Row over Aboriginal housing

COLTRANE · (#1 (**permalink**))

By PAUL LAMPATHAKIS

HOMESWEST is refusing to work with WA's Equal Opportunity
Commissioner to improve the treatment of its Aboriginal tenants.
Commissioner Yvonne Henderson said the organisation had continuously
refused to join a committee that would make changes based on a two-year
inquiry that had accused it of systemic racism.
This was even though five months ago, when the report was released,
then-housing minister Nick Griffiths and then-Department of Housing and
Works executive director Greg Joyce, conceded that some changes were
needed.
The Equal Opportunity Commission's inquiry into discrimination towards
Aborigines in the public housing system, said Aboriginal families were
being forced to live in overcrowded, rundown public houses, while white
tenants got the best properties.
At the time, Mr Joyce rejected a quarter of the EOC's 165
recommendations and said 43 per cent of them had already been
implemented.
But he acknowledged that he agreed with 10 per cent of the proposals of
the report, called Finding A Place. But Ms Henderson said that since
then, the department had refused to join an implementation and
monitoring committee.
"This is unfortunate because we could have actually gotten down to
doing something with Homeswest in a constructive manner by now because
there are some recommendations that they agreed needed to be
implemented," she said.
"But because the department is not on the committee, it means we will
have a more long-winded and cumbersome process of getting change."
She said Homeswest's claim that it had already dealt with many problems
highlighted in the report, vastly differed from the 500 submissions to
the inquiry.
And at one stage about 37 per cent of complaints to the EOC were
against Homeswest, which was a huge amount.
She said policies such as keeping homeless people who lived with
relatives off priority housing lists contributed to overcrowding,
antisocial behaviour and property damage. This led to evictions and
other problems.
But DHW acting director-general Bob Thomas said the independent
Homeswest operational standing committee was the appropriate body for
reviewing Homeswest's policy, not the implementation committee. </p>
http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/c...5E2761,00.html