Partnerships in Local Government

• Other projects undertaken with this money include:

• Community grants of nearly $60,000 to groups based on the public housing estates, including the African Information Network, the Indo-Chinese Support Agency, public arts events on housing estates, a Turkish Women's Support Group.

• Neighbourhood Houses being established on all public housing estates, with Council providing nearly $200,000 of funding. These centres run a huge variety of recreational and cultural activities, giving tenants not only the opportunity to develop new skills, but also to interact with other tenants and local residents, forming important relationships and social networks.

• The well known community gardens project, now established on three estates. These gardens have resulted in not only an amazing array of produce over the years, but brought together tenants from all over the world in a horticultural development project that is now being replicated overseas. Council has also provided massive composting worm farms for these gardens, which have been a big hit with the residents.

B. Partnerships with other agencies in the Community

Yarra has an extraordinary concentration of community agencies, with the suburb of Fitzroy dubbed "the charitable acre" in the post war period because of the number of charitable and relief agencies located there. This is a legacy of the area being a traditional working class neighbourhood, on the fringe of the Melbourne CBD, and with poverty never too far away for many families.

A key issue we have had to work on with local agencies recently has been the threat of privatisation and redevelopment of our high rise estates, with the first example of this at Kensington Estate under the previous government. In response Council developed a paper in consultation with these agencies on Retaining and Improving Public Housing. This is about to be formally adopted by the Council, and will establish the communities’ response to the future redevelopment of aging public housing stock within Yarra.

The five key principles developed are that in supporting the redevelopment of public housing in Yarra the Council adopts the following Principles for Retaining and Improving Public Housing:

1. Redevelopment shall maximise the provision of public housing within the city;
2. Redevelopment shall promote social cohesion, community safety, livability and draw on recognised best practice models for urban renewal;
3. An integrated and planned approach to redevelopment, linking social and cultural life with the physical, environmental and economic development should be implemented;
4. Consultation with the local community must be a key part of any redevelopment process;
5. A strategy shall be developed to minimise the disruption to any tenants forced to relocate during the redevelopment, provide them with choice and assist them to retain local links.

Once adopted, it is hoped that these principles can be widely promoted throughout the broader community, as part of a strategy to promote the benefits of public housing and highlight the important contribution that public tenants make to the life of the city.

Again, it is difficult to properly acknowledge the incredible efforts of the people involved from these community agencies in such a short space of time. But their commitment goes well beyond their paid work, and they are a tremendous resource to the local community.

Conclusion

Local Government can and does have a key role to play in helping to build strong and viable communities, and contributing to the debate on how we all achieve this. In the case of the City of Yarra, we are keen to continue linking our work in the sphere of affordable housing to our work in community building.