1 hour ago
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July 15, 2026 — 5:00am
It was a ballot I never imagined I’d enter, let alone win. At a friend’s suggestion, I’d applied for an apartment in the government’s affordable housing scheme and six months later, I was lucky enough to be offered my own place in a new development.
My life had ground to a halt due to a series of difficult events a couple of years earlier, so I was relieved by the security of the capped rent and excited to be rebuilding with a new community in Melbourne’s inner north. I moved in and exhaled.
But I soon discovered this opportunity came with a significant hidden cost. I’d arrived anticipating housing security and social connection, only to find myself segregated from the full-paying residents.
It was while running a health startup that I’d founded to improve the safety of aged care residents that things had first taken a bad turn for me. After five hectic years I burnt out suddenly and spectacularly. As I was coming to terms with closing my company and letting go of my team, our customers and the dream, I began to develop debilitating carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists.
With the prospect of losing full use of my hands due to the aggressive condition, immediate surgery was recommended. Then the slow recovery began. I was physically unable to work for around 18 months. For some time I was unable to perform simple tasks like closing a zipper, squeezing a toothpaste tube or turning the key in my front door. To this day, tasks requiring prolonged grip strength (like carrying a washing basket or mowing a lawn) can impact my fine motor skills for a day or two.
Around that time my rent increased significantly, forcing me to leave the home I’d lived in for five years, and I moved into a share house.
Once I was medically cleared, I was eager to re-enter the workforce. Down, but not out. I’d been able to pick up occasional contract work but given its irregularity, I met the income threshold requirements for affordable housing. Finding a place in the Pace 3058 development in Coburg had me feeling thankful and hopeful about getting back on my feet.
It was during my resident induction that the friendly concierge explained the site’s shared resident amenities. As an affordable housing tenant, I would not have access to: the 25-metre lap pool; the ground-floor residents’ lounge; or the main rooftop garden, barbecues and dining room, (unless I’m accompanied by a regular resident). My key fob would permit me to use the smaller, no-frills rooftop.
Puzzled, I thought that perhaps access to certain features of the building might be restricted to owner-occupiers. But I soon found that it’s entirely determined by whether or not you live in affordable housing. It was becoming clear that those of us in affordable housing were “the others” of the building.
With this realisation came a pang of isolation.
I could take or leave the pool, and wasn’t really interested in using the rooftop kitchen. What I hadn’t expected was the feeling of exclusion. In the very place I’d hoped to find community, I instead found myself separated from it.
Over the following week, I discovered something more subtle, and more disturbing. All of the affordable housing apartments are grouped together on designated floors that contain only affordable housing residents.
What’s more, they’re commonly known throughout the building’s community as the affordable housing floors. This means that every time I step into the lift with other residents and press my floor number, I effectively disclose my financial circumstances.
Whether anyone judges me or not is almost beside the point. My economic status becomes public information simply because of the floor I live on. It feels like a private, painful and ambiguous aspect of my life is being repeatedly disclosed without my consent.
I noticed other differences. Every standard residential floor has a substantial artwork in its shared foyer, along with seating and some plants. The affordable housing floors have bare walls. There are no benches, no plants, and the hallway carpet is noticeably less well maintained.
“No, no – not classism,” one well-meaning owner protested, after kindly escorting another affordable housing resident and me to the rooftop so we could attend the weekly residents’ games night. “That’s a horrible term,” she said, genuinely disturbed by the idea.
“It’s because of the luxury levies. That’s the deal the state government must have made with the property developers.”
The explanation was that restricting access to shared amenities keeps operating costs lower, allowing affordable housing rents to remain affordable.
She missed my reference to the other parallel that had come to mind – Dr Seuss and his “Sneetches, with stars upon thars” who shunned and excluded those without.
There is a need for affordable housing across Australia. Among the various government programs, developers are also using incentives for affordable housing to gain approval for sites that might otherwise be knocked back. In Sydney, a luxury 12-storey Potts Point project backed by billionaire James Packer proposes keeping all the affordable housing on the lower floors. Those homes will not have access to the swimming pool, and will have a separate entrance, an increasingly common idea that is fairly described as a “poor door”.
I understand the economic rationale behind keeping costs down. From a legal and financial perspective, the purpose is to keep affordable housing viable. But from a human perspective, the result is consistently and genuinely uncomfortable. Almost humiliating.
I remain grateful for the rental support and stability of this program. Yet residents are segregated from shared spaces. Their floors are publicly identifiable. Their communal areas are noticeably less welcoming. Whatever we choose to call it, the impact is unmistakable.
If affordable housing is intended to foster stable, connected communities, security ought not come at the cost of dignity and inclusion.
Georgie Armstrong is a former health tech founder.
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