the application were from employees of the developer.

Jimmy  15:13

Yeah, there’s a few of these things going around. And you know, obviously from the developer’s point of view, they want to maximise their profits and the more expensive apartments that they can build, then the more profit they’ll make. Well, this is the problem when you have free market,

Sue   15:28

Sure, and you also have state government that isn’t building enough affordable and social housing, really, because then it’s up to the private market to provide it, and the private market is not finding it profitable anymore?

Jimmy  15:41

Well, the private market is not going to build 25 single rooms apartments when they can build 12 three bedroom places.

Sue   15:50

That’s right. And so you’ve got six buildings which are all threatened. And you know, most of these buildings are quite stable. And knocking down buildings, they might not be terribly pretty, but they’re pretty functional. As somebody made the point at the at the hearing today, that the greenest building is the building that’s already there. Like knocking down these buildings and then building new ones in their place is hardly sustainable,

Jimmy  16:14

absolutely

Sue   16:15

hardly responsible.

Jimmy  16:16

Well, we’ll keep an eye on that and report back. And in a related matter, we’re going to talk after this about another change to affordable housing, or is it that’s after this? So you spotted something on your way up the street today. What’s going on?

Sue   16:38

Yes, there’s a hotel near us, the sort of service department hotel, I think it’s kind of like a four star place, yeah. And it’s got a big sign, well, it describes itself as four star. I mean, that’s pretty meaningless, isn’t it, really, yeah, but, um, it’s got a big sign saying new management in new management, which is horrible, oh, dear, um, but there’s a big crowd of people standing outside, and there’s also another sign there saying studios on one bedrooms for lease right now. These are hotel rooms. All these people are crowding there because they’re trying to get a lease of a tiny studio and a tiny one bedroom. And it just kind of broke my heart, really, because there’s so little rental accommodation in this area. The people, and there’s possibly going to be a lot less after this court case, depending on which way it goes. But you know, all these poor people, and they just look so desperate and sad and ready to kind of cram themselves and their possessions into a tiny little space.

Jimmy  17:38

But look, I seem to recall you just last week talking about how tiny apartments, micro apartments, were okay,

Sue   17:46

Absolutely, if they’re well designed,

Jimmy  17:49

right?

Sue   17:49

These are hotel rooms,

Jimmy  17:51

right?

Sue   17:51

I’ve been to many hotels which have been converted into apartments, and most of them are pretty terrible.

Jimmy  17:57

That’s true.

Sue   17:57

You look at a new building that’s been very carefully designed to make the most of all the space, and it can be great, but certainly not when you’re trying to turn a little hotel room into a proper apartment. It’s just awful that people are having to live that way.

Jimmy  18:15

When we were talking about micro apartments last week, I hadn’t realised at the time it was a development in Marrickville by a church organisation had donated the land, and a church related organisation had developed the affordable accommodation.

Sue   18:31

Talking about Nightingale?

Jimmy  18:32

 yeah

Sue   18:33

Well, Nightingale got a fantastic reputation because they’ve been mostly in Melbourne, and their developments have been incredibly oversubscribed. People love Nightingale housing developments.

Jimmy  18:43

These are micro apartments, but they have, but the buildings have communal areas,

Sue   18:48

that’s right, lots of amenity. So they’re kind of like, you know, the modern boarding houses, but really well done. Great community values, fantastic atmosphere. Great common rooms, you know, laundries, all that kind of stuff, and they’re a great way to live, I think, to rent in lots of ways.

Jimmy  19:07

Well, yeah, maybe somebody should convert the one of these buildings into a Nightingale. I guess Nightingale. They’re not for profit, so that means they depend a lot on the generosity of well, property owners and people like that, but yeah, we need more of that,

Sue   19:27

Absolutely, and they’ve been a shining example of what can be achieved in the housing space.

Jimmy  19:32

And on that positive note, Sue. Thanks again. You’ve been out there, you’ve been out and about, you’ve been reporting and researching, and it never changes, does it the strata, there’s always something,

Sue   19:44

No and I went through enormous difficulty today to bring you this story, because when I was walking back, I walked into a pole,

Jimmy  19:51

A bollard,

Sue   19:52

and I’ve really hurt my leg. I didn’t  notice it, and I’ve got a huge black bruise on my leg already and a big lump. So I. Really appreciate this danger that I go through for

Jimmy  20:02

if you’re looking workers compensation, you’re looking in the wrong place. By the way, I was on radio today, back on ABC afternoons with Tim Webster, and I’ve never really had a full session with him before. I think he was surprised at how many people were calling up. Fantastic. As soon as we started his it’s the old saying, the switchboard lit up.

Sue   20:25

Great,

Jimmy  20:26

but it was funny, because the some of the comments that people were making, I just didn’t have time to correct the misconceptions, you know, like one bloke was saying individuals can’t apply to have statutory managers appointed. Yeah well that’s not true, but we’d already moved on. You’re not in control of the microphone switch. You just got to go where it goes. Okay, as I said before, thanks very much. Sue and we’ll talk to you again real soon.

Sue   20:56

Fantastic. See you.

Jimmy  20:57

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast, you’ll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au and if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcatcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W. Click on Subscribe, and you’ll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week you.