When my partner and I bought a home in Ann Street, Balmain, in the mid-1980s, there was a container terminal at the end of the block. The noise was 24/7 and lights glared all night.
There were two early opener pubs around the corner, where wharfies could get a beer and a steak at 6am, the end of an arduous night shift. Our house had two small bedrooms and a fibro bathroom out the back. Nevertheless, it was a big step-up on my first home purchase, a noisy one bedroom by the railway tracks in Erskineville, unsewered, with a backyard dunny and a nightsoil collector.
Balmain is earmarked for rezoning as part of the Minns government’s plans to create higher density living around transport hubs.Credit: Steven Siewert
While these houses, these neighbourhoods, had character, they sure weren’t Point Piper. We bought there because it was affordable.
The same is true of the dilapidated double terrace house in Ashfield that my parents bought in the 1950s. The inner west wasn’t a desirable place to live in those days. It was simply what you could afford if you were a migrant, a worker or a battler with young kids.
But suddenly, we’re snobs and NIMBYs because our once-affordable cottages are now as out of reach as places in Rose Bay and Vaucluse were when we were young. It’s as if we somehow caused this, but all many of us did was simply stay put.
It’s just one of the myths in the debate about the housing crisis: affluent Boomers are hogging the goodies. If I look at our street in Balmain, most of the occupants are now elderly people of modest means who have developed, over the decades, a network of connection and support for one another, a rare and valuable thing in a big city. They’re hardly greedy villains.
But here’s the even bigger myth: if human-scale, modest cottages such as these are rezoned and torn down for high rise because of their proximity to the as-yet-unbuilt Bays Precinct Metro station, as the government proposes, the resulting flats will be “affordable”. That’s risible. Two-bedroom flats in these areas routinely go for well over $1 million, and often over $2 million if they have a water view. Increasing the supply will just feather the nest of the lucky developers.
There’s not a scintilla of evidence that more nice flats in close-in suburbs, many with views, will push prices down. The only thing that might do that is building slums in these areas, and no astute developer is going to do that when there is a such a high premium to be made on a better-quality build.
We bought in Balmain when it was affordable. Rezoning won’t turn back the clock
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19.01.2024
When my partner and I bought a home in Ann Street, Balmain, in the mid-1980s, there was a container terminal at the end of the block. The noise was 24/7 and lights glared all night.
There were two early opener pubs around the corner, where wharfies could get a beer and a steak at 6am, the end of an arduous night shift. Our house had two small bedrooms and a fibro bathroom out the back. Nevertheless, it was a big step-up on my first home purchase, a noisy one bedroom by the railway tracks in Erskineville, unsewered, with a backyard dunny and a nightsoil collector.
Balmain is earmarked for rezoning as part of the Minns........
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