Jennifer Pittorino
“A welcome first step” is what Techno Park resident Lara Week had to say about an open letter from Hobsons Bay council advising residents that council is pausing efforts to evict them from their homes.
The letter dated Friday, April 5, is the latest form of communication from Hobsons Bay council addressed to the roughly 100 residents living at the former Wiltona Migrant Hostel.
It reads, “Council advises that it will not take any further enforcement action at Techno Park until it has concluded its legal review and fully considered its obligations and the best way forward following Ministerial changes to state planning rules about existing use rights”.
The existing use rights discussed in the letter refer to the small but significant change to the planning scheme by the state government in February.
The planning scheme amendment opens up a path for Techno Park residents to stay in their homes by claiming existing use rights.
Techno Park, which has been zoned Industrial 1 since 1988, sits beside the Kororoit Creek opposite a row of fuel storage tanks, a kilometre from a former fuel refinery owned by Mobil.
Ms Week said residents are frustrated Hobsons Bay council is continuing along this path despite the change to the planning scheme.
“It is frustrating that council is choosing to continue to create so much uncertainty and insecurity for people,when the planning scheme is clear that council cannot extinguish people’s existing use rates once 15 years have accrued,” she said.
“Council’s own internal documents, which we’ve now seen through Freedom of Information, show that when council sent the eviction notices they knew that people had lived at Techno Park for more than 15 years and were entitled to existing use rights to remain living in their homes, regardless of zoning.
“They show that council deliberately attempted to extinguish those rights, and to force a mass eviction of Hobsons Bay residents from their own homes. Now the planning minister has intervened to say a council cannot do that.
“Council need to recognise our existing use rights and just let people live in peace.”
With no time frame for the pause outlined in the letter, Ms Week feels this is causing more anguish for residents.
“They’re given no sense of any time frame for this pause, which I think must be because they know they have no grounds to evict anyone from their home,” said Ms Week.
“But what I don’t understand is why they won’t just come out publicly and say that, rather than continuing the same hostile position against us by saying there is a pause and there is more still to come.”
