At 10 o'clock yesterday morning, Reclaim Our Recovery and House You, a grassroots Housing First movement dedicated to getting everybody a house, held a peaceful community meeting on Pine Street, North Lismore, to protest against an eviction notice issued by the NSW Reconstruction Authority (NSWRA) last week.

In a statement released today, the two groups said, "For more than 2 years, the Lismore community has been grappling with the complex challenge of relocating residents off the floodplain, as originally advised by the Widjabul Wia-bal peoples before the town was even established. However, since the 2022 flood, the relocation process has crawled at a painfully slow pace, with barely any of the bought-back homes successfully moved to higher ground."

"In the meantime, these vacant properties have been left to sit empty and deteriorate. "We need people living here now to help care for the land and homes; and support the environment to return to its natural state as a floodplain," explains local resident Roisin, who is currently occupying one of the abandoned homes on Pine Street. 

"Rather than allow these homes to waste away, a community of locals, artists, travellers and land carers are taking peaceful action - occupying and protecting the properties to prevent them from being boarded up. However, the New South Wales Reconstruction Authority (NSWRA) is attempting to forcibly evict these current occupants."

"It is unconscionable to leave people without a roof over their heads in the middle of a housing crisis," says Chels Hood Withey, a founding member of local housing first campaign, House You. The NSWRA claims it will only grant "licences to occupy" (LTOs) to the original homeowners, not the caretakers, due to safety and liability concerns. However, the community argues these are the same people who disconnected the services when the homes were first boarded up."

"Any house that has been bought back has been inspected for safety multiple times...These homes were safe when they were boarded up; they are still safe," counters Mim Torzillo of Reclaim Our Recovery (ROR). Refusing to comply with the eviction orders, the community is now calling on the NSWRA to grant LTOs to current occupants and prioritise relocating these homes to higher ground for public housing."

"We have been trying to negotiate with NRRC, now the NSWRA, since January 2023 to find a solution and ensure these homes were not abandoned. It's time for the government to start prioritising community over bureaucracy," says Mim.

Echoing this sentiment, Andrew George of Reclaim Our Recovery states, "Aussie taxpayers are paying at least $2500 per year per buyback home on boarding them up, disconnecting utilities, fencing, security and lawn mowing. This is ridiculous when, if they were lived in as public housing, they could be saving the taxpayer money, by generating a revenue for the government."

The community is urging the NSWRA to engage in transparent, community-led direct and deliberative democratic processes and fulfil promises of truly affordable housing through the Resilient Homes and Resilient Lands programs. "We want to see these homes moved to higher ground to provide urgently needed public housing," says Chels.

"These homes are perfectly liveable, yet they'll be left empty for up to 4 years while people are desperately in need of shelter. How hard can it be for the NSWRA to simply connect these empty homes with the community members who want to live in them?" said Mim from Reclaim our Recovery.

During the Lismore App's story on May 30, the majority of people living in or using the empty buyback homes were overseas travellers who were using Lismore as a stepping stone to move north into Queensland.

During her first Talking Lismore podcast, Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin said the homeless are not living in the empty properties and there is a social media network recommending that people come to Lismore and live in the vacant properties.

"I get it, we've got a lot of homeless, but I don't see our homeless over there, I still see our homeless people where they are. I do get around a lot and see them and know who a lot of them are, with DCJ Housing and Homes NSW trying to help them," Ms Saffin said in the podcast Podcasts.

Mayor Steve Krieg told the Lismore App, "They are living illegally and anytime that people choose to break the law they deserve to face the consequences. There is a reason those houses are empty, that is because they are either uninhabitable or earmarked for relocation.

"People come to us from out of our area to get free accommodation, and they are using resources that are supposed to help genuine flood vicitims in the recovery process."

Freeloaders or fulfilling legitimate housing needs for empty buyback homes?