Owners, twin sisters Rose Banks and Yvette Kelly have worked at the 66 room hotel since they were 14. End of an era: The Gatwick Hotel is up for sale. Credit:Simon O Dwyer "They are now in their 60s, so they're retiring," Mr Walls said. "They can't do this forever, it's very demanding. There's a lot of things that go on there that's difficult to deal with. "They've worked hard, they've done something for the community that no one else wanted to do."

Mr Walls said the sisters would continue to run the hotel until the end of next year, while helping its residents find alternative accommodation. Co-owners Yvette Kelly and Rose Banks stand in front of three of the Gatwick's guests. Credit:Thom Rigney Traders on Fitzroy Street have blamed The Gatwick's residents for the decline of the once-fashionable street, calling for its closure in July this year. The boarding house has been the scene of murders, drug raids and stabbings. The Gatwick on real estate agent Lemon Baxter's website. Credit:Lemon Baxter

Mr Walls said residents and business owners would welcome the sale. "It's been the bane of everyone's life," he said. The media-shy sisters recently opened up about the boarding house and its inhabitants in the documentary 'The Saints of St Kilda'. In it they explained how they feared no one else would house many of the residents. "They have no compassion, not only not to house them, but to even just look at them or tolerate them," Ms Kelly says in the 15-minute film by documentary company PLGRM.

"That's why they have such an issue with The Gatwick being in the middle of this new gentrified area. They don't want to look at it, but we were here always." "The Gatwick's always been here and they should have noticed before they moved in," Ms Banks added. Long-time resident Cindy told the filmmakers she became homeless because of her drug use. "If it wasn't for The Gatwick and the girls, a lot of people would be on the streets still, and a lot of people might be dead," she said. The sisters' Maltese-born mother Vittoria "Queen Vicky" Carbone ran the hotel as a boarding house from the 1950s to her death in 1998.

Mr Walls said the hotel was likely to be sold for more than $11 million. He said he fielded more than 20 calls about the property in the four hours after it was advertised online on Tuesday afternoon. The Kellys approached the state government "some time ago" about their intention to sell the rooming house, according to a statement issued Tuesday night by housing minister and local area MP Martin Foley. Expressions of interest are being called for next year. The state government will work with housing agencies to find alternative accommodation for the residents "when any sale might occur. While a matter for the owners, the government understands the sale of the site is some way off.



The government understands that the residents will be secure over the Christmas, New Year period and well into 2016."

During last year's election campaign, the Labor Party promised to spend $600,000 improving facilities at the Gatwick. "The value of the Gatwick isn't in its land, it's in its people," Mr Foley said when the election promise was made. In February this year, plans by the previous Coalition government to sell neighbouring rooming house Elenara were dropped. St Kilda Community Housing chief executive John Enticott said he understood the owners had set a 12-month settlement date, which would secure residents' housing until early 2017. "Given the long lead time, agencies like ours and others will have sufficient time to relocate those who are in the Gatwick to more suitable accommodation if that's what they want."

There were about three groups of residents in the Gatwick, he said. The first group did not have any serious issues, and could be rehoused fairly easily. The second group had minor psychiatric, drug and alcohol issues but, again, agencies would be able to rehouse them fairly easily. But the third group, comprising about 30 people, were "fairly transient", and had more serious psychiatric, drug or alcohol issues.This group, Mr Enticott said, "probably wouldn't want to be housed by community housing". "I'm not sure what will happen to them. There would be housing options if they wanted to take them up." He said most of this group would probably opt to find accommodation in an illegal rooming house in the area, rather than permanent community housing. There are fewer than 300 registered rooming houses in Melbourne, Mr Enticott said, but many more illegal rooming houses. In July, Fairfax revealed Melbourne's high-rise towers had become the new frontier of a thriving illegal rooming house market, with dozens of city apartments being partitioned and leased as bedrooms to international students.

