Some further REDWatch comments on the People and Place Plan

You may have already seen REDWatch Initial comments on the People and Place Plan. Subsequent comments were also made in the South Sydney Herald online in Can the Waterloo South People and Place Plan deliver?

Prior to the REDWatch meeting about this Plan, REDWatch produced some Focus Group Questions for Draft Waterloo South People and Place Plan. Similar questions have now been used to facilitate discussions with Groundswell Agencies and with the tenants only portion of the Waterloo Redevelopment Group. These questions might be helpful for people preparing their own feedback. Another approach suggested is to think in terms of what you want to Keep, Change or Add as you review the plan. REDWatch has not prepared its submission as yet and we are keen to hear from others about their concerns.

Following a recent Homes NSW presentation and discussion with other Groundswell agencies , it seems to us that this plan is really a Waterloo South project plan and not really a People and Place Plan for all Waterloo social housing tenants during and after the redevelopment. This raises concerns about the People and Place issues the redevelopment brings for the surrounding community, the interaction between the public housing and Community Housing Provider tenants, and how the Waterloo People and Place plan will mesh and cooperate with the Waterloo Human Service Plan that is looking at current issues, which will persist irrespective of who the social housing tenant’s land lord is.

Here are some thoughts on items REDWatch would currently like to see added.

1)      Health Facilities built into the plan – From the planning for the redevelopment of the Metro site there has been recognition of the important opportunity to have a Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) run a “Health One” or similar in the Waterloo redevelopment. This option is in the current Collaborative Action Plan as Action 2.6 but it is not specifically mentioned in the People and Place Plan. The People and Place Action 4.4 is to “Enable the local community to access affordable health services”. This action seems to bundle the responsibilities of SLHD and the Public Health Network (PHN) which is responsible for doctors and primary health care into a single action. There should be a commitment to providing a base for a SLHD “Health One” or similar for the delivery of local health services, in addition to a costed plan for how bulk billing doctors will be provided into an area the redevelopment plans will further gentrify.

2)      LAHC has agreed to Waterloo Renewal Principles February 2023 with local services and the Waterloo Redevelopment Group over. These were based on earlier work by The Tenants Union NSW and Shelter NSW over a state wide compact that Minister Jackson has shown interest in. Back in 2016 LAHC agreed to a Waterloo Stakeholder and Engagement Framework but were unable to deliver on it. The People and Place plan must include undertakings that Homes NSW and its consortium partners will operate within the Waterloo Renewal Principles and any state level compact that might be developed.

3)      While the Human Services Action Plan, prepared by the Waterloo Human Services Collaborative, is referenced on page 8 of the draft, it is plain from subsequent presentations that how the Waterloo South People and Place Plan interacts with the Collaborative action plan has not been considered. Clearly the challenges facing tenant’s access to human services do not go away because of the redevelopment; they are only likely to be exacerbated. So the People and Place Plan needs to cover how the Waterloo South Plan will interact with the Collaborative’s plan to help address the areas current human service challenges and any changes resulting from the redevelopment. The Plan should commit the CHPs and development partners to participation in the implementing the Waterloo Action Plan and helping address the issues it identifies. It should also commit to a process for work to marry up at a detailed level the Collaborative Action Plan and relevant aspects of the Waterloo South People and Place Plan as well as a coordination mechanism between the two plans.

4)      The People and Place Plan is primarily about Waterloo South. While it recognises the rest of the “Estate” it is silent on the 500+ public housing units to the east of the estate some of which border areas to be redeveloped. The People and Place Plan needs to deal with, and resource, the additional human service needs that come from the disruption and anxiety caused by the redevelopment. In many places it is assumed that unspecified “service providers” will help with the delivery of the Waterloo South People and Place Plan, but there is no indication of how already stretched services will be funded to undertake additional work created by the redevelopment.

5)      Some of the undertakings are difficult to understand, due to ambiguity about which group(s) of tenants are being referred to and also about if Homes NSW refers to Homes NSW Portfolio (old LAHC)  which deals with the redevelopment or Homes NSW Services (old DCJ Housing) which only deals with public housing tenants. So for example someone might think that a reference to Homes NSW working with tenants might be about Homes NSW Services working with public housing tenants outside Waterloo South when it actually refers to Home NSW Portfolio working with CHP tenants. For clarity, the Plan needs to distinguish which tenant cohorts and which parts of Homes NSW will be involved in each action.

6)      The redevelopment model creates two different tenant cohorts - the existing public housing cohort and a new CHP cohort. Services tenants can access will in large part be determined by who their landlord is. CHPs will be expected to run their own tenant participation program and this is usually not independent of landlord. Support for public housing tenant participation is provided independently of Homes NSW by Mission Australia for the public housing Neighbourhood Advisory Board. CHPs will also be expected to provide wrap around support for its tenants while public housing tenants continue in the current fractured system the Collaborative is trying to address. Many issues, including Health and Wellbeing and Community safety, do not totally depend on who your landlord is. The People and Place Plan needs to commit to minimising the difference in supports between these two cohorts of people. Equity in supports and access must be central to a people and place plan for the entirety of Waterloo social housing, rather than a two tier system depending on the landlord. The plan also needs to commit to mechanisms for social housing tenants to meet and work together on non-tenancy issues of common concern. The Waterloo Safety Action Group and the Waterloo Redevelopment Group are examples of existing tenant groups, currently under the NAB that deal with tenant issues unrelated to who their landlord is.

The People and Place Plan needs to capture more accurate data about the Public Housing people in the place. Using suburb wide data for Waterloo or combined with Redfern for Aboriginal people does not accurately capture the complex mix of the people government policy places into public housing nor the high concentration of Aboriginal people in the area being redeveloped. Redeveloping an area that has a concentration of people with complex needs has to inform how the redevelopment happens and the people part of the plan. For example at a suburb level 9% of Census respondents said they had a mental health condition, in Waterloo South it was 18.59%, even this was less than the 35.5% of Waterloo public housing tenants who self-reported a mental health condition in a recent Waterloo survey. That same survey found only 21% of tenants surveyed had no long term health conditions compared to 65% in the suburb from the last Census. An accurate picture of the people needs to be factored in to the people and place plan. Survey and Homes NSW data should be used if available. If ABS figures are to be used they should include data for statistical areas that overlap Waterloo South. The limitations of any data set should be recognised.

The current need for the developer to employ police at the Waterloo Metro site to manage interactions between the developer and the local community should indicate the need to properly understand the local community and to have a people and place plan in place that understands and works with the local community in its complexity.