EXCLUSIVE The extraordinary fee homeowners are being charged in brand new Melbourne apartment block built on 'Stolen Land'
An Aussie apartment developer has introduced a 'pay the rent' scheme that includes a contribution to First Nations organisations as part of the owners' fees.
Not-for-profit development group Nightingale Housing has competed 21 projects across Australia, with most of them concentrated in Victoria.
Some of the apartments, like the ones at the Preston development in north-east Melbourne, are as small as 27 square metres.
Completed last year, the 'teilhaus' apartments were billed as being a 'fraction of the carbon and a fraction of the cost' of a typical one-bedroom dwelling, and sold via priority ballot to means tested first home buyers for $280,000 each.
Nightingale Housing co-founder Jeremy McLeod said the building was powered off 100 per cent renewables and had 'no operational carbon attached to it'.
Mr McLeod also explained why owners paid an annual fee to First Nations groups.
'Nightingale has a pay the rent scheme, which means that every resident in this building pays rent annually to the traditional owners, in acknowledgment that this country was stolen, that these lands were never ceded, and that there's no treaty with the traditional owners,' he told Never Too Small.
In a statement, the developer clarified how the scheme worked.
'Nightingale households each pay $100 to First Nations Organisations or Land Councils through their annual Owners Corporation fees' it said.
'In 2024, our residents and commercial tenants donated almost $50,000 to the Traditional Owners of the land on which they live and benefit from.
'It's a way to compensate First Nations Australians for the resources that are drawn from their land.
'We encourage you all to consider donating to one of the many First Nations owned Organisations as a way to acknowledge that the land we live on was never ceded.'
Nightingale's scheme is similar to a campaign organised by the Pay the Rent Grassroots Collective, a charity which encourages non-Indigenous Australians to regularly donate a portion of their income.
Supporters of the campaign include feminist author Clementine Ford and high-profile Greens senator and activist Lidia Thorpe.
'We need to stop paying lip service to decolonisation and start paying the rent to the first nations people,' Ms Ford said previously.
Ms Thorpe said: 'Pay the rent from grassroots for grassroots. No strings attached to government agenda. It assists sovereign grassroots fight the many campaigns and struggles we face everyday.'
But conservative commentator Prue MacSween dismissed Nightingale's scheme as a 'marketing exercise'.
'There clearly are some people residing in this country - probably all the YES voters in the failed referendum - who love the idea and have bought into the concept,' Ms MacSween told Daily Mail Australia.
'No one has forced them to purchase a property under this scheme, and they probably wear it as a badge of honour, sleeping soundly in their community of like-minded self-righteous neighbours. Good luck to them.'
'What I find most objectionable is this property developer's claim that it builds on 'stolen land'.
'The fact that they have come up with this schtick is a ploy that sets them apart. It is a marketing exercise that probably works well for the anonymous people who formed the Company, which is of course, is hoping to claim charitable status.'
Nightingale has a further three projects under construction in the Melbourne suburbs of Brunswick, Coburg and Coburg North, according to its website.
The company's sole development in NSW, called Nightingale Marrickville, was designed just for renters with studio apartments as small as 22 square metres.
The project was made possible through a partnership with Fresh Hope Communities, the benevolent arm of Churches of Christ in NSW and ACT, which owns the land.
Under the deal it was able to offer rent well below market value - $395 to $440 per week.
In October the developer called in restructuring firm Rodgers Reidy to help it broker a deal with creditors.
Debts included $410,000 owed to the Australian Taxation office.
The restructure came as six directors and the chief executive left the company late last year.
This statement comes from the Pay The Rent organisation, which outlines why they believe non-Indigenous landowners should contribute financially as a form of giving back for living on land that was taken from First Nations peoples without consent or treaty.
Australia is founded on land that was stolen from Indigenous people. The wealth that has been generated by that theft is disproportionately distributed. All people who live here today, or who have lived here in the past, have not benefited equally from the continuing dispossession of Indigenous people. Indeed, many are deliberately and profoundly marginalised from power and the spoils of colonialism. However, some uncomfortable facts remain:
Every day, people consume food grown on Indigenous land or harvested from Indigenous seas; they drink water that flows across or under Indigenous land.Every day, people who are not Indigenous to this land take shelter in homes built upon it; they socialise, gather, and make family and community here.Every day, business is conducted on this land for the benefit of non-Indigenous people.Every day, land belonging to Indigenous people is traded for profit.
This land was never empty; the sovereignty of First Nations people was never ceded. Despite centuries of attempted genocide that continues to this day, Indigenous people have managed to hold onto and nurture culture and connections with country. At the same time, Indigenous health and wellbeing have been devastated; Aboriginal people are significantly more likely to be incarcerated, over-policed, to die in custody, for children to be separated from their family, and are more likely to die prematurely from preventable illnesses or to die by suicide. While governments and individuals have said Sorry to the Stolen Generations, they have taken no meaningful action towards making right, nor towards preventing further harm.
Paying the Rent is a step towards acknowledging these facts. It is part of a process that all non-Indigenous people – individually and collectively – need to enter into if we are to move towards justice, truth, equality and liberation for First Nations people.
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