Business, Charity & Sentiment – Business, Charity Susan Marsden (left) researching historical photographs with Murray Hutchesson and Shirley Trebilcock at Riverside in 2009. The South Australian Housing Trust has supplied a broad range of public and private housing across the state over 75 years, and in so doing has built and renewed suburbs and towns and contributed to the social and economic wellbeing of many thousands of South Australians. Business, Charity and Sentiment, the fifty-year history of this renowned public enterprise, was published in 1986. Drawing Part on contemporary and often contentious records and recollections, Susan Marsden carries the Trust’s story through the turbulent 25 years that followed, a time of profound social, environmental, Two political and public sector change. Business, Charity Susan Marsden is a professional historian who works all over Australia as a consultant and oral history interviewer. She has also Susan Marsden been a State Historian, a National Conservation Manager, and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. Her doctoral and Sentiment thesis (Flinders University, 1995) built on her research for Business, Charity and Sentiment, and explored the shaping of metropolitan Adelaide by the Trust during the Playford era. She has published more than 40 other books and heritage studies, and several are Part Two on the Internet. The South Australian Housing Trust 1987–2011 ISBN 978-1-86254-971-5 Cover photo: 1950s Housing Trust homes at Hillcrest before removal and redevelopment 9 781862 549715 in the 1990s. Susan Marsden Business, Charity and Sentiment Part Two Business, Charity and Sentiment Part Two The South Australian Housing Trust 1987–2011 Susan Marsden Wakefield Press 1 The Parade West Kent Town South Australia 5067 www.wakefieldpress.com.au First published 2011 Copyright © Susan Marsden, 2011 All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Designed and typeset by Paul Wallace Printed in China by the Opus Group National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Marsden, Susan, 1952– . Title: Business, charity and sentiment. Part two: the South Australian Housing Trust 1987–2011 / Susan Marsden. ISBN: 978 1 86254 970 8 (hbk.). 978 1 86254 971 5 (pbk.). Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: South Australian Housing Trust – History. Public housing – South Australia – History. Dewey Number: 363.58099423 Contents INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................... vii CHAPTER ONE: Greater than ever before, 1986–1995 ..................................1 CHAPTER TWO: A reform agenda, 1996–2005 ............................................63 CHAPTER THREE: Living environments, 1986–2011 ................................111 CHAPTER FOUR: Using modern means, 2006–2011 .................................209 APPENDICES 1. Housing Trust stock built, purchased and leased, 1937–2011 ............260 2. Members of the Board and General Managers, 1987–2011 .................266 GLOSSARY ................................................................................................269 ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................271 BIBLIOGRAPHY .........................................................................................272 INDEX ........................................................................................................282 Introduction and acknowledgements Business, Charity and Sentiment: the South Australian Housing Trust 1936–1986 was launched by Premier John Bannon in the Housing Trust’s old headquarters at 17 Angas Street, Adelaide, on 26 September 1986. As I wrote later to a news- paper, ‘It is my earnest wish that readers will learn a greater understanding of the Trust’s role in the social and economic history of the State, and gain a sympathetic concern for those who must suffer and wait during the most recent of a series of housing crises which have afflicted South Australia’. That wish also animates this new history of the Housing Trust for the twenty-five years following 1986. I also hoped that Business, Charity and Sentiment would be put to practical use in informing new ministers, boards, employees and customers of the Trust. And so it was. I hope this modern history will be put to similar good use by the South Australian Housing Trust (SAHT) and Housing SA. Contemporary history is a fraught business, especially when it involves contro- versial events, and the historian cannot write as critically or as comprehensively as for more distant times. Public records are closed, and most informants are still employed or in official positions, limiting their ability to offer frank reminiscence. In these circumstances, it is the more remarkable that I was allowed access by the Department for Families and Communities to SAHT and Housing SA records, their Intranet, and to many informants. Amidst the alarms and uncertainties of radical organisational change, staff kept their long commitment to public housing, and a willingness to share the Trust’s achievements in a new history. This updated history draws not only on SAHT and other official records, as well as on secondary sources, but also on tenant and staff recollections, including responses to my questionnaires, and recordings or writings from the Minister and former Board members. All of these informants are listed by name in the bibliography. I am grateful to the South Australian Housing Trust Board for commission- ing this work in 2006, and to the SAHT and Housing SA for providing access to records and staff, as well as encouraging people to contribute recollections. I would especially like to thank executives Malcolm Downie, Helen Fulcher and Phil Fagan-Schmidt; successive history project managers Beverley Morris, Mignon Schneider and Shirley Trebilcock; as well as Alison Bogdanowicz, Wendy Hackel and Rosie Mangan. Thanks also to work-experience student Anne Lord, especially for her help in collecting tenant and staff memoirs. Most of the illustrations in the book are from Housing SA, as explained in the note below. Alison Bogdanowicz and Shirley Trebilcock, together with (it seemed) half the staff on level 5 at Riverside, also gave welcome help in locating, copying and providing information on illustrations. In particular I appreciate viii BUSINESS, CHARITY AND SENTIMENT: PART TWO the contributions of Josie Pastore, Brenton Herringe, Eleftherios (Lefty) Morias, Michael Findlay and Tasnim Morium. I am also grateful to those who have created the invaluable SAHT Memorabilia Collection, including Wendy Hackel, Jan Mudge (History South Australia) and the collection’s volunteers. I would like to thank Paul Wallace for his patient and professional editing and indexing of this later history as well as for the book’s design which is intended to match the first volume (designed by Erica Fairbanks in 1986). Finally I thank my friends Maria Dam and Russ Lamb for sharing their peace- ful house near Maleny where I wrote the main draft of this book. I wish to dedicate this new history of the South Australian Housing Trust to the memory of another historian, Averil Holt, who became a dear friend after working with me as a researcher and oral history interviewer for the original Business, Charity and Sentiment. Susan Marsden Adelaide 2011 A note on the illustrations and abbreviations Most of the images in the book are reproduced from those held by Housing SA (HSA) at the Riverside headquarters in Adelaide. Many SAHT photographs and drawings have been scanned and digitised by HSA, and are stored in the DIMS database. Other illustrations are reproduced from pictures, posters, plans and documents held at HSA in the SAHT Memorabilia Collection. Most of the remain- ing illustrations have been copied from those in current HSA offices. Illustrations provided by the author (S Marsden) and by other people are acknowledged individually. A list of abbreviations used in the book is supplied with the glossary in the Appendices. CHAPTER ONE Greater than ever before, 1986–1995 The State Jubilee 150 year, coupled as it is with the Trust Golden Anniver- sary, will live in my memory all my life. All the more so when the Premier presented Mr and Mrs Peacock with the keys to the 100,000th dwelling on 5 December. They were ecstatic, and that is what the Trust is all about. (Ray Paley 1986)1 Almost on the eve of … the International Year of Shelter, the SA Housing Trust is celebrating its 50th anniversary … the Trust has performed a remarkable role in providing shelter for South Australians, including the neediest. About 20 p.c. of South Australians live in houses built by this energetic body. The Trust is the second largest landlord in the nation … [T]he need for shelter by people on low incomes, especially single parent families, who have little hope of buying houses or renting privately, is greater than ever before … In an age in which welfare tends to be impersonal, the Trust maintains a caring attitude and friendly image. But the waiting lists grow longer and the Trust’s deficit grows bigger, and the challenges ahead are formidable. They call for all the skills and flexibility for which the Trust has been notable for half a century. (The Advertiser 1986)2 Introduction The year 1986