REDWatch Initial comments on the People and Place Plan

It is hence important that tenants and services review this draft and comment on any omissions or proposed responses to issues of concern. The current Waterloo Human Services Collaborative Action Plan deals only with human services issues currently impacting tenants. The People and Place Plan needs to deal with all the additional issues that might impact tenants as a result of the redevelopment. It also needs to show how this plan interacts with ongoing aspects of the Collaborative’s Action Plan.

On a preliminary read the draft plan does not appear to cover all key concerns raised during consultations nor deal adequately with the interactions between what is happening within the redevelopment area and the rest of the Waterloo public housing. Local service providers are expected to support many actions in areas that they are not currently funded for. Expecting service providers to provide activities at night for example, will require additional funding from elsewhere even if they were funded to do it during the day. Unless Homes NSW decided to start funding NGOs to support public housing tenants it is difficult to see how parts of the plan will succeed.

DCJ funded Targeted Early Intervention (TEI) services, which include NGO community centres are already under pressure for providing services to public housing tenants without young children, and have been told for some time there are no additional government funds for community centre activities. How Council will fund these kinds of services in its Community Centre also remains to be seen given that Council does not run this kind of service elsewhere.

An awful lot seems to be left up to the Community Housing Provider (CHP) and the Developer to deliver without there being any indication that there are sufficient resources in the contract to deliver the ongoing services and activities. There is no indication of how some expected dislocations in the community are to be handled. For example there currently exists a single social housing tenant voice in the form of Waterloo Neighbourhood Advisory Board. CHP tenants have previously been excluded from NABs and TPCE support because the CHP is expected to deliver these services and a unified social housing voice is likely to be lost. This might make sense for housing standards and maintenance but not for wider NAB activities like the NAB’s Waterloo Safety Action Group.

It is also unclear how the Plan interacts with the current Waterloo Human Services work even though this work is acknowledged. The problems do not go away just because a Community Housing Provider (CHP) takes over managing some tenants from Homes NSW. The CHP will need to become involved in the Collaborative at some point and be part of the place based human service plan and its aspirations to improve services for social housing tenants.

REDWatch is in the early stages of identifying areas of concern and we welcome input from tenants, agencies and the wider community on your concerns.

REDWatch has subsequently made some additional comments on this plan in the South Sydney Herald  Can the Waterloo South People and Place Plan deliver?