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Friday 20 February 2003, Media Release

NSWALC ADDRESS LA PEROUSE HOUSING ISSUES

Urgent repairs and maintenance on Aboriginal housing at La Perouse have been given the go-ahead following an agreement reached at a meeting of the local Aboriginal community, NSW Aboriginal Land Council and the Aboriginal Housing Office (AHO) earlier this week.

The meeting was called by the administrator to the La Perouse LALC to reach an agreement addressing urgent health and safety issues of housing situated on La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council (LALC) property.

"This agreement has been a long time coming but we are happy that we have been able to get all the organisations involved in this issue under one roof to thrash out the problems and come up with positive solutions," Chairperson Trindall said.

After much discussion, members of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, agreed to give AHO and Department of Aboriginal Affairs the authority to begin to facilitate urgent repairs and maintenance on the properties. This process will begin early next week.

It was also agreed that DAA and AHO would jointly fund a project manager position to finalise a community Housing Management Plan, complete a Community Housing and Environmental Health Plan and project manage a AHO Housing for Health project. The project manager would also prepare a submission to the National Aboriginal Housing Service (NAHS) to begin addressing other funding issues.

"I firmly believe that this process has been greatly assisted by the new level of cooperation forged by the NSW Service Delivery Partnership Agreement, signed at the end of the year by ATSIC, the Premier of NSW and the NSWALC."

Chairperson Trindall and NSWALC's AHO representative, Manul Ritchie, visited the housing estate on Thursday to explain the process to residents and dispel fears that those who received emergency repairs would miss out on renovations and house replacement when further NAHS funds are released.