‘The opposite of a solution’: Eight years to decide if Anna’s home will be bulldozed

Each morning, Anna North takes to the water searching for calm. As she swims laps of the pool close to her home at the Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney’s inner south, her thoughts sometimes shift to the uncertainty surrounding the plan to move hundreds of vulnerable tenants out, bulldoze their homes and build thousands of private and social dwellings.

“It’s just a sort of fear under the days. Even on a happy, lovely, swimming day, I’m thinking ‘When will I not be able to do this?’,” North says. “The closer I get to thinking [my home] might go, and I might have to go, I get really sad.”

Anna North, 62, was told she would have to relocate just weeks after moving into her unit at Waterloo, in Sydney’s inner south, in 2015.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

As the Minns government forges ahead with plans to redevelop part of the estate, tenants are angry and confused by what they say are mixed messages about whether their homes will be demolished.

Housing Minister Rose Jackson told a residents’ meeting at Alexandria Town Hall on Monday night that Labor maintained its pre-election position that the Coalition’s controversial proposal for the vast stretch of publicly owned land at Waterloo was “a bad plan, and we didn’t support it”.

Plans to revamp the estate have long been the subject of dispute between the state government, residents and the City of Sydney council. The $3 billion project affecting more than 2000 tenants is considered one of the largest social housing estate renewals in the world.

In 2022, the site currently comprising 749 social housing properties was rezoned by the former Coalition government to allow for the construction of 3000 homes, nearly 2000 of which would be private apartments.

Housing Minister Rose Jackson has attended a meeting with the residents.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The rezoning pushed hundreds of tenants, who were first told of the redevelopment in 2015, one step closer to being forced from their homes. The first residents are expected to be shifted from the site in early 2024.

Premier Chris Minns told parliament last month the Waterloo South redevelopment would go ahead, but the government was exploring opportunities to increase the proportion of social, affordable and key worker rental housing. He said there would be at least 34 per cent social and affordable housing.

“We need to get the balance right,” Minns said.

The state government is pushing ahead with plan to redevelop two-thirds of Waterloo’s social housing estate.Credit: NSW government

But residents said the decision to proceed with the redevelopment was at odds with Minns’ remarks on social media days prior that Labor was “immediately freezing the sale of all public and social housing”.

Tenant Karyn Brown said some local Labor politicians, including Heffron MP Ron Hoenig, told residents during the election campaign to “vote for us, we’ll save your homes”. “I guess we assumed they’d save our homes,” Brown said.

“It seems now [Labor’s] still going to redevelop the estate, but they might put more public housing than the Liberals, and they say we’ll be able to return [after the redevelopment].”

North said she had no idea what the government had planned.

“I don’t think anyone knows. I haven’t had anything told to me for what feels like years.”

Jackson told the residents’ meeting on Monday that the government’s ability to rework the plan for Waterloo South at this stage was constrained because the tender process for a development partner was still underway. She expected that process to be completed in about a month.

“That would then be our opportunity to come in and say ‘OK, well, we didn’t support that plan. How can we turn what that has produced into something that we do support?’,” Jackson said.

“I completely understand people’s frustration about wanting quick decisions, I want that too. But we can’t rush things when there are processes that were initiated [by the previous government].”

Jackson said all Waterloo South residents would be given access to a safe and secure home within their community or nearby. She said all residents who had to move out would be able to return.

Brown said she felt “no wiser” about the government’s plans after the public meeting.

“The opposite of a solution to a housing crisis is to demolish homes. There’s definitely space for more housing, but there’s no need to destroy what’s already here.”

The Greens housing spokeswoman and Newtown MP Jenny Leong said Waterloo residents had lived with uncertainty about the redevelopment for nearly eight years, and clarity was long overdue.

“In the face of a massive public housing shortage, Waterloo is an opportunity for the NSW Labor government to prove that they can improve on the Coalition’s track record when it comes to delivering and maintaining public housing on public land.”

Jackson said the government’s freeze on the sale of public and social housing had been put in place “to provide the opportunity to assess all government owned assets and identify where we can keep people in their homes and deliver more housing for the people of NSW”.

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