Goulburn's social housing exposes heavy reliance | Letter to the Editor

I can understand residents' concerns about the sizable changes proposed - from five to 16 dwellings and two storeys. History everywhere has shown that multi-storey public housing is never a good outcome.

Whenever a wide ranging socio-economic study is carried out, Goulburn always ranks low because of its comparatively high level of public housing compared to other areas of the State. Increasing public housing won't reduce this.

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No government, past or present, has made any effort to seriously improve Goulburn's housing demographic statistics.

A long-term strategy to gradually reduce the level of public housing should be formulated.

In 2011 the incoming O'Farrell government promised to remove two regulations for every new regulation introduced. This was soon forgotten and not monitored or fulfilled.

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So, along the same line of thinking, why not introduce a policy of removing two old and dilapidated public housing dwellings for every new dwelling created? This should not be hard since there are many uninhabited old public housing dwellings around (I don't know how many) and it would achieve a gradual phased long- term reduction.

The aesthetics of west and south Goulburn, with the high level of old fibro public housing dwellings, doesn't look appealing, especially at a time when the council wants to attract people to Goulburn. Passing motorists see ageing public housing aplenty.

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Recent evening news reports "an exodus" of people from Sydney to regional areas of the State. Is Goulburn getting any of these? Is anyone monitoring this? It would be interesting to know.

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