Some further REDWatch comments on the People and
Place Plan
You may have
already seen REDWatch
Initial comments on the People and Place Plan. Subsequent comments
were also made in the South Sydney Herald online in Can the
Waterloo South People and Place Plan deliver?
Prior to the
REDWatch meeting about this Plan, REDWatch produced some Focus Group
Questions for Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan. Similar
questions have now been used to facilitate discussions with Groundswell
Agencies and with the tenants only portion of the Waterloo Redevelopment Group.
These questions might be helpful for people preparing their own feedback.
Another approach suggested is to think in terms of what you want to Keep,
Change or Add as you review the plan. REDWatch has not prepared its submission
as yet and we are keen to hear from others about their concerns.
Following a recent
Homes NSW presentation and discussion with other Groundswell agencies , it seems
to us that this plan is really a Waterloo South project plan and not really a People
and Place Plan for all Waterloo social housing tenants during and after the
redevelopment. This raises concerns about the People and Place issues the
redevelopment brings for the surrounding community, the interaction between the
public housing and Community Housing Provider tenants, and how the Waterloo
People and Place plan will mesh and cooperate with the Waterloo Human Service
Plan that is looking at current issues, which will persist irrespective of who
the social housing tenant’s land lord is.
Here are some
thoughts on items REDWatch would currently like to see added.
1) Health
Facilities built into the plan – From the planning for the redevelopment of the
Metro site there has been recognition of the important opportunity to have a
Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) run a “Health One” or similar in the
Waterloo redevelopment. This option is in the current Collaborative Action Plan
as Action 2.6 but it is not specifically mentioned in the People and Place
Plan. The People and Place Action 4.4 is to “Enable the local community to
access affordable health services”. This action seems to bundle the
responsibilities of SLHD and the Public Health Network (PHN) which is responsible
for doctors and primary health care into a single action. There should be a
commitment to providing a base for a SLHD “Health One” or similar for the
delivery of local health services, in addition to a costed plan for how bulk billing
doctors will be provided into an area the redevelopment plans will further
gentrify.
2)
LAHC has agreed to Waterloo
Renewal Principles February 2023 with local services and
the Waterloo Redevelopment Group over. These were based on earlier work by The
Tenants Union NSW and Shelter NSW over a state wide compact that Minister
Jackson has shown interest in. Back in 2016 LAHC agreed to a Waterloo
Stakeholder and Engagement Framework but were unable to deliver on it. The People and Place plan must
include undertakings that Homes NSW and its consortium partners will operate
within the Waterloo Renewal Principles and any state level compact that might
be developed.
3)
While the Human Services Action Plan, prepared
by the Waterloo Human Services Collaborative, is referenced on page 8 of the
draft, it is plain from subsequent presentations that how the Waterloo South People
and Place Plan interacts with the Collaborative action plan has not been
considered. Clearly the challenges facing tenant’s access to human services do
not go away because of the redevelopment; they are only likely to be
exacerbated. So the People and Place Plan needs to cover how the Waterloo South
Plan will interact with the Collaborative’s plan to help address the areas
current human service challenges and any changes resulting from the
redevelopment. The Plan should commit the CHPs and development partners to
participation in the implementing the Waterloo Action Plan and helping address
the issues it identifies. It should also commit to a process for work to marry
up at a detailed level the Collaborative Action Plan and relevant aspects of
the Waterloo South People and Place Plan as well as a coordination mechanism
between the two plans.
4)
The People and Place Plan is primarily about
Waterloo South. While it recognises the rest of the “Estate” it is silent on
the 500+ public housing units to the east of the estate some of which border
areas to be redeveloped. The People and Place Plan needs to deal with, and
resource, the additional human service needs that come from the disruption and
anxiety caused by the redevelopment. In many places it is assumed that
unspecified “service providers” will help with the delivery of the Waterloo
South People and Place Plan, but there is no indication of how already stretched
services will be funded to undertake additional work created by the
redevelopment.
5)
Some of the undertakings are difficult to
understand, due to ambiguity about which group(s) of tenants are being referred
to and also about if Homes NSW refers to Homes NSW Portfolio (old LAHC) which deals with the redevelopment or Homes
NSW Services (old DCJ Housing) which only deals with public housing tenants. So
for example someone might think that a reference to Homes NSW working with tenants
might be about Homes NSW Services working with public housing tenants outside
Waterloo South when it actually refers to Home NSW Portfolio working with CHP
tenants. For clarity, the Plan needs to distinguish which tenant cohorts and
which parts of Homes NSW will be involved in each action.
6)
The redevelopment model creates two different
tenant cohorts – the existing public housing cohort and a new CHP cohort.
Services tenants can access will in large part be determined by who their
landlord is. CHPs will be expected to run their own tenant participation
program and this is usually not independent of landlord. Support for public
housing tenant participation is provided independently of Homes NSW by Mission
Australia for the public housing Neighbourhood Advisory Board. CHPs will also be
expected to provide wrap around support for its tenants while public housing
tenants continue in the current fractured system the Collaborative is trying to
address. Many issues, including Health and Wellbeing and Community safety, do
not totally depend on who your landlord is. The People and Place Plan needs to
commit to minimising the difference in supports between these two cohorts of
people. Equity in supports and access must be central to a people and place
plan for the entirety of Waterloo social housing, rather than a two tier system
depending on the landlord. The plan also needs to commit to mechanisms for
social housing tenants to meet and work together on non-tenancy issues of
common concern. The Waterloo Safety Action Group and the Waterloo Redevelopment
Group are examples of existing tenant groups, currently under the NAB that deal
with tenant issues unrelated to who their landlord is.
The People and Place Plan needs to capture
more accurate data about the Public Housing people in the place. Using suburb
wide data for Waterloo or combined with Redfern for Aboriginal people does not
accurately capture the complex mix of the people government policy places into
public housing nor the high concentration of Aboriginal people in the area
being redeveloped. Redeveloping an area that has a concentration of people with
complex needs has to inform how the redevelopment happens and the people part
of the plan. For example at a suburb level 9% of Census respondents said they
had a mental health condition, in Waterloo South it was 18.59%, even this was
less than the 35.5% of Waterloo public housing tenants who self-reported a
mental health condition in a recent Waterloo survey. That same survey found
only 21% of tenants surveyed had no long term health conditions compared to 65%
in the suburb from the last Census. An accurate picture of the people needs to
be factored in to the people and place plan. Survey and Homes NSW data should
be used if available. If ABS figures are to be used they should include data
for statistical areas that overlap Waterloo South. The limitations of any data
set should be recognised.
The current need
for the developer to employ police at the Waterloo Metro site to manage
interactions between the developer and the local community should indicate the
need to properly understand the local community and to have a people and place
plan in place that understands and works with the local community in its
complexity.