Housing Band-Aid won’t fix a bigger problem

SENTINEL-TIMES COMMENT

We’ve got to stop stuffing about!

Wonthaggi is going to be a big place, and if you look at what’s going on at San Remo at the moment, so is that spectacular seaside town, with massive housing growth and still the same community infrastructure it had in the 1950s.

Come on people (government agencies, local MPs and the council), we’ve simply got to start looking at the big picture.
And what’s going on as a response to the crisis in social housing in this area is symptomatic of the general approach taken by the authorities to Bass Coast’s growing pains (Victoria’s growing pains for that matter).

We are told (Victorian Housing Register) that there are 720 families on the waiting list for social housing in Bass Coast and yet, at last Wednesday’s council meeting, it was disclosed that Community Housing Limited and the Bass Coast Council have identified two, tiny sites as being suitable for the job.

These sites consist of two “surplus” or “unused” road reserves, one of 1500m2 between houses in Cowes and another of 2400m2 in Wonthaggi.

Look, you want to be positive, so good on the council for trying but it’s simply a Band-Aid fix for a haemorrhaging wound.
You’re talking about accommodating maybe 30 independent living units on these sites, which would be a help, but on two counts, it’s a proposal that’s doomed to fail.

The local residents in Wyndham and Roydon streets Cowes have righty identified that the “preferred” 1500m2 site, which runs between their two residential streets, is an important relief area, used by kids to kick the footy and play, and by birds and wildlife, its trees providing a soothing break from suburbia.

They also say Cowes does not have the health and social services needed for this style of development, whereas Wonthaggi does.

The 2400m2 site in Wonthaggi might be OK but the reality is, there’s no future in it. We need a much bigger site for a properly designed social housing project that has a future.

And there’s one sitting right in the middle of town just waiting for an overall development plan – the Wonthaggi Golf Course.

The good people of the Wonthaggi Golf Club would likely move to a sand-belt site on the edge of town in a heartbeat if the project was properly planned and funded.

And there are consulting development firms that could put such a proposal together in a matter of months.

The same goes for services on Phillip Island.

When the Census 2021 data is released from June 2022 onwards, we’re likely to see a massive growth in the resident population of the Island, and we know official figures will never fully capture the numbers spending most of their time there.

And yet, we still have only one football ground catering to hundreds of players and a full complement of teams and no aquatic centre. It’s absolutely crucial that projects like the Phillip Island Aquatics and Recreation Precinct are made shovel-ready ASAP.

Trying to be positive again, good on the council for stitching up the $27.2 million Cowes Cultural Centre project, with the Cowes hospital and PICAL projects to follow.

But we’re also told the shire’s administration is struggling with its increasing workload as a result of the growth – so step it up!

No one is going to complain about increasing staffing levels or dropping low priority services to pivot and deliver much-needed growth infrastructure and services.

Just get on with it. That’s why you’re getting the big bucks!