Law and Advocacy Centre for Women says there was nothing to replace accomodation after it was sold

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A significant number of vulnerable women who lived in St Kilda’s Gatwick Private Hotel, before it was sold to Channel Nine and converted into six luxury apartments over the 2018 season of reality television show The Block, have ended up in prison.

One social worker told the ABC, which broke the story, that 32 of her female clients who had previously lived at the Gatwick had since been jailed.

The rooming house had been operating since the 1950s and had more than 100 beds sold at cheap rates, offering a last-chance hostel to desperate and displaced people, some of whom lived in the building for decades.

Jill Prior, the principal legal officer of the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women, said the centre had represented more than a dozen women who had been living on the street after the Gatwick closed.

“We have had a number of women come to us where homelessness or transience was the immediate precursor to imprisonment, and these same women have utilised the Gatwick either immediately prior to being imprisoned or in some cases in an on-off way,” Prior told Guardian Australia.

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“When women or homeless or transient or both, they are more likely to come to the attention of police and are at greater risk of coming before the court ... and under the new bail regime, they are less likely to be released.”

The rooming house had become notorious for a number of high-profile tragedies, including murders and fatal drug overdoses, and was closed in mid-2017 following years of public pressure from its increasingly gentrified neighbours.

Channel Nine bought it for $10m. The winning property on The Block, a competitive renovation show where the aim is to turn a real estate profit, sold for $3.02m.

Prior said the symbolism of replacing a home for Melbourne’s most downtrodden with luxury penthouses was “repugnant.”

“There is nothing to replace it,” Prior said. “It might not be The Brady Bunch but it was better than being under a bridge.”

Unlike state-funded crisis accomodations services, the Gatwick did not require a referral from the court or a support service and allowed residents to be anonymous.

“The accessibility was significant,” she said.

About 400 people sleep rough in Melbourne’s CBD and inner-city suburbs each night and the public housing waiting list is 82,000 people long, growing by 500 people a month.

The Victorian Labor government has promised to build 1,000 new public housing units if it wins the election on Saturday, adding to an existing commitment to build 5,000 units.

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The Victorian Council of Social Services has said that the state needs to build 30,000 public housing units over the next decade to meet demand.

Prior said that social housing programs, like thosegatwick which reconnect mothers with their children who have been removed by child protection agencies, are a better use of funding than tough-on-crime policies that send more people to jail.

“It costs $100,000 a year to house a woman in jail,” Prior said. “There’s no magic to this. It’s the same life that you or I would want to live, and that’s to have somewhere safe and secure to live and have enough support to get your life on track.”