NAKED CITY: TOM’S LEGACY IN THE LOO
We have all seen the results of the public housing selloff at Millers Point and the indecent real estate scramble to secure the million dollar heritage properties. Meanwhile in Woolloomooloo a sizeable slab of public housing remains but the question arises, for how long?
The recent death of Tom Uren reminds us of his remarkable legacy in Sydney suburbs such as Glebe and Woolloomooloo, where numerous historic dwellings were saved from developers in the 1970s and given over to affordable public housing. Today in the Loo he is immortalised in an area known as Tom Uren Place, originally conceived as a central community area but now essentially a welfare hub to service the area’s homeless.
Despite various problems over the years public housing in the Loo has created a real community with its mix of older style terraces and latter day townhouses and apartments. With plenty of green spaces and wide open streets it stands in stark congress to some of the public housing disasters that plague Sydney’s outer west.
What the Loo estate has always lacked is a central shopping and community area, the kind of social focus that binds a neighbourhood together. Tom Uren Place was originally conceived as this welcoming communal centre but today it’s very much a rundown quarter of welfare services, a fortress like police station, a few basic shops and the homeless sleeping rough.
There’s considerable resentment on the part of many public housing residents that what was originally intended as their community heart has now been hijacked by the welfare sector. The various charities that support the homeless in the Loo are well aware of this antagonism but there is simply nowhere for them to move.
In 2013 part of Tom Uren Place was sold off to developers and the first signs of redevelopment of the area are underway, albeit of a minor nature with the possible addition of a number of shops. What the area really needs is a complete rethink that accommodates both the homeless and their welfare protectors and gives the residents of the Loo estate a real community/shopping centre.
It’s a real shame that the millions squandered on redeveloping both the Walla Mulla and Bourke Street Parks was not used to address this more immediate problem. Despite their expensive cosmetic makeovers both these areas are seldom used by the local community and would certainly provide the real estate if they were given over entirely to providing for the homeless. Tom’s original vision for the Loo could then be restored with the area now known as Tom Uren Place revitalised as both a shopping centre and village style meeting place.
Unfortunately there’s also an almost conspiratorial theory that maintaining the current status quo, with its all its associated problems, sets the scene for a Rocks style selloff of the public housing state somewhere in the not too distant future. With its close proximity to the city and gentrification on all sides the estate is a developers wet dream, just waiting to be appropriated. Tom would be feeling uneasy in his grave.
