The NSW Land and Housing Corporation has completed early investigations into "reimagining" the troubled Hamilton South estate with a mix of new social and private housing.
The ageing 746-unit social housing complex has long made headlines for the wrong reasons, including murders, drug busts, burglaries and other criminal activity.
The LAHC has launched massive social housing redevelopments with the private sector in parts of Sydney and regional NSW, including Redfern, Macquarie Park, Bonnyrigg, Waterloo and Wagga Wagga, to renew housing stock and mix social housing tenants with the broader community.
"While there are no plans currently in place, the NSW Land and Housing Corporation have undertaken initial investigations into what opportunities there might be to reimagine social housing at Hamilton South as part of the broader analysis of the Newcastle local government area," an LAHC spokesperson told the Newcastle Herald in a statement.
"It is important to note that any formal planning for estate renewal at Hamilton South would only proceed following extensive community consultation and in partnership with City of Newcastle. Projects such as Tolland Estate in Wagga Wagga and the renewal of Bonnyrigg in Sydney's south-west are testament to that."
Hamilton South estate residents, including 2022 Newcastle Senior Citizen of the Year Jan Chamberlain, have spoken to the Newcastle Herald about the violence and stress facing those who live in the complex.
Ms Chamberlain received the citizenship award for her work with the Hamilton South Community Solutions group improving the amenity of the area and reducing the stigma surrounding social housing.
But a series of bashings and break-ins in her building in February forced her to suspend her involvement with the group and Hamilton South Neighbourhood Watch.
She is moving to another social housing unit in Strathfield next month.
"After everything that happened in my complex last week, my family feared for my safety. They drove to Newcastle and collected me," she wrote in a letter to Family and Community Services, police and Newcastle political representatives in February.
"I am no longer on the Hamilton South Neighbourhood Watch page. Exhausted from trying and it is affecting my heart health."
She catalogued some of the recent criminal activity, including the ransacking of an apartment of an elderly resident who had died days earlier.
"The past 4 months Hamilton South illegal activities have been out of control. Drugs, violence rampant," she wrote in her letter.
"Instead of people saying, Hamilton South 'what do you expect' please clean it up.
"Successive governments and departments have failed the elderly, vulnerable, disabled, families and especially children."
Serious violent incidents at Hamilton South in recent times have included the targeted shooting murder of 57-year-old Anthony Nugent in his Fowler Street unit in September.
A fight between two men and two women in December resulted in a 35-year-old woman being stabbed in the neck, a 38-year-old woman suffering serious head injuries and police charging three people.
In 2020, a man received a jail term after allegedly threatening a police officer with a large carving knife following reports of a brawl in Fowler Street.
Police arrested a 13-year-old girl in January after three cars were stolen simultaneously in nearby Pulver Street and two of them were involved in car chases.
In February, a stolen car crashed into a parked car near the Hamilton South estate after a brief police pursuit.
The same month a 42-year-old man was arrested after allegedly inflicting serious facial injuries on another man on a bus on Glebe Road at Hamilton South.
Ms Chamberlain has been a Hamilton South estate resident for four years after retiring at 67.
"I had no idea about the history of Hamilton South because I'd moved up from Sydney," she told the Newcastle Herald.
She said her over-55s apartment building in the estate had "gone absolutely downhill" in the past three years and she had become "worn down, frustrated and exhausted".
"There's an absolute network of drugs," she said.
"I've never seen drugs like it. I lived a pretty sheltered life before Hamilton South, but I'm not a puritan. I know stuff goes on in the world.
"The violence ... this is regular there. Bashings are not uncommon."
Another female resident said she had been the victim of a savage attack after two men broke into her unit with a crowbar.
"He hit me repeatedly in the face, head and body with the crowbar," she said.
"He dragged me around by the hair and smashed everything."
Ms Chamberlain said authorities needed to question how the the estate had descended into its current state.
"This is generational. It's got to be redeveloped. Hamilton South is high-density, and it's everyone together.
"I was in a meeting to represent the community with Land and Housing, and I was very honest. I said, 'We're in real trouble here. We have got major problems here.'"
Ms Chamberlain called on the NSW government to replicate its Sydney social housing redevelopment strategy in Newcastle.
"While problem estates in Sydney ie Woolloomooloo, Waterloo, Redfern and Campbelltown are being redeveloped, it is important not to forget the regions," she said in her letter.
"Newcastle council, surrounding suburbs and population are all being impacted.
"For four years I have attempted to shine a light on the positives. Help authorities with information that I have and that people connected have provided to me.
"Places like Hamilton South cannot be just put in the too hard basket.
"The solution, and everyone is on the same page, has to be redevelopment, focused on diversity. It is no good just doing the same thing and hoping for a different outcome."
She said land values in Hamilton South were "nuts" and private developers would be interested in a partnership to overhaul the social housing estate.
LAHC's renewal projects in Sydney include a 1.1-hectare redevelopment of part of the Redfern estate which includes 300 new apartments, more than 100 of which will be for social housing tenants.
Bridge Housing, which was chosen in December to help deliver the project, will sell or rent out the remaining 200 apartments in the new complex as private dwellings or affordable housing for workers in key professions on lower salaries such as nurses, teachers and police officers.
The Macquarie Park project includes 954 social housing units, 130 affordable rental apartments, more than 2000 privately owned dwellings, a school, two childcare centres and a town plaza with new shops and cafes.
The department is concentrating its larger-scale renewal projects in Sydney, where social housing waiting lists are longer than in many regional areas.
The wait list for social housing across Newcastle and Lake Macquarie was more than 2800 in June last year.
An LAHC analysis published last year showed the corporation had 6117 tenants in Newcastle local government area, 3.9 per cent of the total population, living in 4369 social housing dwellings.
About 1300 of the Newcastle dwellings were concentrated in four suburbs or estates, and the average age of the main tenant was 58.
The LAHC analysis says "renewal and deconcentration is a long-term objective" for Newcastle's social housing stock.
"This requires a 'mixed tenure' model of planning and delivery for new housing," the document says.
"Mixed tenure describes an outcome where social, affordable and private housing is seamlessly integrated within a development or a neighbourhood."
The LAHC spokesperson said mixed-tenure projects had a "proven record of positive outcomes that include lower crime rates, improved educational outcomes, improvements to community facilities and more positive health outcomes".
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