Waterloo Estate redevelopment moves forward with more community consultation

By AMBER GRIFFIN

The Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC) is continuing community consultation to involve the community and residents in the redevelopment plans of Waterloo Estate. 

While other council and government community consultation campaigns have come under fire recently, the LAHC’s campaign is in the same hot water.

Waterloo Estate residents feel as though the community consultation is a “shallow gesture” after hundreds were evicted from their public homes that are set to be demolished. 

“It takes years to build community cohesion in a new community. Currently that cohesion is there but it will be broken by the redevelopment and a significant injection of at least 70% new private residents”  Community group ‘REDWatch’ spokesperson Geoffrey Turnbull said. 

“REDWatch’s role is to try and influence the process to reflect the diversity of community voices, irrespective of if government agencies want to seriously consult with the community or not.” 

LAHC justified the redevelopment through four key claims about the social benefits of redeveloping public housing estates and replacing them with mixed tenure housing: 

• New social housing is well designed and indistinguishable from private and affordable housing 

• Renewal improves ‘place outcomes’ 

• Renewal improves education and employment outcomes and reduces disadvantage 

• Renewal reduces crime and anti-social behaviour

Geoffrey Turnbull told City Hub that the resident’s concerns about the community consultation are fully justified.

“In the consultation report for the planning part of the redevelopment, community concerns were not noted, nor an explanation as to why they were not considered.” 

Consultation “ticking a box”

There were approximately 2500 submissions from individuals, agencies, and councils calling for a Social Impact Assessment on the redevelopment plans. This assessment would involve a process for the management and monitoring of the potential social impacts of the redevelopment project, both positive and negative – it has not been done. The Department of Planning assessment report did not mention these requests or respond to them. 

Due to this information, REDWatch’s Geoffrey Turnbull asks, “Why would the community believe that the consultation was seriously interested in what they thought, rather than just a ‘tick the box’ that the government goes through?”

LAHC and consultants aim to use the community consultation to introduce a ‘People and Place guiding framework’ to the community and Waterloo Estate stakeholders. 

The framework is being developed to be utilised in the next stage of the over-six-year Waterloo redevelopment process. It will be used to influence decisions about the Waterloo redevelopment, including what is included in its contracts. 

Key outcomes that LAHC hopes to achieve with the People and Place guiding framework include connecting with country, place making, future human services, tenant relocations and support, and engagement. 

REDWatch believes that LAHC is rolling out the same process used for other redevelopments that are much more ‘tick the box – done that’, rather than showing understanding community concerns.

“REDWatch is much more concerned with what has been learnt from other developments, how do we avoid the problems of some other large redevelopment and how do we deal with the issues in the likely outcome that the developers does not deliver the outcomes required – i.e. the harmonious mixed community rather than just new buildings.”