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Developing appropriate exit strategies for housing regeneration programs

Summary

Project Number: 40200
Research Theme: Public_and_Community_Housing
Project Leader: Jacobs, Keith
Funding Year: 2003
Research Centre: Southern

Research & Policy Bulletin

Issue 086: How can the benefits of housing regeneration programs be sustained?

Formal exit strategies from social housing regeneration programs assist an estate to become a community by involving local tenants, developing leadership capacity and establishing community-run successor organisations.

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Description

The research reviewed the international literature in this field, audited State Housing Authority regeneration practices and conducted five case studies of regeneration programs in Tasmania (Bridgewater), South Australia (Salisbury North and The Parks), and New South Wales (Minto and Windale).

The key findings of the research are:

• The benefits of exit strategies from public housing regeneration programs are widely recognized.
• Yet, there are few examples of explicit exit strategies in Australian public housing regeneration programs. The tendency is to wish/hope that the community will develop sufficiently to sustain the benefits of regeneration. Only in Queensland have explicit project management strategies focused upon 'exit' been planned.
• There are many reasons for the lack of exit strategies: short term funding and planning horizons; differing views about the long term outcomes amongst the regeneration partners and within the community; as well as differing views about which agency should have the longer term responsibility.
• Public housing regeneration programs vary widely, but key elements of a successful exit strategy are:
  1. Community capacity building with residents during regeneration and establishing successor community organisations and community governance  arrangements.
  2. Business and budget planning that includes 'exit funds' to provide for successor services and viability testing of these services, funding the recurrent costs for maintaining a community organisation, and dedicated community based staff to manage handover to the 'exit' projects and staff.
  

More Information

Research and Policy Bulletin: Issue 086: How can the benefits of housing regeneration programs be sustained?
117KB PDF Document

Positioning Paper: No. 069: Developing appropriate exit strategies for housing regeneration / renewal programs
2.9 MB PDF Document

Final Report: No. 087: Developing appropriate exit strategies for housing regeneration programmes
1017.2 KB PDF Document