guys if I’m going to enter a huge debate about yarn-bombing and gentrification I can at least use my newfound notoriority to do something constructive, which is promote this rally for public housing in Melbourne. 4pm Friday the 6th of July, 140 Brunswick St, Melbourne.
yarn-bombing is IMO pretty annoying, but little more. This, on the other hand, is a very real threat to people who need cheap housing. the Liberal state government is openly hostile to public housing. their latest technique to avoid investing in it is to propose building private apartments on the open space between towers. These towers have 200 apartments each, many of which are severely overcrowded. The loss of open space would be keenly felt by apartment residents.
Judging by Victorian history, they won’t stop there — it’s likely the thin edge of the wedge for the privatisation of existing apartments, to be rented out at market rates. But it’s bad enough. I went to a meeting for the African migrant community in the towers and the women there (it was almost all women) were really worried about the effect losing open space would have on their kids. they were just like “uh, my kid is gonna be completely impossible without an open space to run around and burn off steam in”. like I said, a lot of the apartments are overcrowded, and it’s not like they have backyards. how would you feel if the government sold your backyard to a developer, huh???
if a lot of people come to this rally it will also put the tenants in a better position to make demands for maintenance, better apartment allocation, and so on.
please reblog this if you think you might have a significant number of followers from Melbourne, Australia and you reblogged anything about yarn bombing, because this is a lot more important.
