Katherine Ceballos sat before a panel of Victorian MPs inside the Djerring Flemington Hub, her voice steady, her message clear.
“I come to save public housing. I come to save the land. I come to save the system,” she said.
Ceballos has lived in Carlton’s public housing estate for decades. For her, these high-rises are more than buildings – they are her “sanctuary” and “security”.
But like thousands of others, she will be forced to relocate under the Andrews-era plan to demolish all 44 of Victoria’s public housing towers by 2051.
The government argues the buildings are outdated, unsafe and energy-inefficient. They promise to modernise each site, increasing housing supply, and allow residents to return once complete.
But Ceballos, like many others who appeared before the first hearing of a parliamentary inquiry into the redevelopment on Tuesday, is not convinced. She described the plan as “reckless, arrogant, foolish, undermining and insulting”, and accused the government of trying to “kick out the minorities” from the gentrified inner-city suburbs.
“This is not what Victoria, or Australia, is about,” she said.
Reem Yehdego, another Carlton resident, echoed the sentiment: “These demolitions don’t feel like progress, they feel like erasure.”
She said the migrants who made these areas safe and vibrant were being coerced into leaving by a “government and developers seeing it as a cash grab”.
Kah Wah, speaking through a translator, put it more bluntly: the government was “collaborating in a bad way with businessmen”.
He said he left his Flemington apartment after being told if he did not move before 30 September he would have to pay relocation costs himself.
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The government, however, has disputed these claims. They have said more than 70% of high-rise residents who have been relocated so far have been moved into homes that suit their needs, including in their local neighbourhoods, and they are not responsible for the costs involved.
“We are so proud of the diverse, close-knit and vibrant multicultural and multi-faith communities who have called the towers home – in many cases for decades – they are an incredibly important part of Melbourne’s multicultural identity,” the housing minister, Harriet Shing, said.
“We also want more people to have access to quality housing in the inner suburbs, which is why the overall increase in the amount of social housing at these sites is so important.”
Community housing v public housing
In September 2023, in one of his final acts as Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews announced “Australia’s biggest ever urban renewal project”, a plan to knock down every public housing tower in the state and replace them with a mix of “social housing” – the umbrella term that encompasses two types of state-subsidised housing for low-income people: public housing, which is owned and operated by the government, and community housing, which is run by private not-for-profit companies.
The first towers due to be developed by 2031 are 12 Holland Street in Flemington, 33 Alfred Street and 120 Racecourse Road in North Melbourne and two unoccupied red-brick towers in Carlton. Towers in South Yarra and Richmond will follow.
So far, only the buildings in Carlton will return as public housing, thanks to federal funding. The rest will be rebuilt as community housing under a model where the government leases land out for 40 years. This “ground lease model” was also used during the $5.3bn “Big Housing Build”, launched in 2020.
Since then, community housing has proliferated. In 2022, it made up 20% of Victoria’s total social housing stock.
Stephanie Price, from West Heidelberg Community Legal Service, told the inquiry it proved a “retreat and diminishment of public housing” by government. She said in the past three years 20 new community housing providers have been registered – a 50% increase. Some, she said, had no website or contact details.
While the number of providers has grown, Productivity Commission data from January shows Victoria has the lowest proportion of social housing stock per capita of any state, with only 2.9% of people living in social housing, below the national average of 3.9%. There were more than 55,000 applications on the state’s housing waitlist as of March 2025.
Both Price and Louisa Bassini, a lawyer from Inner Melbourne Community Legal Centre, who represented tower residents in a recent class action, told the inquiry community housing lacks protections of public housing, including that private providers can charge higher rent – up to 30% of income compared to the 25% capped rate for public housing.
Price also raised concerns about smaller unit sizes and the loss of communal spaces, affecting public housing residents whose families are often larger.
Rose Aba told MPs her family was relocated to two adjacent community housing apartments on Victoria Street in Flemington. She was promised the apartments – one four-bedroom and one two-bedroom – would be combined. It has not happened.
As a result, she is “struggling to pay two rents”.
“I’m feeling crazy at the moment,” Aba said. “This is the thing I didn’t bargain for my family – to have my kid in the other apartment. Sometime I don’t even sleep.”
Demolition or retrofitting?
Another key theme of the inquiry is whether demolition is even necessary. MPs will soon hear from the towers’ original architect and engineer, as well as firms proposing retrofitting instead of demolition.
Among them is OFFICE, which released a proposal last year to retain and upgrade the Flemington estate and build five new mid-rises on existing car parks, saving the government $364m.
The government disagrees. It said it would cost $2.3bn over 20 years – or $55m per tower – just to maintain the buildings, not improve them.
Labor MPs at Tuesday’s hearings went to lengths to illustrate the poor living conditions of the units, including the inability to install air conditioning in some.
Ryan Batchelor cited a report on the Carlton buildings that said it was “not feasible or practicable” to upgrade them as the sewer stacks were “failing”, causing damp and mould within the walls.
“Do we have to wait until there’s a failure of the sewer stacks?” he said. “Or do we need to have a proactive program of capital assessment management … to give the most vulnerable and poorest residents of our state homes that suit their needs?”
He framed the redevelopment as a staged 30-year plan and accused “non-government agents” of spreading misinformation.
Hamdi Ali, from the Carlton Housing Estate residents’ group, agreed, saying confusion was widespread and rumours were flourishing.
“Because of the language barrier, sometimes people will put their own spin,” Ali said.
Ayan Mohamud, a food security coordinator at the Church All Nations, however, put the blame on government.
“Rumours are coming from the government not giving information. So people are filling in the gaps,” she said.
Privately, some Labor MPs agree the lack of clarity has allowed the Greens to capitalise on the issue, alongside the Victorian Socialists. They point to both Bassini and Price having run for the Socialists in local elections, while the party’s Senate candidate, Jordan van den Lamb, and the Greens housing spokesperson and Richmond MP, Gabrielle de Vietri, have led several protests.
Shing accused the Greens and Socialists of “spreading misinformation” and “creating fear without offering actual solutions”.
“These ageing towers will not stand the test of time – we have to act now. Victorians deserve better than Band-Aids on 1960s concrete,” she said.
“We do not underestimate the impact of such major change on residents who have in many cases called the towers home for decades – we are determined to make sure that all residents … have the information and support that they need.”
The hearings will continue next month.
• This article was amended on 27 June 2025. An earlier version misspelled the first name of Hamdi Ali.
