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During a council meeting on Tuesday night, the city’s general manager for community development Wendy Attenborough confirmed during public question time that the council was not aware of the state government’s plan to buy the hotel.
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“The city was unaware of any prior consultation with ratepayers or residents,” she said.
The two major purchases follow the Department of Housing and Works buying an entire apartment complex in Inglewood last year, comprising 24 dwellings, which has since been labelled a hub of anti-social behaviour by locals who are lobbying Carey to fix the dire situation which they say has fundamentally changed the social fabric of their community.
The decisions indicate the state government has moved away from its previous ‘one in every nine’ public housing policy which aimed to disperse public housing across the community to one in every nine properties to create a more diverse and socially better outcome.
The policy – heavily promoted during the department’s centenary celebrations in 2012 but now nowhere on its website – was created after previous use of entire apartment buildings for public housing, dating back as far as the 1950s, led to social issues including vandalism and violence.
The media at the time accused the department of creating “ghettoes” and “one-class estates” which segregated the poor.
A snippet from the Department of Housing’s centenary celebrations display promoting its 1 in every 9 strategy as a lesson learnt from previous mistakes.
Zempilas conceded WA needed to do something to house its growing social housing wait list – which stands at 34,000 – but that there would have to be consequences if any of these apartment blocks threatened the well-being of nearby residents.
“It now takes longer to build a house here than anywhere else in Australia, and I think in some way this [new strategy] is a bit of a concession from the government that their attempts to build more social and affordable housing is getting away from them,” he told Radio 6PR on Wednesday.
“The purchase of Fraser Suites in particular is very interesting ... that could be up to 350 or 400 people living very close together.
“What is very, very important, and the sector will tell you this ... that putting people into proximity when they are dealing with a number of issues has to be managed very, very carefully.
“It does seem as though the government has gone away from what previously they’ve said about putting a lot of people from one cohort into one small area.”
Carey on Monday said the state government was trying “trying to think outside the box” and look at different ways to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable housing.
He said the “beautiful” area of North Coogee only had about 0.78 per cent social housing.
“If we are to address the critical issue of housing our most vulnerable, we need to keep doing this,” he said.
“I understand from time to time that people can have apprehension, but the reality is that we do need to keep delivering social and affordable housing because we don’t, then we risk the consequences of more rough sleeping.”
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