06 July 2005

Minister Sartor to Meet with Public Tenants at PCYC Saturday 9^th July 2005 11am

A letter has been received by some public housing tenants over the last couple of days advising them of a meeting that has been organized for public housing tenants with Minister Sartor, Kristina Keneally and representatives of Department of Housing, Police and the City of Sydney Council. A copy of the letter is attached for your information. We have been advised that public housing tenants should have received a letter from the Minister in the mail and that a leaflet also attached should be hand delivered from the RWA starting this afternoon.

Given that a number of public tenants we have spoken to have not received a letter about the meeting this coming Saturday we are passing on the details and requesting people to feed the information out into Redfern and Waterloo public housing networks as soon as possible so all public housing tenants have the opportunity to turn up and hear from the Minister. This is important given the very short notice, yet again, for an RWA public meeting. We are advised that the short notice on this occasion results from the recent illness of Nette Griggs, who has recently joined the RWA from the City of Sydney as the new Community Relations Manager. In these circumstances it is even more important for the RWA to feed information out to the existing information networks to ensure as many people hear about the meeting as early as possible.

The Minister has also promised at least 4 Community Forums per year for all residents of Redfern-Waterloo and it is hoped that relatively soon the Minister will announce a date for his first meeting with the whole community. We are advised that the delay in holding a Community Forum results from the first few months being a start-up phase and that the Minister wants the first Forum is to be scheduled at a time when the Minister is able to give a substantive report on progress of the RWA.

We await news of the first Community Forum, the Ministerial Advisory Committees and other mechanisms to ensure community involvement in the decisions to be taken about the future of Redfern-Waterloo.