The Glebe Society made a thorough submission to the NSW Parliament Inquiry into Social and Affordable Housing, in which (among other matters) we noted that NSW faces a crisis in public housing, urgently needs a coherent housing strategy that sets targets and provide incentives to public and private developers, must establish improved governance based upon community involvement, must build trust, improve maintenance and welfare. It suggests establishment of The Glebe Project to inquire into these matters as they affect Glebe and report within six months. It points out that the policy of market rental for social leases such as
the Glebe Youth Service produces an arcane process that provides makework for accountants and consultants, diverts public and NGO workers from their main tasks and produces no more than a roundabout of cost transfers.
Growth-at-all-costs planning laws continue to threaten community consultation and advantage developers. The Glebe Society has been a strong opponent of excesses and has made sensitive policy proposals as a network member of the Better Planning Network, and separately. Our latest letter is here. Minister Hazzard has not yet replied, but non-government members in the Legislative Council have written back indicating support and congratulations.
I have written to the Chief Executive Officer of the CBA and told him that ‘You can remain the last Bank in Glebe.’ The owner of 205 GPR (not the CBA) intends to re-develop the site as two shopfronts and some accommodation. The owner apparently would be pleased to see a bank lease one of those shops. I told the CEO, ‘Glebe hopes it will be your bank and I guarantee that my society will influence Glebe to use it’.
4 comments. Please add yours.
I absolutely support John Gray’s position (Bulletin No.3 of 2014) that the people who live in low income housing in Glebe have as much right as anyone to live here.
Many have always been inner city people and would not, as Rob Darroch suggests (pp3-4 last Bulletin), ‘jump at the opportunity’ to be moved to the outer-lying suburbs where there is little in the form of transport, work and entertainment, and where they would miss the many aspects of community life they enjoy here, as evidenced by groups such as the Community Action Group, the Residents Group, the Youth Service, Café Church, the Homework Helpers Club, the ‘Concerned Older Women’ group, among many.
These groups, along with the Glebe Society, the Blackwattle Cove Coalition, COGG and FLAG illustrate just what a wonderfully diverse society we have here in Glebe – long may it last, and flourish.
I draw attention to a paragraph in The Saturday Paper (p15, May 3-9, 2014):
London School of Economics professor Richard Sennett says in his book Together that he considers ‘co-operation between people from differing backgrounds to be key to a thriving community and social life’. Sennett identified an us-against-them ethos in communities where there wasn’t a mix of backgrounds. He writes of his fear of ‘losing the skills of co-operation needed to make a complex society work’.
Rob’s comments that ‘public housing does not need to be situated in these precious areas”, and his suggestion that some of us would “want The Glebe preserved as an example of what a slum Glebe was…’ reveals an elitist position that some of us don’t deserve to live here.
The President’s critique of Rob Darroch’s statements in favour of encouraging a monocultural Glebe [Bulletin No.4 of 2014] needs no reinforcing.
However, as Mr Darroch was applauding the proposed changes to Millers Point it may be useful to point out that the travesty of what is proposed there ignores the official heritage statement of significance for the Millers Point Conservation Area. This specifies that it is the totality of the social and the built heritage of that place that is important, including its ‘early 20th Century public housing … The whole place remains a living cultural landscape … retaining its residential character, in particular worker housing. This is a rare continuing use.’
The Glebe has always provided a complex mix of housing. The real heritage challenge is to keep and celebrate the social diversity that this built form represented historically.
I respect this contribution (below) by Robert Darroch, founding Vice-President of the Glebe Society, based on his recollections of the time. However, Mr Darroch left Glebe for Europe in 1971, and the issue of the future of the Glebe Estate did not come to a head until October 1972, when the Church announced its intention to sell Bishopthorpe and St Phillip’s.
Bernard and Kate Smith present their considered position on The Glebe Estate in the introduction to their book, The Architectural Heritage of Glebe, 1973 (see the insert below).
“There are some sections of the Glebe community which possess a special social and even moral stake in the area. There are many pensioners who have already lived most of their lives in Glebe and wish to remain there. There is a large student population because of the proximity of the University of Sydney. And there are others on low incomes who prefer to live close to their work in the city or because they prefer urban to suburban living. This social mix is to be preferred because it provides a more diversified style of life than suburbs styled to only one or two income-strata of the community. Yet in order to preserve a desirable social mix of this kind, in the face of rising values which can price out important sections of the community whose incomes are not geared automatically to inflationary trends, some measure of subsidized housing will probably be necessary.”
From Bernard and Kate Smith,
The Architectural Heritage of Glebe, 1973
Demonstrably, the Glebe Society has been involved in its community from 1969 to 2014, facing up to changed circumstances, challenges and opportunities in various ways. As I said in my previous article this duty is recognised in our Constitution and it is the Glebe Society’s strategy to protect the social character of Glebe and recognise the benefits of social diversity. The clear and well-researched writings of the Society figure prominently in The Glebe Project (1980, pages 27-28 and 153-170). Indeed a paper based on research by Kate and Bernard Smith and Max Solling is a masterpiece of prescient professionalism, which sets out the case for preservation, commentary on the built heritage values and the desirability of ‘socially and economically diverse but integrated neighbourhoods.’ (p.155).
I turn now briefly to Mr Darroch’s contemporary opinions on social housing. Yes, the Glebe Estate is run down. Its landlord has not properly maintained housing since it reverted to NSW Government ownership in the mid-1980s. It is a landlord’s duty to maintain and there is good evidence that tenants respond to their context (Putnam 2000; Rawsthorne and others 2013, Farrelly 10 April 2014). Mr Darroch suggests gentrification of Glebe but he does not live here. People choose Glebe for its diversity. Homogeneous suburbs are no way to build a city or a society (Moore 2014; Albanese 2014).
For my last point I shall use his exact words — for they disturb me: do-gooding is all very well, but it should take second place to the interests of, in this case, the maintenance and advancement of The Architectural Character of Glebe’. It is not do-gooding to recognise that low income housing has a right to remain in an area where it has existed in one form or another since the century before last. This is about the social character of Glebe. The built environment means nothing without people. As Bernard and Kate Smith (1973, page 12) said, ‘Glebe has been built up over almost a century and a half in order to provide accommodation for different classes of people with differing residential needs. As a result it contains a great variety of houses: large houses, large and small terraces, many large and small cottages. This variety of dwellings has encouraged the growth of a community that is more mixed socially, economically and ethnically than most suburban communities.’
Thank you for the latest newsletter, which is, as usual, full of things of interest. However, I must disagree with the President [President’s Column, Bulletin, April 2014] about the ‘public’ land in what was The Glebe, between St Johns Rd and the university when we started the society. This was church land, and very run-down — derelict, in fact, but it contained some of the best heritage houses in Glebe in almost their original condition. We had hoped that The Glebe would go the way of the rest of the suburb (Glebe Point, etc.) and be ‘gentrified’ and ‘saved’ i.e., bought up and restored and properly maintained so that we would have a revitalised suburb right through to Parramatta Rd when the land was acquired by the government. I thought this was a step in the right direction and indeed it has been preserved.
“Do-gooding is all very well, but it should take second place to the interests of, in this case, the maintenance and advancement of The Architectual Character of Glebe” – Robert Darroch
The Glebe is largely intact, and we should be eternally grateful for that (we have not lost its historic character, as we did with other valuable and historic properties in Glebe, before we managed to stop inappropriate redevelopment). But today The Glebe is almost back to what it was when the church owned it; it is run down and ill-maintained, and looks very shabby but you can’t expect people who do not own their property to look after it — especially if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds and, indeed, cannot afford to do so.
The story of public housing around the world is a miserable one (look at England and its modern-day council housing slums). It is certainly not a way to maintain a heritage precinct like the former Glebe. To be frank, it should be opened up for gentrification, like the rest of the suburb (with strict heritage orders on every premises) then Glebe will fully realise its potential as an intact representation of Victorian-Edwardian inner Sydney (as Paddington has done, and I hope Millers Point will too).
Public housing does not need to be in situated in these precious areas. Do-gooding is all very well, but it should take second place to the interests of, in this case, the maintenance and advancement of The Architectural Character of Glebe (as my partner in crime, Bernard Smith, put it). If the people living in The Glebe were part of the original Glebe community, of course we should not put pressure on them to vacate; but most, if not all, are not, and are just people lodged there from the public housing waiting list. I believe that, given the chance to move somewhere more spacious and modern, the public tenants in The Glebe would jump at the opportunity, as did the traditional Glebe populace when we started the Glebe Society in 1969. Believe me, I was there and saw it happen.
Unless you want The Glebe preserved as an example of what a slum Glebe was when we moved in (and I have no doubt that some people would) then I submit that everyone’s interests would be best served if The Glebe went the same way as Millers Point is now almost certainly destined to go.