'It feels very lonely': Public housing tower residents speak about facing days of lockdown - The Age

She had yet to see any sign of any health workers at the building and the police officers stationed in the foyer were unable to provide any details on what was happening, she said.

“People are on Facebook saying things like ‘the government is going to give them the essentials, groceries and toys’ - when is that going to happen?”

“What started out as anxiety is slowly turning into rage for me, unfortunately,” Ms Alan said. “The way we are being treated and viewed is pretty disgusting.”

“We are all human beings, we all have basic rights and they have been taken away. And we haven’t done anything wrong.”

The police presence in one of the locked-down public housing towers on Saturday night. Credit:Hulya Alan, Supplied

Ms Alan lives at her unit with her young son and her dog Puffy, and has been taking measures to shield herself from coronavirus since the early days of the pandemic. She bought a washing machine - an unplanned and expensive purchase for her - so she wouldn’t have to use the building’s communal laundry facilities.

“I was so scared, those areas aren’t sanitised and there are too many people crowded in the laundry,” she said. “But not everyone is able to do that. It’s a scary time.”

She has only left her unit five times since the state’s lockdown measures were put in place earlier this year - once to buy groceries (until she was able to find a way to arrange them to be delivered) and four times for medical appointments.

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She currently has enough supplies to last her two days, but on Sunday morning was unsure of how she would be able to get food given the new measures.

She said it was dispiriting seeing some comments on social media that blamed those people in the towers for the predicament they were currently in, but said she was thankful others had rallied behind them with messages of supports and offers of assistance.

A crowdfunding campaign was set up last night by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, which had raised more than $235,000 as of Sunday afternoon

African-Australian Multicultural Employment and Youth Services head Berhan Ahmed also criticised the state government’s response, likening it to a “military solution to a health problem” and akin to “cracking a nut with a sledgehammer”.

Another tower resident, Tehiya, said she was shocked by the scale of the government’s response to the cases.

“The government didn’t let us prepare for this lockdown,” she said.

She said she believed health authorities made the decision because they wrongly assumed people living in the buildings did not understand coronavirus.

At a press conference on Sunday, the state's Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton stressed the lockdown measures, which he said were an appropriate response, were in place not because of the people who live at the buildings but because of the nature of the buildings.

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https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMimAFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL3ZpY3RvcmlhL2l0LWZlZWxzLXZlcnktbG9uZWx5LXB1YmxpYy1ob3VzaW5nLXRvd2VyLXJlc2lkZW50cy1zcGVhay1hYm91dC1mYWNpbmctZGF5cy1vZi1sb2NrZG93bi0yMDIwMDcwNS1wNTU5NmEuaHRtbNIBmAFodHRwczovL2FtcC50aGVhZ2UuY29tLmF1L25hdGlvbmFsL3ZpY3RvcmlhL2l0LWZlZWxzLXZlcnktbG9uZWx5LXB1YmxpYy1ob3VzaW5nLXRvd2VyLXJlc2lkZW50cy1zcGVhay1hYm91dC1mYWNpbmctZGF5cy1vZi1sb2NrZG93bi0yMDIwMDcwNS1wNTU5NmEuaHRtbA?oc=5

2020-07-05 05:34:43Z
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