Slow news day

What do you do on a slow news day?

The Sydney Morning Herald rehashes this story about the Common Ground project and its founder, Roseanne Haggerty. It's an excellent story and a great model for service delivery. Very much a "give a man a fish" vs "teach a man to fish" sort of idea. Interesting how it developed, though. Haggerty founded the first Common Ground building by renovating a derelict hotel in the middle of a property slump, when many buildings were vacant and real estate prices were down. Obviously it's a different situation in present-day Sydney, where vacancy rates are very low and there is a general shortage of housing stock exacerbating the homelessness problem. As has been reported by the SMH previously, the project will cost "tens of millions of dollars" to construct an apartment block to house "up to 90" people. The reason the project is back in the news is because the development application (DA) for the land in Camperdown has now been lodged, meaning the project is one step closer to not being entirely imaginary, and one step further away from falling down the deep black well of lost promises.

While the NSW Department of Housing is happy to report that they've started work on the 1000th home (pdf) to be delivered as part of the stimulus package, how many houses they've finished is a mystery. It will be interesting to see if there is a Christmas update on the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness from the Federal and State governments, one year on from the release of the Homelessness White Paper. Considering that each state was meant to have released its Action Plan by April 09, and NSW released their "dynamic document" (pdf) which was actually only an action plan for 09/10 in August 09, perhaps we will get a Christmas update at Easter.

Seriously, people, if you can't get a document out on time, how can the public believe you'll get anything tangible, like housing, done on time? I guess that's why they were buying them ready-made. What a quick and elegant solution to the shortage of public housing - to exacerbate the shortage of private housing instead. Bring on the bright shiny future!