IN KENSINGTON, AN ESTATE BECOMES A VILLAGE

'Well, how did you go?" says Tyson Reilly, standing at the counter of the
Office of Housing in Kensington.

"It's great," say Edgardo and Marta Piazza, an Argentinean couple. They've
just been to see a new house in Kensington that the office has offered them
to replace their dingy flat.

"Well, I'll put you down on the list for that one, and you can pick up the
key on November 30."

"It's definitely ours?"

"Yes, there I am writing it into the book."

They are all smiling. You don't expect to see happiness on the Kensington
public housing estate, one of Victoria's largest.

"Will it have a washing machine?" says Marta Piazza.

"No."

"My son is allergic to mosquitoes, and I can't afford the screens to keep
them out."

"Don't worry about that, there'll be screens."

"It's definitely ours?" they ask again.

This is a great experience for Reilly. As a housing bureaucrat, he is
helping to relocate hundreds of tenants from the Kensington estate. The
40-year-old estate is to be largely demolished and replaced with new
housing stock, new access roads, and a new demographic. The new estate is
likely to number about 900 dwellings, just over half public and the rest
private.

Most of the first block of 68 families left at Christmas and demolition
will start soon. The other blocks to go will be closed over the next 18
months. Since the flats' residents comprise 2000 people, a quarter of the
Kensington population, the redevelopment will change the suburb forever.

Reilly's relations with his clients are usually marked by frustration.
There has been a huge increase in drug trafficking on the estate lately.
With every 10 visitors in search of drugs come a hundred problems:
assaults, broken windows, and so on.

The worst block, on Altona Street, has seven storeys and no lifts: try
getting a fridge or heavy pusher up there. Some buildings hold single
alcoholics and people with mental health problems. Others have
old-fashioned Aussies who have lived tough lives. There are lone mothers
with young children, and many recently arrived migrants from Asia and Africa.

Edgardo and Marta Piazza came to Australia nine years ago. Edgardo thinks
the chance of a house is "unbelievable". It has a security system, a garage
for his car. His children will be able to stay at their school and he will
be only 300 metres from his work in the Kensington Pizza shop. As soon as
she saw the house they were offered, his daughter said: "I want this house,
it's new, Papi, new!" Though Edgardo says he has never had a problem on the
estate, he would have moved anyway, for his children's sake, because of the
drugs.

Yet Marlene and Roberto Rivas have been offered a house in Keilor Downs, a
long way from Kensington. They, too, were overjoyed when they saw the house
and backyard where the children can play. But they are struggling to get
their three children into a local primary school. Marlene does not drive
and will depend on the irregular public transport of the new suburban
sprawl. But she is sick of the visitors to the flats who use it as a safe
injecting venue and vomit on the stairs.

As Kensington has gentrified, the community has become largely
tertiary-educated and left-leaning. It always believed the estate enriched
the mix of the area, and rejected the not-in-my-backyard syndrome - until now.

Since April the number of needles being given out by the local health
centre to injecting heroin injectors has surged from 400 to 1400 a month.
Sara Warne, who lives on the estate, says she is sick of cleaning needles
from her shared laundry, and she enjoyed watching police raid one of her
neighbors' flats.

The middle-class tend to argue that the needle exchange should be in a
non-residential part of Kensington. Older working-class residents have even
less patience with it. In November, a tense public meeting at the
Kensington Community Health Centre debated what to do about the ballooning
needle exchange program. A policeman complimented the community on its
tolerance, saying it had handled the issue better than other communities.
But some argued the exchange program should go; others that it should stay,
but be moved.

Kensington's working-class residents are also keen on the redevelopment of
the estate. They hope it will clean the drug dealers out of the suburb.

Still, hard questions about the redevelopment remain. Will the design of
the private housing be superior to the public? Will the public properties
be hidden to preserve the market value of the private? Can the mix meet
commercial imperatives without stigmatising the public housing?

The flats are on a prime piece of real estate, with a glorious view of the
Flemington racecourse, the Maribynong River, the docks, city and bay. Not
surprisingly, the project managers of the redevelopment, to cash in on the
increasing status of Kensington, have given the new estate a smart new
name: Kensington Village.