It was a hot,stormy day a week before Christmas in 2015 when Anna North ripped open an envelope that had landed in the letterbox of her apartment at a vast public housing estate in inner Sydney.
"Dear tenant,I am excited to write to you,"it read.
A new state-of-the-art metro train station was to be built in Waterloo,and the state government was seizing the opportunity to remake the sprawling 1970s estate,selling off valuable land in the city's thriving inner south to developers.
The letter,from then-social housing minister Brad Hazzard,was the first time the more than 2000 residents had heard of the government's plan to turn the 19-hectare estate into one of Australia's largest urban renewal projects.
Homes would be bulldozed,residents displaced and the estate's social housing properties rebuilt alongside thousands of private apartments – all with the promise that tenants could return to a neighbourhood transformed.
But as she read of the plans that day,North,59,became anxious. She had moved into her sunny apartment on the top floor of a low-slung brick block on Wellington Street just two weeks earlier,after years of transient housing.
"I was just like,'Oh no,not again'. This has been the most stable housing I've ever had,"she recalls from her apartment,with its white walls and bright blue doors,as her cat prowls around her feet.
"That's where it started,"Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore says.
"Brad Hazzard had argued for[a metro stop at] Waterloo because he thought it would be a fillip for him to be able to get improvements to housing for the Waterloo tenants. That was his great goal,"she says.
But the government's ham-fisted attempts at spruiking the project after the announcement sparked fury among residents. They have since rallied for the preservation of their neighbourhood through countless plans and rounds of community consultation.
Richard Weeks says the prospect of returning to a new home did little to salve the shock and confusion of the government's initial plan to evict and scatter tenants – many of whom are elderly – as early as 2017.
"I've got broad shoulders,but what got me was all the elderly people who were frightened. They were telling me,'You might as well just send us to the cemetery now,because we’re going to die'."
Among those was Croatian-born Anna Kovic,83,who was the fifth tenant to move into the Solander building in 1972. She doesn't want to budge,and says the delays and lack of certainty have left her depressed and worried.
"They told us in 2015 they would pull down these buildings – now they tell us in 10 years,15 years they will pull them down,"she says."They can take my body out – I won’t leave. If they pull this building down,I don’t know where they will put me."
The government has said there will be no relocations in 2020. The traumatic and complex logistical exercise of shifting thousands of residents from the estate is something Clover Moore and her council want to avoid.
Another is the construction of a development that is too densely populated.
Moore lashed the government's plans in 2018 to cram at least 6500 apartments in towers soaring to 40 storeys on the estate as an"urban disaster"that would create the densest urban development in the country.
The council put forward an alternative lower-density proposal:5300 dwellings in buildings topping 13 storeys and a large central park. Under the plan,the twin towers would be retained and there would be more social housing.
Moore hopes the government's decision in December to hand the council responsibility for assessing the most recent plans for the first stage of the"state significant"project will lead to a development closer to that ideal.
"Our goals are to protect the character of the area and to get the maximum amount of public and affordable housing on the site,"she says.
"We still have a way to travel I think. Tenants are a bit anxious at the moment that they're not involved in this stage,but this is the process."
The government submitted a planning proposal in May to rezone a third of the site – named Waterloo South – to allow construction of 3000 dwellings. In response to public outcry over the prospect of multiple 40-storey buildings,the proposal would allow developers to build up to 32 storeys.
Moore says the decision to split planning for the site into three sections leaves open the possibility of retaining the Matavai and Turanga towers,as well as the 18-storey Cook,Solander,Marton and Banks blocks.
"We think it's a way of keeping,recycling,retrofitting and dramatically improving some of that existing housing stock,"she says. It would also mean residents could potentially stay on-site while the redevelopment takes place.
"There's been a real fear about being relocated. We know when the people who were relocated from Millers Point[in inner Sydney],that had a really serious impact on a number of people who got moved on – some died."
The government has said the retention and refurbishment of those buildings will be explored with the council. And while it promised 100 more affordable housing properties in Waterloo South,the government says the final dwelling numbers and mix for these precincts,and the overall estate,are subject to future planning proposals.
Moore is lobbying for federal funding for public domain works and to lure community housing providers to boost the amount of lower-density affordable housing projects at the site for workers such as teachers and nurses.
"If we could get community housing providers on board and ensure that the majority of that 70 per cent is,in fact,affordable housing,rather than high-income private housing,this would be the best possible outcome,"she says.
"So it wouldn't be 70 per cent private and 30 per cent social housing. It would be more like hopefully ... well,we'd like to see those numbers reversed,really."
Those homes would help address the council area's need for an additional 14,000 affordable and social housing dwellings by 2036. Moore also wants to ensure there are ample support services for public housing tenants.
Architect Eddie Ma moved into the estate with his mother when he was 16. He leads a group of planners and architecture students who volunteer with Waterloo Public Housing Action Group to explain the plans to tenants.
He's concerned that breaking up the site into three parts suggests there is no overall plan or strategy for how the much higher-density development planned for the estate would impact the wider community and environment.
"The risk is,what happens if they decide not to retain the towers anyway and you end up with another spot-rezoning with a very high density,like a threefold increase in density?"he asks.
"We need to get them to consider the estate as a whole. Not as three pieces or three different developments. Splitting the estate just doesn’t consider the overall impacts to the entire estate as a community."
Ma says the proposed density in some parts of the precinct would be equal to that of Sydney's central business district. This would set a precedent for higher-density development for a huge swathe of the city's inner south including the nearby Redfern public housing estate.
It is also still unclear what the government's policy to rebuild the estate with a mix of private,affordable and social housing will look like in terms of final numbers of dwellings. It's also not clear how many homes will be set aside for Indigenous residents.
"The net increase in new affordable and social housing across the entire estate will likely be under 400 units,"Ma says.
Heffron MP Ron Hoenig says the Waterloo South planning proposal was"just a smoke screen not to benefit social housing or social housing tenants – it is to hand publicly owned land to the private sector".
"With 28,000 people still to come at Green Square and Waterloo,there is very little scope to increase population density as the roads are gridlocked,schools are at capacity and at normal times people can’t fit on the railway station platforms,let alone the trains,"he says.
Michael Darcy,a social housing researcher from the University of Western Sydney,says research suggests the most appropriate scale for assessing social mix is the suburb or neighbourhood. At this level,Waterloo is already made up of about one-third public housing residents.
Professor Darcy's analysis suggests the current plans for the redevelopment could reduce the suburb's proportion of social housing dwellings from 30 per cent to about 17 per cent.
"If we plan for 70 per cent private housing,in an inner city area such as Waterloo we can expect 50 to 55 per cent of that will be privately rented,''he says.
"Now you've got a completely different picture and it puts a hole in the argument that you'll have a majority of stable owner-occupiers going off to work who are committed to the area."
He says the northern parts of the estate - Waterloo Central and Waterloo North - comprised about 50 per cent of dwellings in the estate and should be considered as part of a masterplan for the entire site.
"It's already a very dense place,so the idea of increased density has to be dealt with very carefully. You've got a lot of things going on in that area,not least the metro station across the road,''Darcy says.
"A good urban planning approach must consider not just the scale of the plan itself but how it meshes and contributes at the wider neighbourhood and urban scales."
Ma says the government's plans for Waterloo are"a 50-year experiment"in whether the city's inner south can handle the influx of residents.
"We're not going to get the answer for at least 50 years. The development itself will be at least 20 years,and you won't know the long-term impacts for at least another 20 years after that,"he says.
As the uncertainty continues,Anna North is one of many tenants wondering where she will live. The prospect of being forced to move into one of the proposed high-rise towers is"horrifying".
"I feel there is very little care for what we want – well,there's none. There's just a grab for money. It just makes me want to cry,"she says.
"It is frightening when you realise'I don't have any power over my house,which I love'. It's not actually my house. But it really feels like my house. They just have no idea how traumatic and destructive what they are wanting to do is going to be."
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