The view from Michael Barbour's Birrong apartment is not Sydney Harbour. But it's not bad – a sunny perch looking out onto the red roofs and eucalypts of middle-ring Sydney suburbia.
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And Mr Barbour appreciates the quiet area, after spending months this year and last homeless and in boarding houses.
"Certainly life has improved," said Mr Barbour. "My mental health has improved," he said.
Mr Barbour is one of over 80 homeless or near homeless people or households to have moved into the 336 properties built so far with the proceeds of sales of public housing in inner-city Milson's Point.
The Milsons Point sales, and more recently the statement the Rocks' Sirius building will be sold for redevelopment, have generated fierce criticism the government's policy removes low-income residents from the inner city.
But the sale of 102 Millers Point properties has also raised about $280 million for social housing. Those funds are not all spent, but many properties are already established, including the new block at Birrong, about a 10-minute walk from the train station, where Mr Barbour is now living.
Mr Barbour, 47, had been intermittently sleeping around Bankstown Hospital when he found help from the Partners in Recovery initiative, a Commonwealth-funded service that supports people with persistent mental health problems.
Partners in Recovery in turn helped Mr Barbour onto the public housing waiting list. At one point he was offered an apartment in an older estate at Villawood – which he was loathe to move into.
"They were setting me up to fail there," said Mr Barbour.
"If I would have gone into there I would've gone into using drugs and into crime and whatnot."
Social housing organisations say they are not opposed to the principle of using property sales to fund new housing stock. But they raise concerns about the transparency of the funding flows, and about the impact on tenants forced to move.
"It is an issue if they sell land that is well located, displace all of those tenants, and push poorer people even further out," said Mary Perkins, executive officer at Shelter NSW.
Wendy Hayhurst, the chief executive of the NSW Federation of Housing Association, said: "It is how it is done."
"The government could do a better job about telling us about what is happening, who is being housed, where the housing is being created."
The Minister for Social Housing, Brad Hazzard, rejects the idea of a lack of transparency around the proceeds of the Miller's Point sales – the government has a dedicated bank account in which it places all money raised.
But he said the government's agenda had benefited far more people than it dislodged.
"I understand it's very tough to ask people to take alternative accommodation to free up funds to build much more accommodation for others who need it," said Mr Hazzard.
"But as the minister responsible for trying to find more homes for the voiceless 60,000 people on the waiting list, sometimes I've got to ask people to come on that journey with us," he said.
At Birrong, where Mr Barbour's apartment has been built on land owned by the Department of Housing, is happy for the clean and bright outlook.
"It's quite surprising it is a housing [commission]," he said. "They never built them like that, now they are, which is good."
