For more than 35 years, the NSW government has been developing housing renewal policy frameworks around concepts of community as place-based, rather than as a grouping existing in a social network free of geographical constraint. At long last there has been some new research done around the subject of the what, how, why, and where of a community and how community is impacted by socio-economic factors, and it challenges the wisdom preached as gospel by the establishment. The research calls into question the government’s policy of the last 15 to 20 years to break up the public housing estates citing grounds of “community regeneration” under the banner of the benefits of “social mix”.
The research has raised the hackles of those who promote the concept of creating a consensus-based functional community as a smokescreen for their true purpose of imposing a market forces ideology on estate tenants. Under the current “best practice” tenants are denied the opportunity to have any voice in deciding the fate of their community. Government consults tenants solely about the “how” and denies them the opportunity to have any input into the “why” component of the redevelopment under consideration, out of fear that the tenants will unite and demand the ability to have a say in the future of their community.
The success of the government in implementing a market forces ideology in its public housing policy can by judged by the shift in the ratio between private and public housing stock on the estates it has “redeveloped” in NSW over the years. In the case of the initial Claymore Estate redevelopment, 12 per cent of the homes were private housing. After the redevelopment at Airds, 14 per cent of the homes were private housing. At the Bonnyrigg Estate redevelopment, the figure was 30 per cent. The jewel in the crown was the Minto Estate redevelopment where figures climbed to over 77 per cent of the homes being private sector. The yet to be repeated apex performance was the “redevelopment” of the Villawood East public housing estate in Sydney’s south-west in 1998, where not one of the 253 dwellings was replaced by public accommodation, despite government assurances to the contrary. All of this has meant cash flow into the government coffers.
In the case of the Waterloo Public Housing Estate the Baird government is promising that a $22 billion construction boom will flow from its historic decision to privatise public housing in NSW, to be followed by a harvesting of stamp duties and other government charges levied on the sale, and each subsequent resale, of the products of the boom.
The fact that estate redevelopment reduces public housing stock and impacts adversely on the private sector rental market is a mere bagatelle in the grand picture – just ask those whose coffers fill with each redevelopment. The other casualty is the existing community.
