The NSW Reconstruction Authority (RA) has told The Echo that they visited eight buyback properties in North Lismore that are illegally occupied by squatters on Tuesday (January 21) handing them notice to vacate the properties within seven days.
The visits were conducted with NSW Police in attendance and notices to vacate were issued to approximately 40 individuals.
‘This is the second time since June 2024 that such notices have been served,’ a spokesperson for RA told The Echo.
‘For several months, NSW Police, RA, Homes NSW and Social Futures have made extensive efforts to engage with squatters, offering alternative accommodation and access to support services. While some individuals have left voluntarily, numerous properties remain occupied.’
Seeking a conversation
However, house occupiers have said that they have not been contacted and the RA had not responded to previous attempts from them to create a conversation about the future of the houses they were occupying.
According to residents who spoke to NSW RA staff when the eviction notices were delivered they were told there had been no previous attempt at contact the resident/occupiers of the houses ‘because they couldn’t work out who the “leader” was,’ said Miriam Torzillo, a spokesperson for Lismore’s post-flood community group Reclaim Our Recovery (ROR).
Ms Torzillo said the RA had her and other members of ROR’s contact details and they knew that they were a conduit to contact the Lismore house occupiers.
‘There are hundreds of houses in Lismore that are empty and part of the buyback scheme – the owners have left and they are empty – but by some strange coincidence they selected the nine houses for the EOI process that are all squat houses,’ Ms Torzillo said.
‘We have been talking for a long time to the RA to see if we could find a solution. There are many houses on the Lismore floodplain and they will be still here for many years because owners are waiting for the Resilient Lands Program (RLP) to provide affordable land to move the houses to.
‘We’ve previously proposed that we could with a group like Women Up North, or another provider, to assess the houses for safety and allow people to live in them. We said we will work with people to have a flood plan. But the RA were never keen on it.’
Water to be cut off
The NSW RA have said that if the house occupiers have not vacated the properties by Tuesday, January 28 they will look at legal and other actions.
‘From when the notice was provided, squatters have seven days to vacate the premises before water services are permanently disconnected,’ said the RA spokesperson.
‘After exhausting all available options, if the properties are not vacated by midday on Tuesday, January 28, RA will initiate legal action.
‘This decision has not been made lightly. The RHP was designed to support those genuinely affected by flooding, not to bear the cost of removing squatters from homes that are part of the buyback program.’
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