With less than 100 days until the state election, and with Labor behind in the polls, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll wants to set himself apart from his predecessors. He has delayed controversial work-from-home legislation championed by Jacinta Allan and called a royal commission to investigate corruption in the construction industry under her watch.
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Carroll is no fan of the multibillion dollar Suburban Rail Loop, conceived in secret prior to the 2018 state election by long-serving Premier Daniel Andrews. And when Victoria’s anti-corruption commission released a report condemning Andrews’ tawdry backroom deals with the United Firefighters Union, Carroll did not resile from the bad behaviour it exposed, but moved instead to widen the definition of corruption.
Yet Carroll has failed to address another contentious legacy of the Andrews-Allan era –the plan to demolish Melbourne’s 44 public housing towers, announced by Andrews without consulting residents just a week before he left office in September 2023.
The towers, containing about 7000 homes, were built between 1962 and 1974. All but five were constructed using large, pre-cast concrete panels.
Many architects and engineers say demolition should be a last resort. They’ve developed case studies to show how individual towers might be retrofitted and upgraded, saving money, retaining embodied carbon, limiting the displacement and distress of residents and maintaining established communities.
The government, though, insists the towers are at the end of their useful lives, and fail modern standards for noise, sustainability, energy efficiency, ventilation, open space, seismic load and accessibility. It insists it has no option but to tear the towers down, yet refuses to share the technical data with an upper house inquiry.
If Ben Carroll wants to craft a different persona to Allan and Andrews by demonstrating his commitment to greater transparency, then he should make that evidence public so the rationale for demolition can be independently scrutinised.
Even if the towers are beyond repair, Carroll should rethink the approach to public housing renewal by increasing the number of low-cost dwellings to be built and engaging residents in the process.
The plan to “retire” and redevelop Melbourne’s 44 high-rise public housing estates promises to triple the population across all sites from 10,000 to 30,000 people. Yet most new dwellings will be sold or leased by private developers at market rates, and the total number of social homes will increase by just 10 per cent. Given that more than 57,000 households are on Victoria’s social housing waitlist, and more than half of them are categorised as “priority” cases, Ben Carroll should be much more ambitious.
The premier should also change the sequencing of renewal. A graphic on the Homes Victoria website shows the steps in high-rise redevelopment. First, residents are relocated, and then the towers are “carefully deconstructed”. This is followed by consultation and construction, before new and returning renters are finally “welcomed into their new homes”. Homes Victoria says each redevelopment will take six to eight years. Given the delays that plague big construction projects, this seems optimistic and promises of a “right to return” for current residents may prove empty. The renewal of the Kensington estate in the early 2000s, for example, ran four years over time and an evaluation found just twenty per cent of the original residents came back.
It’s not too late for Ben Carroll to change course. While residents of several public housing towers have been or are being moved out, many estates are marked for future redevelopment and residents “are not currently required to relocate”.
The premier should direct Homes Victoria to change the order in which renewal is carried out. It should consult first with residents, then build them new homes – ideally on the same site – before bringing down the towers. That way, residents only move once.
This accords with best practice in Britain, which has much longer experience re-developing high-rise council housing, much of it of similar vintage and type to Melbourne’s towers.
Architectural historian Holly Smith chronicles diverse experiences of estate regeneration in her new history of high-rise British council housing, Up in the Air. In some cases, tenants beg authorities to demolish their faulty towers; in others they dig in to save them. As I’ve written elsewhere, Smith concludes that residents want public housing to be reformed but protected and finds that estate regeneration works best when the process is “sensitive and participatory”.
Kate Cavanough reaches similar conclusions in a recent Churchill Fellowship report. The urban designer was a project manager on Victoria’s high-rise redevelopment program when she studied 32 examples of renewal projects in England and Scotland.
Canvanough found that engaging residents early produces better, more resilient neighbourhoods. Recognised as expert stakeholders, residents help shape design briefs, select materials and map desired outcomes, resulting in decisions that are both inclusive and defensible. If new homes are built first, before existing homes are demolished so residents only move once, this minimises displacement, maintains neighbourhood integrity, protects social networks and preserves community capital.
In the absence of meaningful engagement, residents “bear the brunt of uncertainty and upheaval”, resulting in conflict, fatigue, and missed opportunities.
This is the road Victoria has travelled so far. Ben Carroll should make a U-turn.
