[North Eveleigh] Homes NSW Maintenance Changes / 20th Anniversary / RWA no deliverables / People and Place / Research

Fri Jun 28 11:53:36 AEST 2024

Dear REDWatch members, supporters and agencies,

Homes NSW Explains Maintenance changes - REDWatch 4 July 6pm

REDWatch 20th Anniversary

What were we told the RWA would do for us 20 years ago?

Draft Waterloo South People and Place Submissions

Interesting Research
Please note - this email contains hyperlinks. This means that if you see a blue underlined word or phrase that you can click on it and go directly to a document or to get more information.
Homes NSW Explains Maintenance changes - REDWatch 4 July 6pm
On July 1 a new maintenance system starts for public housing. Some changes are immediate, some will roll out over the next few months. Homes NSW will attend the REDWatch meeting on 4th July to explain the changes. Come and hear Homes NSW so you know what to expect and can explain it to others. Please spread the word to public housing tenants. To promote the event this is the Homes NSW Explains Maintenance changes - REDWatch 4 July 2024 6pm flyer<http://www.redwatch.org.au/eventnotice/240704redwp/view>.
The July REDWatch meeting will be held at 6pm on Thursday 4th July 2024 at Counterpoint's Factory Community Centre, 67 Raglan St Waterloo and it will also be available on Zoom via http://tinyurl.com/RedwatchMeetingZoom .
REDWatch 20th Anniversary
REDWatch celebrated its 20th Anniversary this month. At our June meeting we reflected on and celebrated our activities, campaigns, actions and volunteers since we started in 2004. As part of this we did a presentation on REDWatch 20 years - How did we get here?<http://www.redwatch.org.au/redwatch/about/210611redw/view> The last section of the presentation was recorded and you can see it on YouTube at REDWatch 20 years- Some Actions, Campaigns and Reflections video<https://youtu.be/fOqtUnzyoDo>.
In addition to those who spoke or provided messages on the night there has subsequently been a Minute by the Lord Mayor on the 20th Anniversary of REDWatch<https://meetings.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/documents/s84746/20th%20Anniversary%20of%20REDWatch.pdf>. The Lord Mayor put the minute to Council on 24 June 2024 and Councillors Ellsmore and Scott also spoke to the motion, which was supported unanimously by Council. You can see the recording of that Council meeting here<http://webcast.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/archive/video24-0624.php> with the REDWatch minute presentation between 16:50-23.30.
Hopefully this material will be helpful background for those who want to find out more about REDWatch, as well as help a walk down memory lane for those who have been involved at some point over the last 20 years.
Finally this is also a good time for a big thankyou to everyone who has signed a petition or supported an action to Lift Redfern Station, attended a community meeting, written a submission or a letter, spoken up for our community or volunteered time to an event or campaign. You are the people who stand up for this community and change could not have happened without all of you.
What were we told the RWA would do for us 20 years ago?
In preparing for the 20th Anniversary we had cause to go back and look at the early years. After years of the Redfern Waterloo Partnership Project, The Redfern Waterloo Authority, The Sydney Metropolitan Development Authority, UrbanGrowth and Infrastructure NSW (where the RWA went finally to die), we though it useful to look back at what NSW Premier Carr said in 2004 this state intervention and its Redfern Plan would achieve. The words below are from the Premier's announcement of the RWA on 26 October 2004 when he said:
The Redfern-Waterloo Plan will see:

*         The major redevelopment of the Redfern Railway Station, including the development of a  significant town centre,  with commercial and retail activity within a railway concourse;

*         A new pedestrian bridge across the southern arterial roads of Gibbons and Regent Streets at Redfern;

*         A new pedestrian and bicycle bridge to link the Australian Technology Park with North Eveleigh;

*         Extending the entry requirements for the Australian Technology Park to encourage further commercial activity;

*         Optimising use of Government land;

*         Increasing rental or home ownership housing opportunities;

*         Investigating the renewal of public housing estates;

*         Developing a cultural strategy to support economic and urban regeneration; and

*         Working with the City of Sydney Council and the Commonwealth Government on community renewal.

You will notice that many of the bits the community was supposed to get out of this intervention never eventuated and that the bridge connecting North and South Eveleigh that ARAG, FOE and REDWatch have been campaigning for, with the support of Council, was one of the community benefits promised in 2004 by Premier Carr that was never delivered.
Regrettably the Redfern Waterloo Partnership Project's plan to improve human services did not fare any better. You can see some of this story in Human Services in Redfern and Waterloo: A potted history listing of plans, interventions, activities, consultations and reports<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/humanservices/wloohs/180116redw>, which has lead us currently to the Waterloo Human Services Collaborative and the plan on its website www.waterloo2017.com<http://www.waterloo2017.com>.
Draft Waterloo South People and Place Submissions
REDWatch's submission raised many concerns about the Homes NSW People and Place Plan. Our main concern however was that it was primarily a plan for Waterloo South and that it did not deal adequately with the interaction of the redevelopment with the rest of the estate. REDWatch argued that either the plan needed to be reworked to cover all the people living in Waterloo public housing, or that Homes NSW needed to produce an Estate Management Plan, dealing with the impacts and the equity issues that will result from the redevelopment. Major omissions, in REDWatch's view, were not dealing with impacts from the redevelopment on the rest of the public housing residents and how the plan interacted with the issues being dealt with in the human services plan for dealing with current issues.
On 29 May in a briefing and Q&A for Shelter NSW<https://vimeo.com/953764395/e5c9a34fba?share=copy> (6:29) Rebecca Pinkstone, Homes NSW CEO, said that in the creation of Homes NSW that a gap was identified around estate management plans and that these were needed and not just an asset driven approach to redevelopment. REDWatch's submission responds to that gap on the waterloo estate.
Below are the submissions from some of the organisations with an interest in the Waterloo Redevelopment. You will notice there are many common threads in the submissions:

  *   REDWatch Submission on Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/lahc22-23/240620redw/view>
  *   City of Sydney Submission on Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/lahc22-23/240620cos/view>
  *   Counterpoint Community Services Submission on Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/lahc22-23/240620ccs/view>
  *   Shelter NSW Submission on Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/lahc22-23/240620snsw/view>
  *   Inner Sydney Voice Submission on Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan<http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/lahc22-23/240620isv/view>
Interesting Research
Homes NSW recently launched the Waterloo History Project, but the pdf of the book and the video are not yet publically available.
In the meantime this recent academic work in Planning Perspectives on the History of the Waterloo Estate might be of interest - Wilful ignorance at Waterloo: public housing quality and political stigma in Sydney's largest estate renewal<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02665433.2024.2337268> by Michael Zanardo, Alistair Sisson, Cameron Logan & Rebecca McLaughlan.
Also recently released by UNSW City Futures Research Centre is the Riverwood North/Washington Park renewal project: Final evaluation<https://cityfutures.ada.unsw.edu.au/research/projects/longitudinal-evaluation-of-riverwood-north-renewal-project/> about this public housing redevelopment.

Regards,

Geoff
Geoffrey Turnbull
REDWatch Co-Spokesperson
Ph Wk: (02) 8004 1490  Mob: 0418 457 392
email: spokesperson at redwatch.org.au<mailto:spokesperson at redwatch.org.au>
web: www.redwatch.org.au<http://www.redwatch.org.au/>
FB: www.facebook.com/RedfernEveleighDarlingtonWaterlooWatch/<http://www.facebook.com/RedfernEveleighDarlingtonWaterlooWatch/>

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