Locals concerned over Redfern-Waterloo revitalisation

The former Redfern Primary School (proposed National Indigenous Development Centre) with the two public housing blocks destined to be demolished behind.

Only a stone’s throw from Sydney’s CBD, Redfern’s rundown reputation has long stood in stark contrast to its coveted central locale. While other inner-city suburbs like Surry Hills and Pyrmont have been gentrified, Redfern-Waterloo is now getting its own makeover.

Since 2004 things have been set on a course of change for the suburb with the formulation of the Redfern-Waterloo Authority. The RWA is responsible for implementing the Redfern-Waterloo Plan which aims revitalise the area and address issues like infrastructure, delivery of human services and employment generation. But many are questioning the RWA and whether their plan is really in the best interests of the community.

Spokesperson for the community-based activist group Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development, Faye Williams, says “There are serious problems in the area of crime, safety, mental health but the plan is just tinkering at the edges.”

“There is very little happening and the biggest problem is that they are putting no money in to it. We are still here struggling along, under-resourced,” she says. 

Similarly Redfern Legal Centre Executive Officer, Helen Campbell, who is also on the RWA’s Human Services Advisory Committee,  says  “They are really good at having meetings and producing documents and nothing gets done in terms of human services.”

With a major part of the Redfern-Waterloo Plan being to bring more private residents in to the area, there are concerns that the precinct lacks the infrastructure to cope with the inevitable population increase.

Already the redevelopment of a public housing block has been announced by Housing Minister Matt Brown. The current 106 residences on the Elizabeth St block will make way for 264 apartments, with 158 of these to be sold off privately, increasing demand for local education and health care facilities.

According to the RWA’s Built Environment Plan, the former Redfern Public school is to be redeveloped as a community centre and recreational facility while the former Rachel Forster Hospital will become a residential area. This despite the fact that currently a Waterloo public housing pensioner would have to catch a bus to Camperdown to receive hospital treatment.

Geoff Turnbull of REDWatch, a community advocacy group started to monitor Government involvement in the Redfern-Waterloo area, says “The government is going through the motions but it is not interested really in what the local community thinks about anything. I mean on the human services side of stuff, human services providers have absolutely given up.”

“There is a battle of spin going on here,” he says.

On 28 April, The Sydney Morning Herald published a story on the possible demolition of the State Government’s tallest public housing towers in Waterloo in a bid to encourage more private residents to the area. However Yolanda Gil, RWA Planning Manager, says this is not an imminent redevelopment.

“We don’t have authorisation on the public housing areas as yet,” Gil says.

But what is imminent are the needs of the thousands of public housing tenants already in the adjoining suburbs. Faye Williams says that although the RWA may claim the area has sufficient infrastructure to service to the community, this is simply not true.

“They [the RWA] said not to give more resources and the excuses are that there is a list of all these services [already]. Well the list is misleading,” she says.

Organizations such as the Inner Sydney Regional Council for Social Development service the entire inner and eastern Sydney region, but the concentration of problems in Redfern-Waterloo drains much of their resources. Williams says she is concerned about government decisions surrounding an area that houses such a high percentage of vulnerable people when the real estate they live on is worth billions.

Whether the balance is struck in the gentrification of Redfern-Waterloo remains to be seen however one service provider, Kate Cavanagh, Director of Services for Mercy Arms Community Care, says “We have no problem with the building changes as long as the facilities are adequate and a sense of community is maintained.”

Image care of Redfern Waterloo Authority - The former Redfern Primary School (proposed National Indigenous Development Centre) with the two public housing blocks destined to be demolished behind.

http://www.reportage.uts.edu.au/stories/2007/society/redfern.html