Pemulwuy approval ends long housing struggle on The Block

by

The approval brings
to an end a 30 years struggle over what will be built on The Block. The late
1980s and 1990s saw a number of proposals and the early 2000s saw the
Government Architects’ Office working with the AHC on the Pemulwuy Project.
That fell over when the Carr Government offered to only fund the project if the
AHC signed over control of The Block. With the AHC refusing to relinquish
control of The Block, the Government changed its position to no longer support
Aboriginal housing on The Block. A struggle followed between the AHC and the
then Redfern Waterloo Minister Frank Sartor to try to get approval for the
housing company to build housing on their land on The Block. During the
struggle the broad community and the great majority of the Aboriginal community
supported the AHC. The Minister tried to halve the residential development
permissible on The Block and increased the commercial allowance. When the AHC
came up with a way around the proposed controls the Minister restricted the use
of the controls to a precinct by precinct basis and finally granted 75% of the
initial residential floor space. Across the railway line 18 storeys were
permitted.

The AHC finally
managed to get approval for a plan for 62 homes in 2009, but it was
subsequently considered not viable by the AHC as it did not have an income
generating component to make the project sustainable once built. A revised plan
in 2012 included a proposal to include student housing that provided an income
stream to subsidise the affordable housing. The plan was still dependent on
finding funding to do the build. After exploring many options the AHC came to
an agreement with a student housing provider that if they could get density on
the student housing site similar to the buildings on the eastern side of the
railway lines that they would pay the AHC upfront for a 99 year lease which
would allow the 62 houses to be built. In the negotiations the AHC also
achieved 110 subsidised places for Aboriginal students in the complex.

Initially the
proposal was for a 16 storey building of student housing but the Department of
Planning insisted on a design panel which argued that a better outcome would be
achieved by a 24 storey building with a better stepped transition to the
surrounding buildings. This is the building that has just been approved.
Finally everything is in place for the AHC to build Pemulwuy’s 62 affordable
housing units.

During this time,
gentrification and rising rents have driven much of the Aboriginal community
out of Redfern. Whatever happened on The Block it was never going to solve this
problem. The need for Aboriginal Affordable Housing is reaching a critical
point if there is to be a broad based Aboriginal community in Redfern and
Waterloo in the future. Hopefully all those who have had an interest in getting
Affordable Housing on The Block will now join the campaign to push the NSW
government to provide dedicated Aboriginal Affordable Housing in Redfern and
Waterloo in any redevelopment of government owned land – starting with the
Waterloo Estate redevelopment.

Below are the links
to the approval documents

This article originally ran in a REDWatch email update to members and supporters on 5 March 2019.