Urban Hymns for Urban Sins:

Gentrification and Mission

by Rev Albert Peck

One issue of change for churches to consider, especially for those within the inner suburbs, is a manifestation of social change known as gentrification. Gentrification is a buzzword used to describe the process of inner-suburban areas being transformed from a traditional working class socio-economic profile to a middle/upper middle class environment. Harvie M Conn (Professor of Missions at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia) and Manuel Ortiz (Sociologist) suggest in their book Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City and the People of God that words such as redevelopment, revitalisation and reconstruction ‘should be red flags suggesting gentrification’ (p.293). The topic should be a focus, they suggest, for thinking about ministry and mission.

Gentrification comes from the word ‘gentry’, which suggests an upper class of well-bred people. The term ‘gentrification’ was first used in 1964 by British sociologist Ruth Glass, as part of her study on the changes that were taking place in and around London in the 1950s and 60s. Her study was published under the title London: Aspects of Change. This process often results with the original inhabitants being displaced due to the increase in housing prices and rental properties. In Victoria, gentrification is currently characteristic of many of Melbourne’s inner suburbs. This course of social upgrading has been aggressively progressing since the early 1980s when the term ‘yuppies’ (young urban professionals) was coined to describe those who were seen as being at the forefront of the gentrification process in the hedonistic 1980s. In 2010 many of our inner suburbs are either almost unrecognizable or in a state of flux.

One such example of gentrification that is close to my heart is the transformation of Port Melbourne. Port Melbourne was the birth place of my mother and home to my mother’s great grandfather (Thomas Madigan) who settled in Port Melbourne in the 1880s from Ireland. His descendants remained in Port Melbourne until my maternal grandmother passed away in 1996. Originally known as Sandridge, Port Melbourne was for most of its life a working class suburb known for its rough reputation and the various industries that became part of its history. The 1985 book The Outcasts of Melbourne vividly portrays Port Melbourne at the turn of the twentieth century:

In Port Melbourne, a tough working class industrial suburb with the largest concentration of unskilled workers outside of the City of Melbourne, violence was a commonplace’. (p.15)

Terry Keenan’s book on the exclusion of the Port Melbourne Football Club in the newly formed Victorian Football League in 1897 vividly describes the thuggery that typified the Borough:

While the prolonged misery inflicted on people by the ravages of the depression may have been a contributing factor to the violence on the streets of Port Melbourne, there was another cause operating within the suburb. At the turn of the twentieth century its waterfront and piers were a notorious melting pot, a meeting place for seaman from around the world, pimps, prostitutes and local layabouts out looking for trouble. The waterfront pubs were a magnet for seamen and they became the focus for frequent outbreaks of anti-social behaviour. The anti-social behaviour was not confined to the waterfront. The main shopping strip, Bay Street, was just as violent. By 1896 street fighting was so prevalent there that the local shopkeepers became concerned that local shoppers would be driven away to Melbourne or South Melbourne. The Port Melbourne community was presenting an undesirable image of itself to the rest of Melbourne’. (Terry Keenan, Keeping Out the Riff Raff, p.2)

The PMFC’s notorious hooligan ways were legendary back in the day as Robert Holmesby suggests in his concise history of the Hawthorn Football Club. The ‘Mayblooms’ as they were then known found their inaugural year (1914) in the VFA a wake up call to big time football and Port Melbourne (players and supporters) were the most feared. Holmesby goes on to say: ‘It was a big, tough new world in the VFA and the home crowd was shocked by the ruffians from Port Melbourne who started a brawl when they were beaten at Glenferrie in June’ (Russell Holmesby, ‘Hawthorn’. 100 Years of Australian Football, 1996).

Port Melbourne of old was characterised by a resilience that survived waterfront disputes, the depression, the slum reclamation project of the Bolte government in the 60s and 70s and the council amalgamations of the Kennett years. Growing up in the 1970s I have fond memories of staying with my Grandparents and enjoying the ‘old Port Melbourne’ before things changed. I recall the old gasometer in Pickle Street that would cast a shadow across the park where I often played football as a boy. There was a certain smell that usually engulfed Port Melbourne, which was a combination of the Kraft factory, the gasworks and numerous other industrial pleasantries. I can remember the regular sightings of housewives shelling peas in verandas whilst catching up on the latest gossip with neighbours that passed by. Mostly however I remember the way a walk down Bay Street would take forever as we were often stopped by many of the old Port crowd wanting to talk and take the mickey out of each other. They were simple down to earth people who called a spade a spade yet there was a wonderful sense of belonging and pride about being from Port Melbourne. These were people who were far from wealthy and many lived their lives hand to mouth but they were happy and content just the same. Sadly memories of the old Port now mostly only survive in sepia.

Fast forward to 2010 and Port Melbourne is vastly different. The writing was on the wall as early as 1991 when the historical society of Port Melbourne known as ‘Vintage Port’ released a book with the defiant titled They Can Carry Me Out. The following is an extract of its thoughts on the gentrification of Port:

A lot has changed since our eccentric founder landed at Liardet’s Beach, but today this waterfront community, ‘country town’ virtually under the towers of the city, finds more abrupt change imposed upon it. To profit a few heritage features loved by many are gone, or are going. This impending loss of a way of life has inspired the activities of Vintage Port (They Can Carry Me Out: Memories of Port Melbourne, back cover).

Today Port Melbourne is saturated with expensive high-rise apartments, which have been at the expense of many traditional buildings. Bay Street is now a flurry of bourgeois activity with its trendy coffee shops and upmarket retail outlets. Furthermore to consider buying a house in Port Melbourne one would require somewhere between ¾ of a million to a million dollars to even begin to think about such an opportunity. This is incredible when one considers that the average house price in Port Melbourne in 1987 was $22,000. The old Port Melbourne that was once characterised by a close knit, proudly defiant working class ethos has gone, all in the name of gentrification. Sports journalist Ken Bennett, who was born and bred in the borough, surveys the change:

Nowadays you are just as likely to come across yuppie execs driving BMW’s or drinking in pubs which no longer cater for serious drinkers but for arty-farty types who once would have filled their daks if they had been caught on a Port Melbourne bus by mistake’. (Ken Bennett, Vintage Port: the Story of a Port Melbourne Kid, 2001, p.vii)

Eighteen kilometres north of Port Melbourne is the suburb of Broadmeadows. The Broadmeadows area is home to our church, Hume Community Baptist Church, and it is also at the start of its own gentrification process. Hume Community Baptist Church’s concern is for the suburb of Broadmeadows and for those we would class as being ‘the locals’ of this area as gentrification begins to take effect. There is indeed much to love about the Broadmeadows area; the directness of the people and the loyalty and mateship that exists within the community which has been woven together by growing and struggling together in an impoverished community. The spirit of the larrikin who proudly, and defiantly, declares ‘I’m from Broady’ leaves no doubt that there is a sense of community pride about the area. This melting pot of culture and life experience makes serving God in this area a delight and never boring. However Broadmeadows is also a community entrenched in generational impoverishment that does little to foster ambition and self-belief. In February 2007 the Jesuits and Catholic Social Services commissioned the report, ‘Dropping off the Edge’, which identified Broadmeadows as the most disadvantaged urban area in Victoria. The issues for our community include impoverished conditions, family break