Cate Blanchett is greening the Wharf Theatre with the roof to be covered with hundreds of solar panels plus lots of smart things inside.

Today's entertainment has been the building of rooftop staircases ready to carry the panels, seen here through the ripples of old glass in our much-loved dining room doors.

This is a great development and one we are happy to support at the rear of our home, but there is another planned just in front -- the Park Hyatt wants to add a 5.9-metre-high floor to their roof for four penthouse suites plus rooftop swimming pools and raised terraces. I don't think our neighbourhood needs another party venue like the Ivy, and Ken Woolley would be sad to see what they have planned for his beautiful building designed to sit below the parapet of Dawes Point Park so this historic park and the houses built in the 1830s could retain their link with Sydney Harbour and their long maritime history.

If the bulbous addition to the Park Hyatt goes ahead, the elegant serpentine Park Hyatt will become the elephant in the harbour.

Busy Sunday in Lower Fort Street

Woken at 4am by hammering on the Bridge - dozens of workers and lots of machinery doing essential track maintenance the only time it can be done, so this is OK.

The bridge paint sucker underneath was also going flat out, making a high-pitched noise just short of painful. Unusual this is going on a Sunday.

Didn't seem to diminish the number of people walking through Tarra Park, then weaving along Parbury Lane beside the house 'Tarra', or down the beside the other half of the pair, 'Mascotte', then along the alleyways and other walks that weave through Millers Point.

Visitors might have noticed that the 1980s pyramid atop the Park Hyatt lift shaft has come off. There is something afoot here. Are they starting on their rooftop extension already? Is this a fight lost before we have even begun to respond?

Another twenty Housing NSW properties to be sold

Since 2008 Housing NSW has sold sixteen heritage properties in Lower Fort Street, Argyle Place and Kent Street. It was a program. They were selling uninhabitable and empty houses. They said these houses were unsuitable for public housing, and there was a suggestion that it would be irresponsible to allocate large sums from their limited budget to repairing and maintaining these heritage properties. Their charter is to provide public housing, and this was what they would spend their money on.

But sixteen was an arbitrary number. The same reasons for selling sixteen heritage properties holds true for selling another twenty. Earlier this month, a Housing NSW media release announced another twenty properties in Millers Point were to go under the hammer. At the same time, every Housing tenant in the area received a letter outlining the sale of these twenty properties. Nothing specific.

Which houses? Which tenants? Housing wasn’t saying. Thirty years ago, they had inherited from the Maritime Services Board an entire suburb of historic houses – and the tenants who went with them. Some of these tenants were in the wrong type of accommodation. Others were not tenants who required assisted public housing and lived in these properties through some accident of history. Housing was about to sort out some of these anomolies, and hopefully make a tidy sum for themselves in the process.

Most profit they thought was to be made by not disclosing which properties would be sold. On the other hand, the complexities of the 1200-page contracts for each of the houses sold so far, and the particular ways they were selling them, reduced the amount many of the first sixteen had sold for. Housing might not be working outside their charter in selling these houses, but it seems they are working outside their expertise.

In the meantime, the houses are crumbling to an alarming degree, especially those that are empty. Housing is losing the heritage in these heritage houses just as fast as the white ants and leaking rooves and vandalism can take it away. And they appear to be losing other heritage aspects of the area, allowing other developments to proceed even though these developments reduce the heritage value of their properties.

There are other issues relating to these properties. The people in these properties form a strong and cohesive community. It’s a diverse community, but everybody seems to rub along together, and to look out for one another. Then there are the services that support the current community. Many of these will stretch thin if lots of Housing tenants are moved on.

It’s a complicated issue, and it was the main subject of the Millers Point Resident Action Group meeting following the letters to all Housing NSW tenants outlining the plan to sell the next twenty properties. They may have thought at least this way, residents were not going to learn about the plan through the media. But getting a letter like this could indicate your house was to be sold, and you were being moved out. People are very worried.

The meeting voted to support all residents who wanted to stay, and there are strong feelings that social housing should not be lost to this area. What to do about these heritage houses? At the very least Housing NSW should account for them – how they will maintain them, how they will guarantee people’s right to stay, how they will make sure services for the community remain viable by maintaining a strong proportion of social housing in this area. Their plans cannot remain secret as we all wait to see what sort of community they plan to create in Lower Fort Street and the rest of Millers Point.

Clover Moore has a petition calling for the NSW Government to retain these properties, and copies of her petition were handed out at Tuesday’s meeting. Is her petition the right way to go? Not sure … but she can ask a question in Parliament about these houses if she can get 500 signatures. And if she gets another 500 signatures, she can ask another question. So please download Clover’s petition, fill it in (up to ten people per form) and send it to her.