Crushing crowded house

St John’s Height Estate residents came out in force last weekend to show their disgust at a change to highdensity housing on the estate.St John’s Height Estate residents came out in force last weekend to show their disgust at a change to highdensity housing on the estate.

MY View is that enough is enough.
During the last decade we have seen wellestablished residential areas raped in the name of profit when developers have pulled out perfectly good homes to make way for two, three and more dwellings.
Developers and planners find a myriad of spurious reasons for allowing this and while big profits and weak planning principles are involved they will keep ripping down fine homes.
Meanwhile, we have another developers’ ploy of building estates and selling to unsuspecting people on the basis that the estate will be of a certain standard.
People are promised that standards, such as mediumdensity with one home a block, will prevail in their new environment.
They are deliberately told that highdensity housing will not be part of their new estate.
They move in to their new dream homes under the promise of protective covenants and assurances from slick land sales representatives, even in writing.
But these promises during the last decade have been hot air and not worth the paper on which they come.
The simple process is that the developer reaches the stage where a large proportion of the estate is sold and then starts to bring in highdensity unittype development with little space for car parking, highlevel profit and a lowered standard for the whole estate.
Because councillors don’t seem to care about the process, nothing is done when they are issuing permits to prevent the changes despite the fact they are well aware of what will happen.
While councillors are aware of the process because they have seen it happen time and again, few young families are and they become trapped in the situation after making a major financial commitment.
This is happening at Riviera Drive, Berwick, and on this occasion almost the entire community has come out in a protest that the City of Casey cannot ignore.
This type of highdensity housing should be built around activity centres close to shops and public transport, not dumped on an unsuspecting community that will forever have to suffer their streets being used as private car parks.
Residents say they were promised that six homes would be built on land where a developer now proposes to build 25.
If this is the case, it’s not a good method of doing business in a municipality that repeatedly claims to have one of the best social orders in Australia.
I seldom doubt the claim, but Riviera Drive residents can be forgiven for thinking they have been let down by their councillors if this development is allowed.