The Sirius Building, which was sold for $150 million after vulnerable social-housing residents were kicked out, just had its penthouse sell for a whopping $35 million.
In news that feels downright insulting, Sydney’s iconic Sirius Building’s penthouse, which was originally intended as accessible social-housing, just sold for $35 million despite the building’s history.
The news of its eye-watering price comes just months after The Australian Financial Review revealed what the new building plan was going to look like. Around the same time, an ad for the building described it as ‘luxury’ apartments was slammed for being insulting towards it’s previous social-housing tenants.
Pushing 93-year-old residents out of their homes to make way for a pack of rich spivs, because the NSW Liberal Party don’t believe poor people could ever deserve a nice view. The Sirius building has become a disgusting tower of shame. #auspol #nswpol https://t.co/z2yXHd9T9l
— Van Badham ✊ (@vanbadham) May 15, 2021
In case you haven’t been following it, the Sirius Building was once an iconic social-housing apartment block. It’s been on the harbour since the 70s, and was purpose-built to provide social housing to low-income residents as a move to make Sydney’s inner-city more class-inclusive.
Despite its social-housing heritage, The Berejiklian government sold the iconic building to private developers in 2019 for $150 million, and one by one, the residents of the Sirius Building were evicted.
Many of the residents living in the building were elderly, long-term or in a vulnerable position, and all of them were unceremoniously kicked out so the building could be sold for profit and turned into luxury housing, despite public outrage.
Remember how they kicked all the elderly, vulnerable, long-term residents out of Sirius and shut off the water before the last remaining residents had been forced out? Well it was all for such a great cause – wasn’t it? DISGUSTING! Shame on everyone involved in this!!!! #sirius https://t.co/OHQXexoTqd
— Alana Wulff (@alanawulff) May 13, 2021
“To think, just 40 years ago this is where we placed our most vulnerable and our low-income workers, and in just 40 years our attitude to housing has changed so much that people have been forced out of their homes; a community destroyed so that private interests could make a quick buck out of Sydney’s hotly inflated real estate market,” said Save Our Sirius spokesman Ben Peake.
There was a public effort to maintain the building as social housing and have it listed as a heritage building, but ultimately capitalism and profits won, leaving vulnerable Aussies behind. Shows us where the government’s priority lies, huh?
I guess only rich people are allowed city views in Sydney. Everyone else is on their own.