An affluent Melbourne bayside suburb has found itself grappling with conditions residents say feel wildly out of place in one of Australia’s most prosperous cities.
Port Melbourne, long associated with money, profile and polished streetscapes, has also been contending with a troubling reality that has increasingly become visible beyond closed doors.
As in many inner-city neighbourhoods, the suburb’s wealthier residents have lived for years alongside some of the community’s most vulnerable people in public housing.
One housing block, positioned between Nott and Stokes streets, may be modest in size compared with the high-rise commission towers in nearby South Melbourne, but locals say the problems inside are no less serious.
It sits only a short walk from Bay Street, Port Melbourne’s busy commercial spine, where cafés, restaurants and neatly dressed diners help project the suburb’s more glamorous image.
Historically a working-class area, Port Melbourne has been transformed over recent decades by heavy investment, with apartment towers now stretching along Bay Street and towards Port Phillip Bay.
The median house price is now close to $1,575,000, although that figure is about $200,000 below the level recorded around the time some locals say the area began to decline.
Those concerns are often traced back to the Covid-19 pandemic, when Victorians endured lengthy lockdowns under then-premier Daniel Andrews, restrictions that became among the longest recorded anywhere in the world.
The Stokes Street housing block in Port Melbourne
Cassie sits among the filth of her home in the commission block across the street from multi-million dollar properties in Port Melbourne
Ethan claims the Port Melbourne facility is the worst he’s ever been in
Those living within earshot of the Stokes Street commission block knew what they were getting into when they bought there.
But things have changed over the past five years for those living in and around the building.
From the outside, it’s hard to believe that anyone could call the grim, grey complex home.
But home it is to many drug addicts – many of whom have simply moved in as squatters after legitimate residents died or moved out.
Windows and doors are boarded over, largely shielding the chaos that lurks beyond.
And chaos it is.
Daily Mail observed a young mum and her baby walking into the ramshackle complex.
It is not a place any human should be made to live, let alone a child.
Clothes. discarded white goods and garbage litter the housing block
Nature is reclaiming sections of discarded filth
The building has been boarded up in various sections
Human excrement, needles, soiled nappies and garbage are strewn everywhere.
The rear yards resemble something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, with nature reclaiming the filth beneath.
On the day Daily Mail visited the building, resident Cassie had just lost her baby to lung disease.
Her announcement that her 13-month-old had died came as matter-of-factly as someone telling you they’d just ducked down the shops for a carton of milk.
Cassie arrived in a taxi from the hospital alone – no support, no shoulder to cry on.
GHB was her safety blanket – a whopping 50ml a day to help numb the pain of a wretched existence.
Any drug addict will tell you a couple of drops of gamma-hydroxybutyrate can be enough to kill you.
A sign on Cassie’s door warns addicts trawling for drugs not to knock in the early hours of the morning.
Port Phillip Bay and upscale apartment buildings are a short stroll from the commission block
Needles and excrement are scattered throughout the block
Inside, she lives with a family of cats and her beloved dog, who she complains isn’t scary enough because she thinks she’s a feline.
Cassie apologises for the mess and the overwhelming smell of cat urine, faeces and garbage.
But there is no hiding the grim reality of life in this place.
About four years ago the roof of the complex literally collapsed, forcing its closure.
Neighbours hoped it would finally see the place demolished and its residents moved into better facilities while more suitable accommodation was constructed on the site.
It never happened.
To their dismay, the roof was fixed and the building was filled yet again with drug addicts.
But this time something had changed.
A sign places outside Cassie’s unit warns drug addicts not to knock on her door at 4am
‘They’ve got the mix all wrong,’ a neighbour said.
‘That place had a mix of young families and people just down on their luck, now it is drug addicts preying upon drug addicts. The families are all gone.’
Neighbours wisely chose not to be named or identified while talking to Daily Mail.
They know speaking out will just make them even more of a target.
Residents in the commission block don’t think much of their wealthy neighbours.
‘What do you think happens when you have a situation where you have people that have everything in the whole goddamn world?’ resident Ethan told Daily Mail.
‘Living across the street from people who have nothing. You end up in a predatory environment. We start to prey on them because at the end of the the day, we have nothing left to lose. They have everything left to lose. And yet they start to, what you call it, look down upon us for even being here in the first place because their property prices start dropping.’
In the light of day, residents who live in the commission block are seen coming and going without issue.
Junk is piled in every vacant spot
Neighbours are faced with ugliness from the block morning, noon and night
Homes across the road from the public housing complex are worth millions
At night, it’s a different story.
‘They come out naked on the streets. They have knives. People are stabbed. The police are out here all of the time. There are needles everywhere. It needs to be knocked down,’ a neighbour said.
As awful as it is, those living in the block are determined to stay put, even encouraging squatters to move into the abandoned units in the hope the building won’t be knocked down.
Ethan found himself at the block after running into hard times in New South Wales.
Cassie had a similar story, but she had it tough in Western Australia.
Both have lived in various housing commission buildings across Melbourne, but none like this.
‘I’ve been stabbed more than half dozen times here,’ Ethan said before removing his singlet to show his scars.
Ethan has lived in the block for about five years: ‘I can guarantee you it has (gone downhill). I don’t know what it was like before, but it’s f**k*ng gone to sh*t now,’ he said.
Cassie, pictured with her dog, in the housing block
Ethan had been stabbed numerous times while living in the block
Cassie has lived in the complex since 2017 and has seen its decline first hand.
‘It was family orientated. People were nice and stuff… there were kids everywhere. Now it’s just drugs and people squatting and stuff that’s taken over,’ she said.
‘They moved on because people were breaking in and people were robbing them.’
Cassie lives between two elderly women whom Daily Mail saw enter the complex.
One, aided by a walking frame, said she kept to herself and tried not to get involved with the madness around her.
‘They’re both real nice,’ Cassie said of her elderly neighbours.
‘To me the environment is not healthy to live in but it’s something I’m used to and feel safe and comfortable.’
But Cassie’s life is consumed by drugs and all the problems that come with them.
Nothing is pretty about the Port Melbourne housing block
Squatters have moved into the building despite all of its obvious faults
‘For three weeks straight I had people knocking on the window asking to buy GHB and drugs, so I put a sign on there just to stop them,’ she said.
Cassie said the number of drug addicts living within the complex was out of control.
‘It’s junkieville,’ she said.
‘There is no mix of normal people. There’s just junkies. And I can’t say I’m not one because I use too.’
Residents have little regard for their own hygiene and even less for that of their neighbours.
‘Lots of people around here just chuck their needles in the gutter. No lids. They put them in the dirt … there are kids around they’re going to be stabbed by them,’ Cassie said.
Violence is rampant, with Cassie suffering a brutal beating at the hands of drug affected men.
Astonishingly, she attributes the rise in crime to ‘bad drugs’.
Port Melbourne from the air is a picture of inner-city bliss
‘The drugs have gone s***,’ she said.
‘Drugs are not what they used to be. People wanting more, they can get more and it’s by crime,’ she said.
Fentanyl – a synthetic opioid 50-100 times stronger than morphine – is already being mixed into the local supply of meth.
Cassie believes the building needs to be bulldozed, with residents moved into their own individual dwellings.
‘My backyard looks like a rubbish tip because the people in these units throw their rubbish back down, their needles and stuff,’ she said.
‘My pets can’t go out there. If I had my kids here there’d be nowhere they can go and play.’
Both Ethan and Cassie asked for nothing from the Daily Mail, opening their doors and speaking up despite knowing full well the wider public shares little sympathy for them.
Children’s toys lay among the rubble of discarded trash in and about the complex
Cassie somehow remains house proud, repeatedly apologising to Daily Mail for the mess and smell.
She claims she would love nothing more than to find work, particularly outdoors, and win her kids back.
But Cassie knows no one wants to hire a ‘junkie’ like her.
‘I’d love to work. I’d love to have a job and not be on Centrelink. I hate Centrelink, it’s not enough,’ she said.
Cassie claimed to bring in about $400 a fortnight, which barely keeps her and the animals fed.
‘Without them I’d have nothing,’ she said of her pets.
‘I’d love to have a job. I’d love to work. Anything. Outdoor work. But no-one would hire me because of drug screen stuff.’
Cassie said she’d get off the drugs if someone gave her an opportunity to work, but until then, she’s stuck in a dangerous cycle with little hope.
Sunset over Port Melbourne
‘I want out of this area,’ she said.
‘It’s pretty sad but it’s each for their own around here.’
Ethan ended up in Port Melbourne after losing his hospitality job in NSW.
Forced into public housing, he found himself moving to various complexes around Melbourne before landing at the Stokes Street block.
‘This is the worst I’ve had to live in… but I know there are other places actually worse,’ he said.
That place is Park Towers – another high-rise public housing building just up the road in South Melbourne.
Ethan claims the residents are being pushed out under the pretext of the building being renovated, but he has seen no signs of any kind of work or maintenance being performed.
‘Personally I don’t think it’s actually fair,’ he said.
Families moved out in fear of becoming victims of violent crime
Given the choice of living in the building or on the streets, Ethan said the decision is simple.
‘When push comes to shove, if you’ve got the street and here is an option and it’s already sitting here empty, why the f*** not come around here?’ he said.
‘People say the squatters are a problem here but it’s … a byproduct of the problem. The system doesn’t actually give a damn.’
Ethan said the communal laundry was totally ineffective, meaning residents had little chance of staying clean.
‘Most of the machines inside there are broken and don’t even get me started about maintenance. God knows when those things were cleaned,’ he said.
National Homeless Collective founder Donna Stolzenberg told Daily Mail she expected the situation for all involved to get much worse.
‘You know that by looking back at how bad things have gotten. It’s a completely broken system that is a cycle of taxpayers not wanting their dollars wasted on having it fixed, so it gets worse and then there’s only more and more to fix,’ she said.
Ms Stolzenberg said each person needed a caseworker to take them from that place to somewhere completely removed.
Donna Stolzenberg and former Australian of the Year Grace Tame. Ms Stolzenberg says problems in Port Melbourne will only get worse
‘A caseworker to work with them until they’re safely back on their feet. Nobody chooses this. They slowly slip further and further until they can’t get themselves out,’ she said.
‘The problem is that those things the taxpayers didn’t want to pay for five to ten years ago are so broken now with so little funding and longer and longer wait lists just to be seen, people are either never seen or they get completely lost trying to navigate their way through, so they never make it out.’
Ms Stolzenberg said the system was so underfunded and complex it was impossible
to navigate without a good support network.
‘No one ends up in a place like that if they have a good support network still in place. Each council needs to be honest about how many people are living like this,’ she said.
‘The Victorian Government, no matter who is in power, absolutely must look at each of these people as humans in need of complex support and commit to assisting them until they’re OK, or the problem will only get bigger and much worse.
‘Before anyone yells that they chose this or they’re just junkies … you must remember these people are no different from those celebrities who “confessed” to having a cocaine habit or chronic alcoholism but were able to afford themselves a swanky $10k a week rehabilitation program.
‘The only difference is the people here in Port Melbourne have a different dealer selling them a different drug and they’re most likely using in op shop clothing not designer-label leisure wear.’
Daily Mail contacted Victoria’s Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Port Phillip Council and Victoria Police about the situation.
Residents living in the Port Melbourne complex have little hope for the future
Urine drenched floors within the doomed Port Melbourne building
‘All resident concerns, incidents and matters of safety are taken seriously,’ a DFFH spokesperson said.
‘A review of the site has been undertaken in collaboration with Victoria Police and City of Port Phillip, to develop a plan to improve living conditions and amenities.
‘The department refers residents to support services where appropriate and with their consent.’
Victoria Police simply stated it was a matter for DFFH and ‘we respond to incidents’.
Port Phillip Council didn’t bother to respond.
Both Ethan and Cassie said they held little hope for their futures while living in the block.
‘You wouldn’t be here if you did,’ Ethan said.
‘This is the last stop before the bottom.’
Cassie warned anyone contemplating moving to the area: ‘Don’t move here. Stay as far away as you can.’
