$130M bailout helps bandage Housing’s eyesores

“The ibis restaurant” – a corroded, road-dwelling dumpster where urban pests constantly feast, is just one of the eyesores of the Redfern-Waterloo public housing precinct.

Broken security doors, idle elevators, gaping fences and dark hallways are some other hallmarks of long term maintenance issues that locals pray will be addressed by the Federal Government’s $130M bailout for Housing NSW.

$9.82M will go into repairing 3948 homes and infrastructure in the Redfern-Waterloo area over the next two years.

However the maintenance backlog for the whole of NSW was recorded at $647.5M last year – a $35.5M increase from the year before.

The area’s tenants say it’s clear negligent repairs allowed the costs to accrue.

“You put $40-$50 bandaids on and then later on down the road you spend $5000 or $10,000,” said Ross Smith, tenant representative of a group of blocks called the ‘People’s Precinct.’

“It’s a today mentality. You eventually get to a stage where it’s a bandaid on top of a bandaid. Then there’s nothing left to hold any more bandaids. So then you have to replace an entire unit,” he said.

Mr Smith said Housing NSW barely responded to repair requests by the tenant advisory committee, which was largely ignored by the bureaucracy.

NSW Housing Minister, David Borger, said that the extensive backlog was a result of funding cuts by the previous Federal Government.

“The backlog would not be such as issue if the former Howard Government hadn’t ripped out one billion dollars worth of funding from public housing in the decade they were in Government,” said Borger, who said Labor’s investment would reduce the backlog in NSW by over 75 per cent over the next two years.

But Mr Smith blamed the Department’s failure to adapt to the restricted funding: “The Titanic’s sunk and these bludgers haven’t even had the brains to grab a deckchair to hang onto.”

Housing NSW announced a new maintenance contract last September that would bring maintenance standards “into line with community expectation,” and which involved, for the first time ever, undertaking preventative maintenance.

But a recent upgrade announcement for the Waterloo Green common area has residents convinced the Department is still seriously misguided. Plans to remove 167 trees, upgrade the playground, returf the grass and relocate a barbeque will cost $950,000.

“It’s got nothing to do with the maintenance problems that the residents are complaining about,” said Sydney City Greens Councillor Irene Doutney, also a public housing tenant.

A baffled Ms Doutney said the upgrade was a response to a safety audit of Waterloo Green, which was targeted as a problem area for drinkers. But, instead, several maintenance issues were identified.

“The Department of Housing came up with this solution to the street drinkers, which was to rearrange Waterloo Green. It’s got nothing to do with the social problem.

“It’s a total furphy to think that if they pull out trees and move a bit of furniture, that it’s going to stop a problem which may or may not really exist.”

Ms Doutney said that a security company was already contracted to watch the area, but she never saw any guards.

“It’s so typical of housing to hire the worst contractors they can get and when residents complain, to do nothing about it,” she said.

Caption: Public housing contractors let the birds do garbage collection, but they at least keep the lawns mowed