Furious NSW Premier Chris Minns said he has ‘had enough’ of squatters in flood-ravaged Lismore homes who are defying all eviction efforts and have been slammed as ‘out of towners and backpackers’.
Up to 50 squatters have been living in formerly vacant, water-damaged homes, which the state purchased in a buyback scheme after the devastating 2022 floods which left five people dead and more than 30,000 displaced.
‘We bought those houses so that we could keep communities safe, and to have squatters move in off the back of that is completely unacceptable,’ Mr Minns told reporters on Tuesday.
The squatters have drawn up a list of demands that must be met for them to leave, with one being government housing in areas such as Byron Bay – where the median price for a house is $3million.
Local Nationals MP Kevin Hogan said the Minns and Albanese governments are to blame for letting the situation escalate.
‘Labor governments are creating a ghetto in our community,’ he said.
‘They are mostly out of towners and backpackers, and moved in illegally.
‘The Labor Government must act on this. And should have already. This is not fair to our local residents.’
Mr Minns admitted on radio station 2GB on Tuesday morning that he had not been across the issue until it blew up when Lismore was once again flooded last week.
‘I wasn’t aware of it previously, but we’ve been in court trying to evict them from government-owned properties,’ he said.
Mr Minns vowed to evict ‘overseas visitors, tourists, backpackers’ living in condemned properties the government bought to stop people living on flood plains.
‘The housing problems are not going to be solved by moving people into flood-prone land,’ he said.
‘We have to draw a line in the sand here and that means demolishing those houses and ensuring that we can get on with life in the Northern Rivers.’
The squatters have been living in eight houses near the Lismore city centre, and the Premier said previous eviction notices had been served to no avail.
Squatter Tina and her son Tyson said they had been living in one of the properties to escape a domestic violence situation.
Tina said many have been reduced to squatting by the nationwide housing shortage which has pushed real estate prices and rents to record levels, with many others living out of their cars.
Mr Hogan said ‘many residents of North and South Lismore have told me this is a health and safety issue for our community’.
He added: ‘We will become a socioeconomic “ghetto” if the Labor government continues to sit on its hands.’
Mr Minns said the state government is going to act.
‘We’ve had enough of this. This is incredibly dangerous, and I’m going to say today to the reconstruction authority, we need to demolish those houses, get those squatters out of Lismore.
‘It’s not appropriate under any circumstances. It’s a risk to SES personnel as well as those that are living in those houses, and it’s illegal,’ he said.
He added that $980million of taxpayers’ money had been spent ‘to buy back homes for people that live in low lying areas because it’s dangerous’ and had required repeated intervention by emergency services during regular floods.
‘What’s the point of buying all those properties back if squatters are just going to jump in there and say, “Well, we’re going to live here now”.
‘These are homes that are owned by the government that are unfit to live in because if people live in there, it’s dangerous to the community.’
The power and water supply to the houses was previously turned off in an attempt to get the squatters out, but they just turned them back on again and are not paying for the utilities, Mr Minns said.
He said the squatters operate as a ‘collective’ and have ‘got a representative, a leadership, and they demanded a whole bunch of conditions from the NSW government – like they jump the queue when it comes to social housing’.
‘They want to be first off the ranks. We’re not allowing that. We can’t allow that.’
Evacuation centres set up for the receding floods brought on by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred will soon be closed.
Mr Minns said such shelters could not serve as a long-term fix to entrenched housing shortages in the region, which has the highest numbers of rough-sleepers in the state.
More than 50 emergency crews were out in the region doing damage assessments, with four properties already deemed uninhabitable due to water damage.
About 7,500 homes and businesses were still not connected to power as heavy rain continued to fall in many areas.
Major flood warnings had been lifted for most areas, except parts of the Richmond River.