By Howard Gipps from ACA (A Current Affair)
Brian Green bought this old row of terraces in inner Sydney 20 years ago. It was to be his superannuation.
He and son Gary had big plans for re-development — either going up, like the buildings around it, or demolition — no more.
Their plans were shattered by a government initiative that can turn your home into a living museum. It's called heritage listing — and all it takes is a drive-by-expert to turn a valuable site into a nightmare.
Gary and Brian Green are property owners struck by the heritage curse.
"It's lost its value, it's lost over a million dollars worth of value," says Gary. "It was a drive by, and somebody said our houses look alright, we'll list these — they never said anything to me or anybody else."
"People should be outraged, because if you can heritage list this property you can heritage list any terrace property in Sydney," he says.
Heritage listing of your property means that even minor repairs or alterations to your home could spell a lengthy and costly approval process through your council.
Rotten timbers, modern concrete floors, aluminium windows , even newish brick walls. All would have to go under a heritage-approved-renovation.
Sydney City Council's Alistair Walton says heritage houses are preserved for everyone, and that Brian could have fixed them up himself at any time.
"They're fine examples of how houses were built, in the 1880's, the bricks that were used, the type of roofing, the style," says Walton.
"And there's all sorts of laws that we can argue about, but in regards to heritage, there's no reason that we can see why that restricts people in being able to use a house or to renovate a house or even to maintain a house," Walton argues.
But maybe Alistair hasn't had a close look.
Most heritage properties have rising damp, and in Brian and Gary's case, these repairs have been estimated at over half a million dollars to fix alone.
"The council's mad; City of Sydney Council is quite mad and treating people that own property, their property rights , they're just riding roughshod over them," Gary says.
Rents on the occupied terraces wouldn't increase much even after the million dollar heritage makeover. And Gary and Brian would foot the bill.
"If you did decide to bulldoze them what would happen? I think we'd be fined but then that's nothing new, we've been threatened with a 1.1 million dollar fine when we spoke out against the council's unfair heritage listing policies," Gary says.
Even the old outside dunny is now an architectural treasure.
"Now have a look at this one, complete with a plastic seat , no roof its in rack and ruin and we're supposed to preserve it," Brian says.
VISIT THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR MORE INFO:
http://www.garygreen.org/theft/
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