Rocks sell-off: delay tactics promised

Public housing tenants facing eviction from Sydney's historic Rocks precinct have vowed to stand their ground.

Hundreds of locals from Millers Point, Dawes Point and the Sirius tower packed into a public meeting on Saturday, three days after NSW Community Services Minister Pru Goward announced their properties would be sold off en masse.

Most of the homes are dotted around the Harbour Bridge, while some have prime water views.

"They are dividing our city and locking lower-income people right out," Paula Rix from Shelter NSW told the crowd.

"What we've got in our hands now is just a land grab."

Ms Goward has said she is trying to make better use of housing department resources, to help move some of the 57,000 low-income families currently on the public housing waiting list into a home.

But residents have slammed the decision, urging fellow tenants to rally and use formal relocation appeals processes to delay officials "while the real fight to save your homes goes on".

Some tenants say they will simply refuse to leave.

"I think we have to be as contemptuous towards the government as they have been towards us," one local woman said.

Local Barney Gardner, who has lived in his street since the pre-public housing era, said the community was close-knit and locals would fight to stay.

"I don't have much family, but youse are," he told the meeting, to cheers and applause.

Ms Goward said properties in Millers Point can have a market rent of around $4000 monthly, with taxpayers subsidising up to $3700 of that amount each month.

That's compared to an average monthly subsidy of about $620 for a public housing tenant at Mount Druitt, in Sydney's west.

Some long-term tenants in Millers Point have received more than $500,000 in subsidies over the term of their tenancy, according to the NSW government.

But in an apparent reference to 2013 allegations that Ms Goward misled parliament about child protection caseworker numbers, Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said the housing figures cited by Ms Goward's office could not be trusted.

"Do not believe Pru Goward's maths. She's been known to get it wrong, let me assure you," he told the meeting.