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One hundred and fifty public housing residents in the Waterloo South estate were given eviction notices, via a February 27 letter, from Homes NSW.

They were told their homes were in “Stage 1” of the redevelopment plan and given six months before “relocation” — eviction. It said that as “moving can be stressful”, a relocation officer would be made available to “help”.

“Evicting people from their communities and homes in a housing crisis unprecedented in modern times, is an appalling act of cruelty,” said Karyn Brown, a resident and public housing campaigner, on February 28.

Brown is a resident of Waterloo South public housing estate. She is also the spokesperson for Action for Public Housing.

“Waterloo South is our home. We don’t want our community destroyed by governments hell bent on privatising housing and land.

“Our communities are not for sale. The last thing Labor should be doing is evicting us, putting us in another home someone else could be living in, and then demolishing perfectly livable homes when we need to save and salvage finite resources.”

Burcak Gurun, spokesperson for Community Dignity Respect, which organises free BBQs for the Waterloo residents in for almost five years, added: “They need peace and quiet, not evictions and demolition of their homes.” He said Labor “wants to destroy this community” amid a cost-of-living and housing crisis.

Brown said Labor’s go-ahead showed it really only cares about developers and privatising public land, not about solving the housing crisis.

“There are 63,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in NSW. You demolish public housing and it takes 10 years to build something else. We have a material and construction labor shortage. This is complete madness.”

Brown said she and her neighbours will resist the demolition “tooth and nail”.

[A has been called at Waterloo Neighbourhood Centre on March 1, 12noon.]