WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
A JOURNEY INTO THE UNDERBELLY OF SYDNEY
Over the course of one year, I have documented Sydney’s deepening accommodation crisis. This has involved visiting numerous homeless encampments around Sydney. Where I often discussed the causes of homelessness with those living on the streets. Causes identified included fleeing from domestic violence, having little to no money following eviction, experiencing a sudden crisis or misfortune, being without family or friends who could temporarily accommodate, likely mental illness, and no access to useful and appropriate social services. To complement this social inquiry, I have also assembled an Empty Properties Register to starkly illustrate, through onsite photography, the utter mismanagement of local accommodation resources. The Empty Properties Register demonstrates precisely that many existing Sydney properties sit vacant, unoccupied, and empty. And that, these same abandoned properties are scattered throughout many Sydney suburbs, indicating widespread resource waste. I argue, through this World Turned Upside Down digital art exhibition and elsewhere, that many of these idle properties could be utilised right now to accommodate the homeless. The alternative is to simply let these vacant properties rot whilst people live under the stars. Which is where find ourselves today.
Keith Salter (2025). Punk Human. World Turned Upside Down.
1 | Abandoned properties in Sydney
2 | Abandoned properties in Sydney
BUYING AND SELLING AND PROFITING
When houses and apartments are left empty and remain unoccupied for years at a stretch and are in no way utilised as a home for anyone at all and now a wire mesh fence and numerous plywood boards obstruct useful access to the property whilst dilapidation and ruin visibly encroaches upon many such structures and people have no choice but to park themselves somewhere in the streets and under the bridges and around the perimeter of railway stations and in any architectural crevice they can crawl into with their possessions in bags of all types and sizes and with tired eyes looking out upon a mean-spirited world then it is fair to say those same houses and apartments are not for living in but are for buying and selling and profiting.
Keith Salter (2025). Punk Human. World Turned Upside Down.
3 | Abandoned properties in Sydney
The arrival of the second sun in Frenchs Forest | Keith Salter
4 | Abandoned properties in Sydney
BE COURAGEOUS, LOOK AT THE PROBLEM
“The private rental market is simply impossible for Australians on low incomes. This is not by accident.”
“Many would say that because the housing market has become too expensive, it is broken. However, the truth simply is that the housing market is working exactly as it was designed to. Generous tax handouts for investors have incentivised the buying and selling of homes like stocks, turning a fundamental human right into a speculative commodity trade. This has happened entirely by choice.”
Anglicare Australia (2025). Rental Affordability Snapshot. National Report. 16th ed. (6).
122,000 HOMELESS AND COUNTING
“Declining housing affordability, correlates with an increase in the numbers of people experiencing homelessness. At the 2021 Census, 122,494 people were estimated to be experiencing homelessness across Australia – a rise from 116,427 people in 2016 (ABS, 2023c).”
National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (2024). State of the Housing System. (115).
In the new world, people without homes receive signal transmissions from abandoned properties | Keith Salter
TOP 10% CLAIM THE LION’S SHARE
“The housing tax concessions are also deeply inequitable. They overwhelmingly benefit the top 10% of taxpayers, who receive 82% of revenue on the CGT discount and 39% of revenue on rental deductions (2023-24). It is a myth that they support middle-class ‘Mum and Dad’ investors – rather, they contribute to growing wealth inequality, with two thirds of investment housing owned by the top 10% of households ranked by wealth.”
Davidson, P and Hall, J (2025). Homes for living, not wealth creation: Tax and expenditure reforms to improve housing affordability and equity. ACOSS, Sydney. (4).
Demolition pending | Keith Salter
WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
When shared values wane or are otherwise pushed aside and the ordinary cracks in our society transform into deep chasms of inequality and injustice it is precisely then when the latest crop of shrewd operators emerge to exploit the vulnerable and the weak. With morality an option to be selected or rejected and law absent in relation to matters of necessity the return of the frontier days are upon us. The wild west is here once again and hence the world is turned upside down.
Keith Salter (2025). Punk Human. World Turned Upside Down.
5 | Abandoned properties in Sydney
Hurstville perspective | Keith Salter
Photography | Artwork | Exhibition Curator
Keith Salter | MRes. Modern History | MA Curating
WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN EXHIBITION 2025
EXHIBITION NOTES
References that have been included do not represent endorsement or collaboration.
References that have been included (quotations) are reproduced without editing.
Wherever possible permission has been sought and granted to photograph the homeless.
The Empty Properties Register is a dynamic database that is regularly updated.
Punk Human 