The clock is ticking for a group of elderly residents due to be evicted from an inner-city boarding house. The building has been bought by developers who want to convert it into luxury apartments. But with Sydney in the grip of an affordable housing crisis, only a handful of the 28 residents have managed to find somewhere to move to.
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00:00This room has been 84-year-old Richard Anderson's home for the past 10 years, but any sense
00:09of security has gone.
00:11We don't know what's going to happen today or tomorrow or the next day.
00:16With an eviction on the horizon, he doesn't have anywhere else to go.
00:21How are we going to find some place to stay?
00:24Nearly impossible, but you never know.
00:27Snowboarder John Patmore is one of the lucky few who've found somewhere new.
00:32Although he's grateful, it means leaving a community he's been part of for 17 years.
00:38Well, it was my forever home.
00:42Once I'd retired from being a postman, I thought, this is it for me.
00:47I'm staying here till the end.
00:49Thousands in this inner-city neighbourhood have signed a petition calling for the men
00:54to be allowed to stay.
00:56They're our friends.
00:57We love them as a community, and we don't want to see them move.
01:00The government has given an undertaking that the men will not be turned out on the streets.
01:05We have a process where we invite the residents to go and view property.
01:10Sometimes they don't match their needs, and so it can take a little while to match those
01:15people appropriately.
01:16The boarders are hoping a legal challenge to the evictions may buy them some more time.
01:21Developers coming in, seeing this kind of property and thinking, well, we can flip it
01:26and make a quick buck.
01:27For Richard, it's deeply unsettling.
01:30I don't know what's going to happen.
01:32Like many of his neighbours, he has no idea how much longer he'll have a roof over his head.