Rental Histories tour of Brunswick from Great Depression to postwar housing crisis by Hannah Garvan

The ‘Rental Histories Tour’ is the product of research and design by Hannah Garvan and explores tenants’ experiences of the Great Depression and post-WW2 housing crisis by visiting locations of significance around so-called ‘Brunswick’, alongside the voices of those with firsthand experience. Her aim to demonstrate how key elements of ‘renting’ materialised throughout these periods, such as affordability, eviction, housing conditions, tenant-landlord relations, and the role of the state. By emphasising physical locations and eyewitness testimonies, Hannah sought to employ ‘Brunswick’ as an insightful case study to provide listeners with a deeper understanding of renters’ experiences in the past and present. Alongside the knowledge that Aboriginal Sovereignty is ‘grounded in [this] territory’, she also used Engels’ 1872 text ‘The Housing Question’ to inform her interpretation of property relations. Having examined various instances of housing activism, Hannah argues that acts of resistance which occurred in ‘Brunswick’ are correlated with specific outcomes, including the first Victorian rent relief scheme and the establishment of the Victorian Housing Commission.

The Tour establishes that renters’ experiences are defined by their relation to property. Firstly, historical context is provided regarding the impacts of settler-colonialism and the neighbourhood’s origins as a working-class ‘slum’. The anti-eviction struggles of the Depression-era are then illuminated by visiting sites of resistance and hearing from an unemployed activist. Working-class women had complex and varied roles during the thirties, exemplified by one mother’s testimony about navigating rental hardship. Juxtaposed with the housing activism of the labour movement, the Tour describes the ambitions, methods, and achievements of an increasingly influential slum-abolitionist group which later became the Victorian Housing Commission. The Commission’s activities, impeded by WW2, are contextualised within the impending post-war housing shortage. The Tour visits one of Victoria’s first public housing estates, allowing participants to observe how the Commission deployed their newly acquired legal powers to demolish, acquire, construct, and let. Finally, an inspection of the nearby ‘Fowler Estate’ is intended to illustrate the Commission’s use of concrete in the mass-production of housing to accommodate the rapidly expanding population at ‘economic rents’. After briefly describing the political and material outcomes of the fifties, the Tour concludes with personal reflections on the continuing nature of ‘slum’ conditions and housing crises.

In the context of Stage 4 lockdown, Hannah chose to present a tour which was limited to the five-kilometer radius around her home. The approach to this task was informed by a belief that the richest histories come directly from the source. In this regard, she prioritised the inclusion of physical locations, the routes between them, and real voices expressing themselves in their own words. While each destination held particular significance, the act of moving between spaces was intended to spatially immerse participants with excess walking time to engage their historical imagination. Oral histories are rich in significance beyond the transcription of mere words. Hannah included Tom, Nellie, and Olive to deliver the content of their stories, alongside their breaths, sighs, accents, exclamations, and pauses, which cannot be replicated or conveyed in any other way.

Intended as a guided walking tour, the medium had both challenges and limitations. For instance, the experience is inherently limited to able-bodied persons, with significant information forfeited by engaging solely in the audio component. Hannah wrote the script in a conversational and accessible style, attempting to keep academic jargon to a minimum. Choosing a route was challenging because the destinations needed to be situated in a coherent order, both chronologically and spatially. She sifted through hundreds of hours of Wendy Lowenstein and Barry York’s oral history collections to identify relevant interviews.

Lacking technical experience and resources for sound production, Hannah used her phone’s voice recorder to record herself and followed YouTube guides for editing. Living on a busy road, she waited for the quiet of midnight to record. She found speaking challenging in its own way, frequently stumbling over words, and finding herself out of breath. She did several takes to get each sentence down, editing her pauses to improve flow. Finally, Hannah created a simple map using the program ‘paint.net’ to visually highlight the route.

Hannah drew inspiration from the work of Iain McIntyre:
https://commonslibrary.org/walking-tours-of-unemployed-resistance-in-brunswick/?fbclid=IwAR3XrrfEL5WZ58prlMV_VA-mXJl0LuqmwDmKTC0QryUxPs3rlWtCpSOGECk

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