HOW ONE STREET MADE A DEMAND FOR DWELLING JUSTICE

80,000 empty buildings while 22, 000 people homeless— the 2016 Bendigo Street campaign was a political protest that involved the occupation of over 15 government owned houses that were compulsorily acquired for the defunct East-West Link highway project. Throughout the course of the campaign, Indigenous people, squatters, activists, people with a lived experience of homelessness, rough sleepers, and people who traversed all these categories at once, banded together to utilise empty properties that were left to rot. They sparked state-wide discussions about housing affordability, homelessness, and the coloniality of our housing system. Hundreds of people were housed by the campaign during an 8 month period, before they were forcibly evicted.