The only newsletter for public housing tenants guaranteed never to contain a recipe for left-over mince
Feature: Indepth reportage of the Lilyfield public housing redevelopment
ABOUT
Housolink was originally intended as an online voice for a locally startup, the Inner West Tenants Action Group. The group is no longer active, but the newsletter remains as an experiment in citizen journalism. From being a newsletter, it became a satirical site in response to the NSW Goverment's "Reshaping Public Housing". When the resident satirist. the self-styled "Desperate Houso" departed to set up her own blog, the newsletter went into hibernation, until reawakened by the Lilyfield redevelopment. When the Editor was contacted by a distressed tenant still living in the now derelict site almost a year later, the story continued. In the interests of being fair both to tenants and Housing NSW, the story will continue to be updated.
The Editor
Judy Singer is a public housing tenant active in her local area. Thanks to the confidence she has gained through producing this website, she is now a post-graduate journalism student at UTS.
Judy would would like to see this website become a professional publication giving NSW public housing tenants a voice, but is restricted by time constraints as a worker and carer.
She welcomes advice and sponsorship from organisations who would like this initiative to continue. Please contact her by clicking:
Blog
Check out Desperate Houso's Blog in which she details her daily struggle to survive in a poverty trap caught between the pincers of Centrelink and Housing NSW.
Private housing dwellers rip off public by $700,00...
DH, Done diddled by C'wealth Bank
Entrapment? D'oHLink forcing mothers into life of crime.
Pulling the Woolworths over our eyes
Brendan Nelson's sorry housing paradox:
Remembering
Paddy McGuiness
Hockey's Last Stand: A Buffoon Capers to Oblivion
Links
You can help create a fair go for all Australians...
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NSW
Comments on DOH reforms
ARCHIVE
Community Consultations on "Reshaping Public Housing 2005-6
Remember the Bad Old Days of Cherie Burton, Joe Tripodi, Frank Sartor, the outcry over Reshaping Public Housing ...
Trust me. i grew up in Public Housing...
Frank Sartor explains the Redfern-Waterloo Authority to a packed meeting at Redfern Town Hall
Whoops... there goes your home among the Gum Trees...
Kristina
Keneally explains that someone else needs your home more than
you do, so pack up and go quietly.
NEWS
Wed 9th April 2008
Lilyfield Redevelopment Plans on Display
Plans for the Edward St Lilyfield public housing redevelopment went on display to the public for the first time last night at Orange Grove Public School.
Local residents and stakeholders were invited to a community consultation prior to submission of the plans to Leichhardt Council.
As this website has been critical of the insensitive handling of tenant relocations by the then Housing Minister Cherie Burton and the Department of Housing (now rebadged as Housing NSW [HNSW]), it is now pleasing to report that the plans are impressive.
The new development will contain 88 1,2 and 3 bedroom new dwellings, with 146 bedrooms in all. The design is contemporary, varied and attractive, and shows none of the distinctive stigmatising features of past government housing. In line with HNSW's new commitment to environmental sustainability, the new buildings feature solar panels, attention has been given to thermal comfort, and robust materials selected for long term maintenance cost savings.
Ten of the units will be accessible and an alternative ramped pathway to public transport will compensate for the uphill footpath to the bus stop.
One of the attractive features of the original estate, the leafy internal gardens will be retained, and provisions made for community gardens.
HNSW spokespeople confirmed that existing tenants will have the right of return should they choose. While there was a proposal to create a mix of public and private housing in order to "de-ghettoise" public housing, HNSW representatives stated that due to the housing shortage, all the units will now be preserved for public housing.
Subject to DA approval from Leichhardt Council, it is estimated that construction could be completed in approximately two years. Attendance by local stakeholders was sparse in the two hours allocated to community consultation, suggesting that there will not be major community objections to the development.
Sun 9th December
Lilyfield update
The Department of Housing has found alternative accommodation for one of the two families who spoke to HousoLink about their fears of remaining in what they described as a "war zone".
The
tenant who will soon be moving is very happy with her new
accommodation. The other tenant is holding out for the standard
of accommodation she claims was promised by Departmental staff
who interviewed her at the beginning of the year.
An official of the Department of Housing has explained that it has been difficult in the current tight housing market to meet the special needs of the residents.
Both tenants, however, are adamant that despite having a year in which to rehouse all the residents, DOH failed to act until the situation was nearing crisis point. They claim that agreements made earlier were lost due to staff changes.
* Picture shows boarded up buildings on the estate
Mon 12th Nov 2007
The Lilyfield Challenge
One Year Later:
For those who remain in the now derelict estate, the challenge has not been met
Then... |
Now...
Still here.. |
One year after tenants received the unsettling, if generally welcome, news that they might be out of their crumbling homes anytime between Christmas and the next two years, eight families, including many young children, still remain in the now semi-derelict area.
The remaining tenants, who prefer not to be identified, are worried about the lack of safety in their homes. They tell of living in anxiety about vandalism, of people breaking in to the unoccupied properties, setting fires inside building in which tenants still live, of the Department of Housing wasting money boarding up the same broken windows only to have them broken into again instead of hiring security guards, of being too scared to let their children play outside, about their worry about the high security fence which will soon enclose them (not for their protection, but a requirement for demolition works tp proceed), of the department's inflexibility when it comes to meeting their charter to rehouse tenants in equivalent accommodation, and then refusing to go the extra $50 that it might take in the Inner City, of the constant turnover in staff and poor communications in the Broadway Office, which means that the paperwork keeps being lost, of health hazards because the Department no longer does maintenance, of living amongst packed crates for months in false anticipation, of deteriorating mental health due to the uncertainty and the rapidly declining living conditions, of the police "washing their hands" of the neighbourhood, and more.
The Lilyfield Challenge
Can NSW Labor get it right this time?
And can Public Housing residents lift their game to match?
Edward St Block, Balmain Road, Lilyfield
Going ... Going...
With a string of bungles, false starts, and policy "black holes" behind them, Labor is on the nose with tenant groups. Four years on from the traumatic evictions of its entire community, Minto remains a hole in the ground. The new Reshaping Public Housing policy threatens to turn public housing estates into free-range mental hospitals.
But now the Rudd/Gillard team's promise to return Labor to its traditional social justice values challenges NSW Labor to get creative with housing policy and leave a legacy they can be proud of.
The Lilyfield redevelopment gives Labor a golden opportunity to show that they can get it right. Old stock does need to be replaced, and it is generally agreed that public housing needs to be pepper-potted through the city instead of within stigmatised ghettos. While it may be true that you cant make an omelette without breaking eggs, the place to begin is with proper consultation and a commitment to honouring promises.
But the laudable plan to increase affordable housing stock in the Inner West got off to a bad start with Premier Iemma and Housing Minister Burton's brusque announcement in Lilyfield scaring the wits out of tenants.
The surprise announcement left the new Labor candidate for the state seat of Balmain, Verity Firth, in the lurch. She responded quickly, door-knocking the estate, seeking to reassure tenants with the news that she had extracted a written promise from the Minister, guaranteeing the right of return to all who wanted it.
The promise of this magical piece of paper may have some value in helping both tenants and Verity Firth to sleep easier at night, given that life must go on. But tenants would be justified in thinking that the promise is on a par with Mark Latham's "Giant Cheque" stunt.
There can be no cast-iron guarantees for the poor in John Howard's brave new "devil-take-the-hindmost" Australia. Even with the best will in the world, who is to say Labor will be returned in the March election to honour its pledge?
It should be said that not all tenants want to return, nor do they feel any particular attachment to the Lilyfield site. Nor should they be expected to. Some advocates of public housing, particularly those who don’t actually live in it, have a romanticist, sentimentalised need to see Public Housing estates as repositories of mythical "community" … meanwhile, the aspirational dormitory suburbs are empty by day as their inhabitants blithely jet around pursuing their interesting careers and lifestyles.
Public Housing tenants are as rational calculators as any within the constraints of their limited resources. They want, like all punters, to get the best deal they can for themselves and their families. They will be hopeful that this time, they just may get something better. And if Iemma's stated passion for public housing is to be believed, perhaps they will.
Nevertheless, judging on past experiences, tenants would be wise to expect the best, but prepare for the worst.
Certainly Minto tenants had all kinds of well-intentioned guarantees from no less a bleeding-heart leftie than Andrew Refshauge. Yet the devil was in the detail. 4 years on, with much of the area privatised, and the public spaces still holes in the ground, it seems that the new stock will be single occupancy units for the elderly. So while the number of units may be the same, the number of occupants won't be, nor will the families be back.
The best guarantee that tenants have is to form, not sentimental museums of lost working-class virtues, but self-educating, self-helping strong communities. Tenants also need to start taking "baby steps" out of negativity, towards self-empowerment. As the Northcott Arts Project shows, even very disadvantaged communities can be turned around with the right kind of support. Tenants need to be encouraged with innovative tenant participation and leadership development programs, not goaded from above with punitive and disciplinarian policies from a new cadre of Youngish Labor rightwingers who seem to know little or could care less about their own party's history and ideals.
For their part, a much larger proportion of public housing tenants could be joining political parties to support and encourage their representatives to formulate good policy, rather than grievancing ineffectually against all politicians.
There is plenty of scope for both NSW Labor and Public Housing tenants to lift their respective games
BACKGROUND
Merry Xmas, your home is being demolished!
Out
of the blue, in late Nov 2006, public housing tenants at Edward
St Lilyfield received a hand-delivered letter informing them
that their neighbour-hood was about to be redeveloped. In
no-frills departmentalese, it advised them that they might
have to move before Christmas, or anytime within 2 years.
Read letter...