Peter Gibbs bought a four-bedroom house for $120,000 in a city where the median price is about double that. Next door, his 80-year-old neighbour and friend, John Hill, is to be uprooted after 40 years in his public housing home to create another bargain for a private owner/occupier.
Around the corner, 77-year-old Thomas Riley is about to be moved from his Aboriginal Housing Office property so it can be sold, too.
And elsewhere in the road, an Aboriginal Housing property has been bought, renovated and relisted for more than three times its purchase price.
Such is life today on Dubbo's Gordon Estate, 2½ years after alcohol-fuelled New Year's Day riots exploded here in 2006 and marked it as NSW's ugliest public housing mistake.
The NSW Government last week won an award from the Urban Development Institute of Australia, NSW for its Dubbo Transformation Strategy, which judges called "a great example of courageous and innovative leadership addressing problems and perceptions in a notorious public housing estate".
The Government is about a third of the way through converting this public ghetto into private suburbia. It has
sold 63 public housing properties to private owners in the past year after relocating scores of indigenous tenants - sometimes against their will - and renovating or demolishing their former state-owned homes. There are 304 left to sell by June 2012.
A Dubbo real estate agent, Chris Barber, said blocks were selling from $20,000 and houses from $100,000 and it would be cheaper to buy there and fly to Sydney every weekend than live in the big smoke. The carve-up and sell-off is being hailed as a victory over antisocial crime in Dubbo and a solution to the housing affordability crisis for first home buyers and grey nomads.
But it has also produced the occasional windfall, and comes at the expense of elders such as Mr Hill and Mr Riley, who were among the first to live on the 1960s estate and will be among the last to leave.
Mr Gibbs, 42, from Bourke, is a former rugby league player who worked as a security guard on the estate before moving his family to Spence Street last year with some trepidation. He has been pleasantly surprised at how peaceful it is.
"I never, ever thought I would buy here," he said. "I've been a security officer for years and this was the worst I've ever had. We had people pulling knives on us, throwing bricks at us, houses were being burnt down in front of our eyes … it was dangerous. I would tell taxis and pizza delivery people not to go up here.
"I had to convince myself, let alone my wife and three little ones, that it would be OK."
Mr Gibbs now hopes other Aboriginal and low-income people will follow - and that his children will learn the value
of home ownership. "If your father is a baker it's more than likely you're going to muck around with dough," he said.
But like many in Dubbo's Aboriginal community, he is concerned about the cost of the conversion for some elderly residents. Over the fence lives Uncle John Hill, an Aboriginal elder and local legend, who has been told he will be relocated by November because Housing NSW's policy is to leave no public tenants on the estate. Not one.
The independent state MP for Dubbo, Dawn Fardell, told Parliament in May that she would stand in front of bulldozers to ensure Mr Hill and a handful of other elders - who were here long before the worst of the troublemakers arrived - remained on the estate.
"Spence Street is Uncle John's home. Unfortunately for him, home is not a concept recognised by certain faceless executives of Housing NSW," she said.
Around the corner in Algona Street, Mr Riley says he will resist eviction after 39 years in his home. He fumes that canny handymen have bought public properties nearby, done them up and relisted them. Only owner-occupiers can buy the former public housing on the estate, but that does not stop resellers.
According to public records, the four-bedroom house across the street was bought for $50,000 last October and is back on the market for $170,000.
A Housing NSW spokeswoman said no one was being forcibly removed but it was "relocating all tenants to alternative public housing in an area of their choice". There would be no exceptions, to ensure fairness.
Adding value to a property was encouraged, and was preferable to the Government taking the risk, she said.
The Minister for Housing, Matt Brown, said the changes had been difficult but only 15 per cent of tenants in a recent survey were unhappy with their new homes. He said selling off the estate was a tough decision, but it had reduced crime rates and opened doors for young families who wanted to own a home.