Anna Kovic has lived in her Waterloo housing commision flat since 1971. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Now almost 80, Kovic still lives in the same two-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor, and is one of the estate's last original residents. "I think no one is 45 years here like I am," she says, her Croatian accent still prominent after nearly 60 years in Sydney. "I'm the oldest to stay in this building so far. And I want to die in this building." In December 2015, uncertainty and disruption arrived in Waterloo. It took the form of a letter from then-minister for social housing Brad Hazzard. The estate would be demolished, he informed them, to make way for a new underground train station. Across the estate's sprawling 18 hectares, up to 7000 new homes would be built, including at least 2000 new public housing dwellings. The redevelopment will be structured in stages, and will be built over 15-20 years.

"It's not true what they say, that it's not safe here": resident Fanya Tesler, 97. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Before the bulldozers arrive, all of the estate's residents will need to be relocated. A gargantuan task made more complex by the large number of elderly tenants - almost 800 of the 2600 residents are over 70 years old. The government justifies the redevelopment by saying it will ultimately be for the good of public housing tenants. In time, they will be able to move into a refurbished, more modern estate. But the community is wary of such promises. What good is the prospect of a new home in five years to a 90-year-old? The Turanga tower at Waterloo. Credit:Nick Moir And amid a vacuum of detail about how this will occur, many are anxious about what the future holds. Some hope the government will change its mind. Kovic has begun to pack.

"It was a Christmas present for us. I nearly fainted, believe me," Kovic says of the letter. "Since then I am stressed, I am depressed. I am shaking." Queen Elizabeth formally opened the estate in 1977. Credit:Scott Whitehair A rallying voice Kovic was among the thousands who gathered on the estate's lawns in 1977, as Queen Elizabeth formally opened the estate. Back then it was known as the Endeavour Estate – an homage to Captain Cook, one which has long slipped out of usage. But the reference is maintained in the estate's six key buildings – Matavai, Turanga, Cook, Banks, Solander, Marton – all named in connection with the explorer and his travels, and the pioneering botanists who accompanied him.

The 30-storey Matavai building, named after Tahiti Harbour where Cook docked the HMAS Endeavour, still bears some of the original kitsch furnishings, such as the thatched "tiki themed" huts and replica Polynesian artefacts in the outdoor dining area. Today, however, the tribute to British colonisation sits with increasing discomfit against Redfern and Waterloo's strong Indigenous links. At least one in 10 of the estate's residents are Indigenous. The community is a microcosm of the Australian melting pot. "Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Indonesia. We have just about every representative of every creature on Earth," says Scottish-born Fiona Mangold, an 87-year-old Matavai tenant. Amid the uncertainty of the coming changes, the community has found a rallying voice. Residents have formed the Waterloo Public Housing Action Group, and every Tuesday tenants from across the estate squeeze into a small community room in the Solander building to run through the issues. "Now it's like we're one community," says the action group's chairman Richard Weeks. "Our whole lifestyle, and our very existence, is never going to be same again. So we're all losing the same thing and this is what has brought us together."

A government-owned gold mine The estate's grey concrete buildings remain strikingly incongruous against the relatively flat, terraced terrain of their urban surrounds – monuments to the era's utilitarian style of housing projects. To outsiders, the estate's reputation is one of dilapidation; a run-down housing project awash with crime and drugs. It's a perception many residents insist is over-egged by the media. "It's not true what they say, that it's not safe here," says Fanya Tesler, a 97-year-old resident, says. "It's safe here." Another resident, Masalo Laumua, 71, recalls an incident where a man was thrown over the balcony of apartment from several floors above her. When she peered out of her apartment window, she could see his dead body sprawled in the garden below. It was not the first or last time she has called the police.

Yet she breaks down in tears as she talks about the prospect of relocation. "It gives me a lot of grief in my heart," she says. "I still call this place a home. I've made a lot of friends." After 45 years in an abusive marriage, Laumua's modest two-bedroom unit was the first place she had ever called her own, the first home with a door with which she was able to lock out the violence. "I'm very fearful at the moment because I don't know where I'm going to end up." When Waterloo was chosen as the new metro site, then-premier Mike Baird was swayed by the opportunity to improve the housing conditions of people in the area. Leaks from a cabinet meeting revealed he used his casting vote to pick Waterloo over the University of Sydney for the new station, overriding four of his senior ministers who believed the university had a stronger business case. This sentiment – better homes for Sydney's lower-income residents – now runs central to the government's justification for the redevelopment.

Pru Goward, Minister for Family and Communities Services, the department which will oversee the relocation of residents, said she made "no apologies for redeveloping and renewing our social housing stock". However, for at least a decade, governments have eyed off the estate's hectares of open space. In 2004, leaked confidential government documents revealed a $500 million proposal to demolish the towers and hand the estate to private developers to demographically reshape the area with 20,000 private residents. It never got off the ground. But by 2015, as land values skyrocketed, Waterloo's residents – once on the city's undesirable fringe – were now on a government-owned gold mine. The redevelopment will rapidly cement the gentrification of Waterloo, which has gradually crept into the area in recent years. Unremarkable terraces in Waterloo now regularly clear the $1 million mark. And by the time the estate's transformation is complete, as much as 70 per cent of the 7000 new homes built there will be privately owned. To date, the NSW government has been vague about how the relocation process will work, but says no one will be moved before June next year. It has also guaranteed every tenant will be able to return to Waterloo, and has even said many residents will be able to move directly from their old home into their new one as they are built.

However some residents will be placed in temporary housing in other suburbs while the redevelopment occurs. Ben Zavesa, 70, who has lived on the estate for almost two decades, says the anxiety is not simply a resistance to change. "Most of the people I talk with right now, they are concerned about moving somewhere else, even temporarily," he says. "Some of the people here are over 90 years old. They think, 'If we start moving somewhere else I don't know if we'll stay alive after that'." For friends Fanya Tesler and Evgenia Spector, both proud Jewish women from Ukraine, life is governed by years of daily routines – bus timetables, doctors appointments, hospital visits, bingo nights, and weekly visits to a synagogue in Bondi. There, every Tuesday, the rabbi holds a Russian-language service for 30 or so members of the estate's Russian-Jewish community.

"For us it is very important," Tesler says. "At 97, can I move somewhere else? I can't." "We speak about it every day. Every minute. We are very nervous about it," Spector, 84, says. But like many residents, their anger at the looming upheaval carries an echo of resignation. Loading "This is wrong. We have to stop this," Tesler says.

"We won't," says her friend.