At the public hearings, Housing NSW and the NSW Lands and Housing Corporation were the only two organisations to be recalled to give more evidence. By the end of the second day it was very apparent why this was done.
The NSW Lands and Housing Corporation’s answers to the Committee’s additional questions were very illuminating. They included an admission that there was not a detailed Property Condition Audit for the 130,000 properties in its portfolio. This came after the evidence that such an audit had been commenced last year and was not due to be completed for another year. The lack of such an audit raised the question of how had the often cited maintenance backlog figure been calculated?
In the first hearing, evidence was given that 9,000 properties had been sold in the last ten years to finance maintenance. The Corporation’s 2012-13 Annual Report showed a reduction of approximately 1,300 properties compared to its 2011-12 stock holding.
There was an admission that the redevelopment of the Minto and Bonnyrig public housing estates had not lived up to expectations and is way behind the announced timeframe.
The admission that there had been no economic modelling done prior to making the decision to sell the Corporation’s entire property portfolio in the Rocks and Millers Point area, including the Sirius building, caused further questioning. This in turn uncovered the fact that there had been no agreement reached between the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, which owned the land in question, and NSW Lands and Housing Corporation, which owned the building(s) on the land, as to how the proceeds of sale were to be divided. The Corporation declined to indicate the percentage split of its share of the sale proceeds between maintenance and replacement stock acquisition.
The only certainty that emerged was that all the properties were to be sold and that there would be no government-owned property used for public or social housing in the area in the future. It marked the introduction of selective denial by the Corporation of its much-trumpeted social mix concept when espousing its vision for public housing. It was an admission by the Corporation that it would implement gentrification principles when it was in its economic benefit to do so.
The implications of the NSW Lands and Housing Corporation’s actions in Millers Point and The Rocks will cast a long shadow over any other estate redevelopment it may undertake in the future, especially in the inner-city areas such as Waterloo, Redfern, Surry Hills, Woolloomooloo or Glebe.
The evidence given by Housing NSW and the NSW Lands and Housing Corporation was most informative. It gave the public a rare insight into the workings of both organisations.
