'Disregarding and disrespectful': Volunteers and politicians fail to save Ainslie's community garden

It might look like any other house along Foveaux Street in Ainslie, but all the action at number 48 is going on around the back.

Over the back fence, accessible through a gate, is a community housing block run by the Canberra Youth Residential Service (CYRS) for young people aged 16 to 25 experiencing homelessness.

The garden at 48 Foveaux Street, itself a public house, has been laid out by volunteers over the past two and a half years as a community garden – a quiet and calming space where the young people could come and process their thoughts.

The ACT Government even awarded the group a $5000 community support and infrastructure grant to help create it.

All of this has left the volunteers gutted as to why now the government has ripped it – along with the hours and thousands of dollars of work – out from under their feet.

At 12:30 pm on Wednesday, 19 February, the whole block went under the auction hammer and sold for $1.43 million in a private sale.

Housing ACT wrote to volunteers in August last year, warning them the site was becoming too much of a maintenance nightmare due to its age (it was built in 1942), and the government had decided to sell it.

“This is part of the ACT Government’s work to renew 1000 public housing properties and add 400 extra properties to the social housing portfolio by 2026-27,” a Housing ACT spokesperson said.

However, the main driver of the project, Charlie Blumer, said they heard little from the government until the for-sale sign went up in the front yard.

“No more than that,” he said.

“This how the government has treated this project – disdainfully, and at arm’s length.”

ACT Housing Minister Yvette Berry wrote to the group in mid-January, thanking the volunteers for their time and effort, but she essentially reiterated that the sale would go ahead as planned.

“I hope the new owner enjoys the gardens as much as … the community involved in its creation and maintenance have,” she said.

The real estate agency, Bertram Ellis, suggested the group ask the government to subdivide the block and sell off the house while keeping the garden.

In response, the government said subdivision “would not be permitted under planning regulations nor would it be financially or practically viable”.

“Selling the block in its entirety will provide the maximum return to be reinvested into the social housing portfolio.’

Local and federal politicians on both sides of the aisle, as well as local volunteers and neighbours, gathered in the garden on Wednesday morning in a last-ditch attempt to get the government to cancel the auction.

“What’s really important is that the community has contributed so much to this garden, designed as a peace garden to support people with traumatic experiences, and to do away with it so casually … I think is very disregarding and disrespectful to the people involved,” Mr Blumer said.

“We as neighbours speak to the young people using this refuge, and they say, ‘We love to sit here enjoying this garden’, and if we can’t give them that, what hope is there?”

Shadow planning and housing minister Peter Cain urged the government to “put a pause on this sale and consider the options for keeping this peace garden”.

“The government has actually invested taxpayer money into this, and also encouraged volunteer participation and now to see it being planned to be sold off … there’s a great case for the government to pause the sale and talk to the community”.

Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said he had been “really inspired” by the community effort and added it was “disappointing to see the ACT Government continuing to sell off public housing sites when we so desperately need more public housing in this city, not less”.

“The ACT’s own volunteering strategy indicates that volunteers contribute $14 billion a year to the ACT economy – it doesn’t make sense to rely on their efforts and then turn around and bulldoze them or profit from them,” Thomas Emerson from Independents for Canberra added.

Independent senator David Pocock called on the ACT Government to “start listening”.

“The way you do things where there is sometimes token consultation and you continue on your way, or you don’t even consult with the very groups that have put, as I hear, over $100,000 of their time into building a community space – Canberrans deserve better and I’d urge the government to change the way you’re doing things.”

With the auction result finalised, however, Mr Blumer said there’s “not much more we minor players can do”.

“We’ve brought it to the attention of our elected representatives, and I think we can go from there.”

He said the government had offered to contribute to the building of a new community garden elsewhere in Ainslie “which could be something” but that would be “missing the point of what the community contribution here is”.

A spokesperson for the ACT Government told Region the decision to sell had not been made lightly and was part of a “big-picture commitment to increase the number of public houses and improve the quality and sustainability of public housing for tenants”.

“The minister has committed to supporting alternative community garden facilities in the inner north for social housing tenants to access if they wish.”