Not ready, barely set, but soon to go

I attended and spoke at the first of Living in the Olympic State Conference held in 1998. At the second conference in 1999 depressingly similar themes emerged, of a State Government:-

• underprepared in a large number of social impact areas;
• unwilling to publicly acknowledge these areas and so failing to plan properly for them
• denying that some obvious impacts, such as huge Olympic-related rent increases and evictions, are even happening

Shelter NSW launched a report "Ready … Set … Go! One Year to Go - It’s time for action on housing and homelessness for the 2000 Olympics" in September 99, exactly a year out from the Olympics. For five frustrating years Shelter has been campaigning to get the state government to take reasonable steps to protect ordinary people from adverse effects of the Games. Our specialty areas in the wide range of social impacts are the fields of people’s housing or even their homelessness. . .

Private Rental Impacts

Many people have noted the difficulty of identifying an Olympic impact in any area, particularly house and rental prices. What is needed is a precautionary and anticipatory approach to social impact management, instead of a reactive approach.

The Minister for Fair Trading says that our residential tenancies laws will protect tenants in the lead up to the Games. Let's look at the protections he outlines. If I am a careful landlord, I can ensure my tenant is on a lease expiring before the Games period; demand a massive rent increase before the Games; and, if the tenant doesn't want to pay, take my chances that the Residential Tribunal won't find the increase excessive in relation to the overheated market forces operating before the Games. In fact, there have only been 4 successful cases of tenants claiming that rent increases are excessive in the 10 year history of the Residential Tribunal.

It is not just the Shelter report that calls for strengthened tenancy legislation. The consultant's report for the Department of Fair Trading also recommended a number of legislative changes. It is not good enough to quote selectively from this report, and hope that the predicted effects do not take place. The government has left itself with no tools to deal with the impact of the Games on the residential tenancy market.

The Minister for Fair Trading and his Department have not budged from the "pretend it's not happening" stance about Olympic impacts on renters. Their own monitoring continues to show large average quarterly rises in rents across many key areas, but they choose to disregard the impact of the Olympics despite the fact that the consultants doing the monitoring note that the redevelopment associated with the Games is a factor in rent increases.

Rentwatchers has tired of the sterile debate about what constitutes an ‘Olympic impact’, and will soon launch its own proof file of these impacts. The file will include a number of case studies that document the effect the Olympics is having on tenants – rent increases, threats of eviction and growing uncertainty.

What are tenants to do if they are faced with a pre-Olympic rent increase? State Government inaction has meant there is no effective regulatory protection, so they do what hundreds have already had to do - choose between paying up and going deeper into after-housing poverty, or leaving in the faint hope of finding something less exorbitant in the pressure-cooker of the Sydney rental market.

What will happen to the homeless?

I acknowledge the actions of the Minister for Housing and Department of Housing (DoH) in moving to ameliorate the impacts of the Games on homelessness. We do have a good base of a homelessness system to start with. However, the capacity of the system is already under great strain. There are not enough resources around to deal with the issue:

• every bed for the homeless in Sydney is full, every day. Every category of bed – singles, families, youth, domestic violence. After about 2 p.m. every day, the homeless know that there is no hope of getting a bed for that night.
• more people have been turned away from Supported Accomodation Assistance Programme (SAAP) services than have been accommodated by them for each of the last two years.
• the greatest pressure point for services is inner city services for single men – the Homeless Persons Information Centre (HPIC) had 900 inquiries for single men last month, more than the total inquiries it received in 1992.
• there has been no extra money for SAAP services other than inflation adjustments for 5 years and now small adjustment for GST (about $5 million in NSW) starting the year after next. The responsibility to respond to this overwhelming demand has been shirked by both Commonwealth and State governments in the negotiations that led to this outcome.
• there are over 97,000 families and individuals on the DoH waiting lists, so the prospect of significant numbers of people stuck too long in short or medium term refuges getting out into secure and affordable public or community housing remains slight.

This is the crisis we are facing in responding to homelessness now, before you look at the Olympics impact.

One of the key recommendations in Shelter’s Ready … Set … Go! report was for a contingency plan to be set up to house the overflow of homeless people expected during the Games. Shelter is pleased that this is being done by the Department of Housing. As well as pre-booking cheap accommodation, which we have been sceptical about, the DoH is lining up surplus government stock and developing operational plans for referrals, transport, staffing and equipment.

Our key concern remains - will there be enough? No-one can say how many extra homeless people there will be, including those driven out of their regular sleep-outs by the turmoil of the live sites in places like Belmore Park.

The plan we would like to see would be:

• Around 400 to 500 fully operational beds in a number of medium-sized fully staffed centres;
• Another 800-1,000 identified places that can be equipped and staffed at short notice if required;
• A fall-back option of community halls that can be opened up and at least minimally equipped and staffed if numbers exceed those provided for in the first two "lines".

Brokerage programs are playing a vital role in keeping people off the streets, especially families. Without brokerage, we would be seeing families with children sleeping on the streets. Many informal responses are springing up to deal with the overflow of the homeless from the formal refuge system as well – many new soup kitchens in the suburbs, churches allowing people to sleep on mattresses on the floor, rangers tolerating long-term occupancy of parts of the parks by the homeless. Shelter has called for a parliamentary inquiry into homelessness. This recommendation is currently before the Minister for Housing. We are awaiting his response, and if he does not agree to refer the matter to an Upper House committee we will be requesting that the non-government MPs make the reference themselves. Urgent action backed by careful planning and resource allocation is needed now.

The homelessness code of conduct needs to be given teeth by establishing a Homelessness Ombudsman. What we really need is for the Premier or Deputy Premier to make a strong statement that the government is going to protect homeless people during the Games. Police, security guards and the general public need to hear that we will not hide the homeless or push them out of town, but will treat them with respect and attempt to give them secure accommodation. The world will be watching our efforts.

People in insecure accommodation

The boarders and lodgers bill has been stalled in one form or other since 1987. The current process needs to be completed urgently. It must be brought in before the Olympics to protect those in this insecure accommodation.

After years of delay, State Environmental Planning Policy Number 10 (SEPP 10) which seeks to protect low-cost housing, has been extended. It now covers all of Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong, and makes it harder to get around the provisions by strata titling buildings.

Will it prevent further boarding house closures or upgrades to backpacker style accommodation? The stock is still dwindling in areas where SEPP 10 has already been in force. However, where the local political will exists to enforce it, the rate of loss of stock has been slowed. It is a tool for councils, not a guarantee. Only community vigilance will ensure it is used to protect this vital affordable stock.

Action internationally

Against this background of sporadic or non-existent state government action on key social impact issues, there is a ray of hope from an unexpected quarter - the International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself.

The IOC Director-General, Francois Carrard, met with a delegation (including Shelter NSW) from the newly-formed Olympic Impacts Coalition (OIC). Not only did he listen attentively, but significant actions have resulted.

The concerns of the delegation over lack of progress on key social issues like rent rises and evictions, access for community services during the Games, restrictive legislation on the use of public space, and ticketing, were raised with the Minister, Mr. Knight, as he reported to the IOC Executive.

He has been asked to report on progress at the next Board meeting in June - this means that the IOC is starting to call for accountability on social impact issues from SOCOG and the State government, a major breakthrough. After years of stonewalling against community concerns expressed within and outside the Social Impacts Advisory Committee (SIAC), the State government is now having to come up with answers.

Carrard has made it clear he wants to keep meeting with the OIC to ensure that he is aware of continuing community concerns, presumably so the right questions get asked as Knight reports.

A key proposal in Shelter’s Olympics report is for social impact statements to be mandatory for future bid cities. We argued that Sydney is in such a mess over social impacts because no real planning has been systematically done. The contrast is marked with environmental issues, where the impact statement led to the nickname "the Green Games". The government is clearly feeling the pressure to live up to the tag.

Carrard showed great interest in this proposal and complimented us on the methodology suggested in the Shelter report. He said that "this is an idea whose time has come". He surprised us further by saying he would raise it directly with the ten cities bidding for the 2008 games when he met with them later in February. It was clear that the IOC is uncomfortable at being seen to be a major cause of social dislocation in the host city, and is close to being ready to embrace the idea of high-level planning to mitigate disruptive social impacts.

We talk about the "legacy" of the Games. If this principle gets formally adopted, Sydney will have left a legacy that the citizens of future games cities will be truly thankful for.