Northern Rivers locals and flood-impacted residents will gather in Lismore this Saturday to demand the NSW Reconstruction Authority stop demolishing heritage homes and deliver on broken promises, as community anger at the failed flood recovery reaches a new peak.
Local Hannah Robertson said, ‘The 2022 floods took so much from our community. Just as we are rising and finding our feet, our community is being literally demolished around us. The waste of these heritage hardwood homes is a crime and must be stopped.’
Helen Greer said, ‘Demolition is inflicting further trauma on flood-affected residents. They need support, healing and recovery – not more devastation.’
Failure
House You says the NSW Auditor-General has confirmed what the community has long known: the NSW Reconstruction Authority failed to effectively plan or administer the $880 million Resilient Homes Program and the $100 million Resilient Lands Program – Australia’s most expensive disaster recovery programs – while heritage homes continue to be demolished and thousands of flood-affected residents remain without stable housing.
They say houses are being demolished while people remain without stable housing. Materials are being wasted. Deadlines are driving decisions that should be driven by people.
The community calls on the NSW RA to keep its promises, stop making excuses and:
- Stop the demolitions: the decision-making process and criteria must be transparent. The waste of heritage homes and quality materials has to stop.
- Repurpose existing houses: homes must be used for public housing and community use. Our community has been calling for this for years. It is time the NSW RA delivered what our community needs.
- Make Resilient Lands affordable and accessible: land releases mean nothing if flood-impacted people cannot afford them. Relocation contracts must be genuinely extended; not just “considered.”
- Extended deadlines must benefit every home: hard-won community advocacy secured the 2028 deadline extension. Every home requiring resilient support must have a workable timeline. Deadlines must not drive demolitions.
Once heritage homes are gone, they’re gone
Miriam Torzillo from Reclaim Our Recovery said, ‘The audit barely considers the impact on people or place. The devil is in the detail – the cracks in the wall in people’s lives, the empty spaces where houses used to sit, the stories not just of the winners but of the losers too.
‘It does not ask whether communities are being held together or pulled apart.’
Chels Hood Withey said, ‘These homes are publicly owned and they must be used for public housing. Thousands of people in this community are on the waitlist, sleeping rough, or priced out entirely. Demolishing liveable homes during a housing crisis isn’t just wasteful – it’s an act of political negligence.’
Flood-affected resident Nicole Gellately said, ‘All I actually wanted to do after the flood was to return to that house and recover.’
Alex Clarke said, ‘500-year-old trees were felled a hundred years ago to build them. This is an absurd and reckless act.’
Antoinette O’Brien said, ‘For those living it, the health costs and personal crisis are devastatingly real. Government relief efforts have compounded the trauma, in many cases to the point of chronic illness. It’s heartbreaking.’
Th community meeting to Stop the Demolitions: Save Our Heritage Homes will be happening at The Quad, Lismore, Saturday 13 June, at 11am.
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