The Sirius Penthouse Has Sold For $35 Million, Just Three Years After Residents Were Kicked Out
"Remember how they kicked all the elderly, vulnerable, long-term residents out of Sirius and shut off the water before the last remaining residents had been forced out?"
Sydney’s iconic Sirius Building’s penthouse has sold for $35 million dollars — just three years after the last housing commission residents were forcibly removed from the building.
According to Domain’s website, the penthouse sold for the huge price to a buyer from Point Piper last Wednesday, alongside another of the building’s penthouse going to a Coogee buyer for $19 million.
The sales come just a month after pictures published to the Australian Financial Review revealed what the controversial brutalist building is expected to look like after its multi-million-dollar refurbishment.
Situated in The Rocks, the Sirius building was sold off by the state government in 2019.
And despite endless calls from the community to keep the building for social housing and to have it heritage listed, Sirius was bought for $150 million by private developers.
The building has since been advertised as luxury accommodation, inviting — only the rich — to “live on the world’s most iconic harbour”.
Remember how they kicked all the elderly, vulnerable, long-term residents out of Sirius and shut off the water before the last remaining residents had been forced out? Well it was all for such a great cause – wasn’t it? DISGUSTING! Shame on everyone involved in this!!!! #sirius https://t.co/OHQXexoTqd
— Alana Wulff (@alanawulff) May 13, 2021
Otherwise known as the ‘One Way Jesus’ building, the Sirius Building has been a feature on the harbour since the 1970s.
And in case you’re catching up, the apartment blocks in the building were primarily used for social housing for low-income residents for decades.
It was actually purpose-built for the NSW Housing Commission, to provide inner-city affordable and public housing, with some residents living there for huge parts of their life.
For those not up on this, the Sirius building was purpose-built 1970’s public housing, shamefully sold off in #privatisedsydney …. https://t.co/StzqxknXtH
— Philip Thalis (@PhilipThalis) May 13, 2021
But that was until it was announced in 2014, that the building was going to be part of a massive billion-dollar development at Barangaroo.
And what followed was residents — some vulnerable to homelessness — being kicked out of their beloved homes, one by one, over the following years.
“To think, just 40 years ago this is where we placed our most vulnerable and our low-income workers, and in just 40 years our attitude to housing has changed so much that people have been forced out of their homes; a community destroyed so that private interests could make a quick buck out of Sydney’s hotly inflated real estate market,” said Save Our Sirius spokesman Ben Peake.
Speaking to Junkee earlier this year, Leo Patterson Ross, the CEO of the Tenants’ Union of NSW, said that state governments choosing to sell properties like the Sirius Building on to private developers, is a response to the lack of federal investment in social housing.
Since late 2020, the federal government has basically shifted responsibility for social housing onto the states and rejected calls for large-scale investment.
Patterson Ross said there needs to be a massive increase in public housing expenditure across the board. “It should be a no-brainer,” he said.
“The federal budget is another missed opportunity to give the country a fair go… it’s embarrassing for the country that we aren’t taking this opportunity,” Patterson Ross said.
When Sirius was sold, the NSW Government announced the sale money would help build social housing for roughly 630 people.
The number of public housing has gone up in the area since, but it is unclear whether Sirius profits were a part of this. And since the news of the penthouse sales, people have voiced their concerns again about wanting transparency around this.