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Waterloo Green: not a safe place

Public housing residents near Waterloo Green are exhausted and fearful in their own neighborhood, having to confront drug dealing and public drunkenness every day reports John Williams in the South Sydney Herald of April 2008.

Many elderly residents in the 30-storey public housing blocks known as The Towers of Despair are afraid to go out for fear of being robbed or assaulted.

Years of attempts to get the authorities to act have come to naught.

A Safety Audit conducted by police found the area was so rundown and crime-ridden, with lights not working and amenities in disrepair, that legitimate users were afraid to go near the park.

Acting Superintendent Bradley Monk said police patrols were tasked to Waterloo Green on every shift, often to attend to assaults and alcohol-related crime. However, making it an alcohol-free zone was impossible because it was departmental property. “It is difficult to tell people they cannot drink in what is effectively their own front yard,” he said.

Head of local Aboriginal training company Tribal Warrior, Shane Phillips, who was born and bred in Waterloo, said the people taking their children along to a day of drinking and drugging at Waterloo Green had little idea that what they were doing was wrong. He said addiction was like waking up with a light bulb in your face. You could see little else. And struggling people needed innovative programs rather than their children removed.

“Taking kids creates resentment and anger,” he said. “I've been to many corporate functions where people are going on as crazy as the people on Waterloo Green, but they are behind closed doors. We either toss aside the people who are struggling, or we start helping them break the cycle.”

A spokesman for NSW Minister for Community Services Kevin Greene said the government funded a large range of services for children in the Waterloo area. A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Housing said an action plan involving child welfare and numerous other agencies had been developed to reduce anti-social behavior associated with the excessive public drinking on Waterloo Green.

Source: South Sydney Herald April 2008 - www.southsydneyherald.com.au