Women's Web Women's Stories - Women's Actions
Welcome | Actions | Stories | Reviews | About Us | Links | Dialogue | Things to Buy
Actions

Last Updated: November 1, 2009
Contact us: wmnsweb@iprimus.com.au

HOUSING

On this page: Molly Hadfield; Edith Morgan; Elizabeth Coldicutt

Molly Hadfield

- I was married in 1942. I moved into rooms with my sisters when Fred went off to the war. Here was another new experience. Four or five or six different people living in houses in Carlton. You would live in one room - a bed-sitter. Down the passageway or under the stairs would be the little gas stoves where you had to do your cooking. There would be notices up everywhere! 'Turn off the light. Shut the door. Don't do this. Don't do that.' I thought 'We have to get out of this house, we can't cope with this.

So, we found another place. That was no better. 'No noise after 11pm' etc. Somebody told me this was wrong - to enforce these things unless we upset someone else. I rang some government department, I don't remember which and a man came out and had a really good talk to the landlady. He gave her a good dressing down.

There were about six different families renting rooms in that house. That is what Carlton and Fitzroy were like then, all these people packed in. Now you will go to those houses and there might be two people living there! My own aunt opened up a boarding house, now there are just two people living there.

Even when the war finished, people were living in places like Camp Pell - families living in 'Nissan' army huts. My husband remembers people living under bits of tin at the flats in South Melbourne - Dudley Flats it was called.

Then things changed. Public housing was looked into in a serious manner.

- ... We were still living in two rooms (after the 2nd World War), we had to get out and look for a house. We heard of a place in Collingwood, but you had to pay 'key money'. This was not bond - you didn't get it back when you left. It was a black market bribe when you think about it.

Anyway, we paid it and we moved in. Well, the walls were all smoked. We found that what the people in Collingwood used to burn for cooking and heating caused it. It was called 'Collingwood Coke'. It was boot leather offcuts from the shoe factories and they used to burn it when they couldn't afford wood. We had to scrub all the walls.

- ... We were only there two or three years when the factory next door wanted to enlarge his factory - to expand onto our land. The owner gave me a nice little letter, telling me to move out! My brain just went back to the depression and I thought 'Where is the justice? What are they doing to people?'

I thought 'I am not going to move.' I had two children and I refused to move. He gave me this eviction order. I had to go to the Collingwood court. They said 'You have to give this woman three months notice and you have to find her somewhere else to live'.

But the owner was a very smart man. He bought up houses on corner blocks to resell for service stations and he moved me into this house he bought, but I was only there for a couple of years when he gave me an eviction order again.

I said, 'Well, I am not going', so he took me to court again.

There was a different magistrate this time. He said 'Well, you can stay there for thirty days but you will have to be out at 10 a.m. on such and such a date and you will have to find yourself somewhere else to live'. That had changed in housing in a few years. The first time was in 1956 and this was 1960.

I had not met Dr Jim Cairns, the Labor Party federal member for Yarra, before this. He must have heard about the stand I took on the eviction order and he came to my home to congratulate me. I was most impressed. It made me a strong supporter of the labour movement.

- ... We used to go to Chelsea for weekends. Fred's sister lived there and we used to take the children down to the beach. The back of Chelsea, Chelsea Heights, was just starting to develop. We used to go bushwalking out there to the swamps, birds and wildflowers.

We would see these blocks of land for sale. I had a hundred pounds my dad had left me when he died. We had to find somewhere. There was one telephone box in the area and when I went to ring an agent I started talking to a woman on a bicycle while we were waiting for the 'phone.

She said 'look, I am selling my place. It has a two-room bungalow on it, with a verandah you could close in for the children to sleep in. I want cash, but I am up against it too. You give me a deposit then you can pay me off later. Then I can move and you can move'. We accepted.

Next to this block of land there was a neighbour with a truck. He offered to move us, but couldn't come until 5pm when we had to be out at 10am. At 10am the police were knocking at the door. I told them I couldn't move until 5pm. They didn't want to put me in the street so they went to see the sergeant.

At that time I was working in a General Store where the police used to come for their sandwiches. The sergeant knew me from there and said 'if Molly says she will be out at 5 o'clock, she will. Leave her'. They came back at 5 o'clock and there we were, loading the truck.

It must have been terrible for people who were evicted who had nowhere to go and didn't have that protection. I suppose that was when I became an activist, though they didn't use that term then.

Edith Morgan

- At work, I had a job as the social worker for Collingwood Council. I started working there in 1972. found working at the council fascinating because they never had anybody in that position before - the councillors had played the game of being the social worker, or whatever it was.

I was the first social worker who was appointed. When I came to work I was selected by councillors for the position, so the Town Clerk hated my guts.

The Town Clerk had never even been to the Housing Commission flats. You could see his feet were nearly falling off when we finally went! The tenants had never had any place to speak within the council.

They paid rates. Although it wasn't personally taken out of their rent, they were ratepayers. But Collingwood Council divorced that area completely from their perceived area of responsibility. They didn't even pick up the rubbish. I kept on pushing the point that those residents on the estate were ratepayers and as much deserving of as much attention as the people living in Clifton Hill.

Because I became well known, councillors started coming a bit behind me. But when I went there, there was an office - and a shitty office at that - but not a pencil, a pen, a piece of paper or anything. It was difficult, but I quite enjoyed it because I managed to get a number of people, both from the high rise and around the area - people who required support, or whatever I was doing - behind me. Eventually, when I did go, they gave me a big reception.

I did work with people - got to know them. I still see people when I go down to the Collingwood Community Health Centre who say "Oh, Edith, it has never been the same since you left. With you we had somebody we could talk to, who understood us." Very interesting stuff!

Elizabeth Coldicutt

There are two political issues which I feel are a threat to my continued tenancy - a very happy tenancy, because the flat meets my needs admirably.

The first threat stems from the totally inadequate amount of money the Federal government allots the State of Victoria for it to maintain and service the public housing sector. This Federal funding shortfall in the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement gives the State government an excuse to run down public housing into unworkable proportions, so that the need, the demand for public housing staggers with a ludicrous ten year waiting list for 43,000 households.

It is estimated that there are another 30,000 eligible for public housing, but not on the waiting list.

We must not focus on figureheads such as Bracks or Kennett. We must recognise the economic and political forces at work, recognise and determine to reverse the social trends in these forces, which threaten to destroy what public - that is, government owned and managed - housing there is at present.

This brings me to the second issue which undermines my confidence in my future as a public housing tenant: the Social Housing Innovations Project, better known as the SHIP Report.

The Bracks government's SHIP Report proposes not to sell these sites,
but to give them away,
literally,
Title and all,
to private ownership and management.

The ownership and management is to pass for instance, to church groups.

These church groups were, in the 1940's among the slum landlords whose shameful neglect led to public outcry, slum clearances, and the building of the high-rise estates now to be handed back to them - what a bitter irony.

Back to top