Public Housing Debates - sound and fury signifying something

wildturkeycanoe said :

chewy14 said :

Sorry, but community facility land does allow public housing under the territory plan, so complaints on this ground are completely misguided.

And if you didn’t know this was a possibility (or a reality) before the last election, you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been looking at sites for the last couple of years.

Again I point you to the document NI2008-27, CFZ Community Facility Zone – Zone Objectives, which is contained in the Territory Plan,
“Development listed below is prohibited development unless the development is identified elsewhere in this development table as assessable under the code, merit or impact track.”
Types of development contained in the PROHIBITED TABLE include “single dwelling” and “multi unit housing”. So how are they allowed to use the land for public housing? Where is it written in black and white that the government can break the rules of this document, which is dated 19th August, 2016?
If you know for a fact that the rules were changed in 2015, how about a link to the relevant document. I have also emailed the minister for some answers, to see if they can point out where the changes were made.

So you read some of that document but decided not to read or reference the permissable development because it doesn’t support your argument? We aren’t talking about a private residential development on this land, we are talking about public housing.

Community Facility Zone Objectives:

e)To encourage adaptable and affordable housing for persons in need of residential support or care.

And for some types of allowed development:
residential care accommodation
retirement village
supportive housing

Definitions:
Supportive housing means the use of land for residential accommodation for persons in need of support, which is managed by a Territory approved organisation that provides a range of support services such as counselling, domestic assistance and personal care for residents as required. Although such services must be able to be delivered on site, management and preparation may be carried out on site or
elsewhere. Housing may be provided in the form of self-contained dwellings. The term does not include a retirement village or student accommodation.

They aren’t subdividing the land for residential leases or multi-unit development as restricted under the territory plan so your point is moot.

wildturkeycanoe said :

chewy14 said :

Sorry, but community facility land does allow public housing under the territory plan, so complaints on this ground are completely misguided.

And if you didn’t know this was a possibility (or a reality) before the last election, you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been looking at sites for the last couple of years.

Again I point you to the document NI2008-27, CFZ Community Facility Zone – Zone Objectives, which is contained in the Territory Plan,
“Development listed below is prohibited development unless the development is identified elsewhere in this development table as assessable under the code, merit or impact track.”
Types of development contained in the PROHIBITED TABLE include “single dwelling” and “multi unit housing”. So how are they allowed to use the land for public housing? Where is it written in black and white that the government can break the rules of this document, which is dated 19th August, 2016?
If you know for a fact that the rules were changed in 2015, how about a link to the relevant document. I have also emailed the minister for some answers, to see if they can point out where the changes were made.

This is the heart of the problem. The government refuses to enlighten, and stubbornly continues to obfuscate matters. Some clarity would be welcome. When none is forthcoming, and the refusal extends to smearing those who would dare to ask questions, is when the rot sets in, what little trust there was is eroded, and the whole situation continues to fester.

There are so many options available to government, both in relation to the practical matter at hand – public housing – and in the way it engages with communities (including the chaps that voted them back in). Unfortunately they have chosen from the bottom of the heap on both fronts. Whatever your political persuasion, this is what we get when a government is in power for too long.

chewy14 said :

Sorry, but community facility land does allow public housing under the territory plan, so complaints on this ground are completely misguided.

And if you didn’t know this was a possibility (or a reality) before the last election, you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been looking at sites for the last couple of years.

Again I point you to the document NI2008-27, CFZ Community Facility Zone – Zone Objectives, which is contained in the Territory Plan,
“Development listed below is prohibited development unless the development is identified elsewhere in this development table as assessable under the code, merit or impact track.”
Types of development contained in the PROHIBITED TABLE include “single dwelling” and “multi unit housing”. So how are they allowed to use the land for public housing? Where is it written in black and white that the government can break the rules of this document, which is dated 19th August, 2016?
If you know for a fact that the rules were changed in 2015, how about a link to the relevant document. I have also emailed the minister for some answers, to see if they can point out where the changes were made.

@wildturkeycanoe

The author wrote this whole story to help and ensure people like yourself were seen to have genuine concerns, not be treated as bigoted and selfish. So when you state “…having the problems of Northbourne avenue brought out into the suburbs.” you lose any sympathy I had for your position. You’ve just joined a chorus that treats your fellow voting citizens as ‘problems’ because of where they live. I’ve responded to you above to point out that our system is what it is and we should deal with it on that level. Instead, you just shift positions and move the debate somewhere else. Good luck.

Shane Rattenbury promised to put low-income earners into his negatively geared investment flats – I wonder whether they are built yet and ready to be tenanted …

retired_canberran said :

Just how many angry people is that? I don’t think it’s as many as the anti-public housing development groups want you to think.

It was certainly enough to have to relocate the first consultative meeting to larger premises due to over-filling the venue.

retired_canberran said :

I don’t think there should be consultation on the location. Nobody consulted me when they built a development down the road from me years back – and it hasn’t ‘destroyed’ the suburb or lowered housing prices in the least (just some of the excuses I’ve read). This is about losing green space and social fears about what public housing means – let’s be honest.

Honestly, yes it is about losing green spaces and having the problems of Northbourne avenue brought out into the suburbs. There is obviously a stigma surrounding these kinds of developments, whether or not it is based on truth or fiction. But as has been said, this is not salt and peppering as is the policy of the housing renewal task force. They are not adhering to their own policies. They also are using the last available community zoned land in the suburb, which also is in contravention of their own guidelines. If a government department can do whatever it wants and cannot be held accountable to its own rules, the system of democracy and government we all vote for has completely failed. This housing issue seems to be yet another symptom of a systemic problem with the A.C.T. government.

retired_canberran said :

Canberra has a rapidly growing population and the city needs to grow with it. If you want the bush lifestyle, you’re just going to have to make a choice. Or like PMB said, get involved in Canberra’s planning consistently. Not just when a decision doesn’t suit you.

People move to Canberra because of the “country town” appeal, that is what makes it desirable. When you use up every last piece of park land and build apartments on it, of course there will be anger from the community.
As for getting involved with planning, exactly how? Master Plans are developed by the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate. They develop a plan, consult with the community, do a heap of other things like rezoning land etc, before releasing a final plan to the public. What doesn’t seem to happen though, is the government listening to the public during consultation. If you review some of the “consultative” surveys, you will see the questions asked are biased in such a way that whatever the answer given, the statistics will seem to favor what the government proposes.
Sure some developments have been stopped due to vocal opposition, but eventually another proposal is presented, then another and another, until people are exhausted and funds for legal intervention run out. You cannot beat the government when they hold all the aces.
Eventually, developers will get their way because it is financially a windfall for the budget, through land sale, taxes, rates and so on. Leaving it as an open space for the community only costs money in maintenance and reduces the available land for housing, so you can see why they are quickly disappearing. Nimbys and concerned citizens really do not have a voice in these matters, as much as they may make headlines in the media. Money speaks much louder.

wildturkeycanoe said :

PMB said :

Democracy isn’t speaking up when you don’t like something, it’s speaking up all the time. A community has the right to be upset over whatever they like, but their chance to speak up is lost when they vote for a party who’s policies that haven’t really looked into. These developments started happening before the last election, the Weston Creek community should have known this and raised any concerns with their candidates back then instead of just reacting now that it has happened to them.

Well looking at how many people are angry at there being a lack of consultation prior to now, when did they find out about this proposal? Certainly not before the last election. To add to that, they would not have had concerns for the block being used for public housing as at the time it was not an issue, being zoned as community land, not to be used for general public housing. Since the election the D.A. rules have apparently changed [though nobody seems to be able to confirm this in documentation] to allow the development to go ahead. Had the residents known what was in store they certainly would have raised their voices and perhaps changed their voting preference.
As it was, more people voted for Liberal than Labor in the Murrumbidgee electorate, so maybe they were sending a message with their ballot papers.

PMB said :

But honestly if the public expects consultation on every decision that impacts on others lives you’d have a government who’s hands are tied for their entire term. As a community member I don’t want to have to show up and vote every time someone in the my suburb isn’t happy about something. To me the consultation is studying the parties policies, questioning your local member on them, looking deeper into what you vote for instead of just rocking up to the election booth and repeating whatever you did last time. The more blindly people continue to vote, the more a government doesn’t have to make solid commitments on touchy subjects, and the more situations like this will happen.

Again I quesdtion your assumption that people were aware of where these public housing relocations were taking place and how.
From CT Mar 6th, 2016 “”Mr Collett said releasing suburb details “would enable identification of potential public housing sites”.
“This is not in the best interests of integrating future tenants into their new communities,” he said.”
David Collett is the head of the Housing Renewal Taskforce and by this comment I think he meant to keep secret the locations of the new public housing locations so as to not negatively influence the result of the upcoming election in October.
The reveal of these new developments was not out until March of this year, so you can not say that there was consultation. There wasn’t, and continues to be none while they refuse to talk to concerned residents.
That statement about integration into the community has totally lost its meaning, as now everybody is indeed aware of the location of these new tenants. How easy will it be for them to become a part of the community whilst the stigma of this planning catastrophe hangs in the air?

To end this rant, I would just like to say that the more you read about how the Housing Renewal Taskforce has moved forward with these projects, the more they [A.C.T. Labor] are shown to be doing secretive, behind closed door dealings with developers and skirting the edges of the Territory’s planning laws, dangerously close to breaking rules they themselves have developed. Not only that, but now the affected communities are aware of these shenanigans, Labor has pretended to have done the right thing by bragging of “consultation” which never happened, then gone into hiding after seeing how much anger there is from concerned citizens.
PMB, you spoke of democracy [control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.] at the beginning of your comment. There appears to be nothing democratic about the Labor government’s handling of this issue. When they can do whatever they like and cannot be persuaded to change or even made to listen to the voices of the electorate through public forums, “consultation” processes and other avenues, it seems we are living in the clutches of a dictatorship [ruled by one person or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure that the entity’s power remains strong].

Sorry, but community facility land does allow public housing under the territory plan, so complaints on this ground are completely misguided.

And if you didn’t know this was a possibility (or a reality) before the last election, you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been looking at sites for the last couple of years.

@wildturkeycanoe

Governments don’t listen to angry people when they’ve a few years left in their term, particularly if it’s only on a single issue and they’re not a hotbed of armed revolutionaries.

These announcements including Weston Creek and Molonglo go back to 2015. Just because individual blocks and particular suburbs were not announced, doesn’t mean the government hadn’t been touting this as the solution they’re implementing to the relocation of the Northbourne precinct tenants.

There’s over 100 suburbs in Canberra to choose from, you really think our government is that organised to announce years in advance exactly which blocks of land were to be used? We’re not exactly operating on German or Japanese efficiency here.

But think about consultation logic in another situation. Every single person who lives in Gunghalin or along Northbourne Avenue who is impacted by the light rail should have been consulted again after the election, before construction started, and given another chance to consult. They can’t just be deemed beneficiaries with no rights if we expect the government to be 100% genuine in a consultation process.

And that’s my whole point, this argument for community consultation in Canberra isn’t realistic, it’s a government theory of placation that is sold to the public to think they have skin in the game. I’m sure governments love it, giggling when they ask ‘what’s stopping us on this project?’ and the answer is ‘public consultation’.

There’s no point just blaming Labor and thinking they’re doing something underhanded, if you really think they’re corrupt prove it otherwise you just sound like a disgruntled Liberal voter. And if it’s a green space issue pressure the Greens.

I do agree though that if the Liberals got in (as Murrumbidgee voted) we wouldn’t be having this debate. Their policy would’ve just taken back to an older debate about the ageing buildings along Northbourne. That’s them being truly happy to stay in the 1950s when these buildings were constructed.

Bottom line is if people object to our system, make the change happen, the change isn’t going to come from within the existing political parties or systems. If you just strike out at it when it suits, you’re as ineffectual as single issue parties in elections (or someone objecting in comments sections).

Change takes commitment, if people really want a voice they need to stay the course, i.e. Holder and Chapman accepting it now, but staying in the fight for every other suburb or community they feel is not being heard.

That’s the problem, I don’t see the complaining Nicholls community from a few years back jumping in with solidarity to support the Weston Creek and other communities now. It would totally change the landscape for how the government placed these developments if that sort of groundswell actually happened. Until that happens, nothing will change, governments will keep feeding us grass and we’ll continue eating it.

Just how many angry people is that? I don’t think it’s as many as the anti-public housing development groups want you to think.

I don’t think there should be consultation on the location. Nobody consulted me when they built a development down the road from me years back – and it hasn’t ‘destroyed’ the suburb or lowered housing prices in the least (just some of the excuses I’ve read). This is about losing green space and social fears about what public housing means – let’s be honest.

Canberra has a rapidly growing population and the city needs to grow with it. If you want the bush lifestyle, you’re just going to have to make a choice. Or like PMB said, get involved in Canberra’s planning consistently. Not just when a decision doesn’t suit you.

PMB said :

Democracy isn’t speaking up when you don’t like something, it’s speaking up all the time. A community has the right to be upset over whatever they like, but their chance to speak up is lost when they vote for a party who’s policies that haven’t really looked into. These developments started happening before the last election, the Weston Creek community should have known this and raised any concerns with their candidates back then instead of just reacting now that it has happened to them.

Well looking at how many people are angry at there being a lack of consultation prior to now, when did they find out about this proposal? Certainly not before the last election. To add to that, they would not have had concerns for the block being used for public housing as at the time it was not an issue, being zoned as community land, not to be used for general public housing. Since the election the D.A. rules have apparently changed [though nobody seems to be able to confirm this in documentation] to allow the development to go ahead. Had the residents known what was in store they certainly would have raised their voices and perhaps changed their voting preference.
As it was, more people voted for Liberal than Labor in the Murrumbidgee electorate, so maybe they were sending a message with their ballot papers.

PMB said :

But honestly if the public expects consultation on every decision that impacts on others lives you’d have a government who’s hands are tied for their entire term. As a community member I don’t want to have to show up and vote every time someone in the my suburb isn’t happy about something. To me the consultation is studying the parties policies, questioning your local member on them, looking deeper into what you vote for instead of just rocking up to the election booth and repeating whatever you did last time. The more blindly people continue to vote, the more a government doesn’t have to make solid commitments on touchy subjects, and the more situations like this will happen.

Again I quesdtion your assumption that people were aware of where these public housing relocations were taking place and how.
From CT Mar 6th, 2016 “”Mr Collett said releasing suburb details “would enable identification of potential public housing sites”.
“This is not in the best interests of integrating future tenants into their new communities,” he said.”
David Collett is the head of the Housing Renewal Taskforce and by this comment I think he meant to keep secret the locations of the new public housing locations so as to not negatively influence the result of the upcoming election in October.
The reveal of these new developments was not out until March of this year, so you can not say that there was consultation. There wasn’t, and continues to be none while they refuse to talk to concerned residents.
That statement about integration into the community has totally lost its meaning, as now everybody is indeed aware of the location of these new tenants. How easy will it be for them to become a part of the community whilst the stigma of this planning catastrophe hangs in the air?

To end this rant, I would just like to say that the more you read about how the Housing Renewal Taskforce has moved forward with these projects, the more they [A.C.T. Labor] are shown to be doing secretive, behind closed door dealings with developers and skirting the edges of the Territory’s planning laws, dangerously close to breaking rules they themselves have developed. Not only that, but now the affected communities are aware of these shenanigans, Labor has pretended to have done the right thing by bragging of “consultation” which never happened, then gone into hiding after seeing how much anger there is from concerned citizens.
PMB, you spoke of democracy [control of an organization or group by the majority of its members.] at the beginning of your comment. There appears to be nothing democratic about the Labor government’s handling of this issue. When they can do whatever they like and cannot be persuaded to change or even made to listen to the voices of the electorate through public forums, “consultation” processes and other avenues, it seems we are living in the clutches of a dictatorship [ruled by one person or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure that the entity’s power remains strong].