POLICE have called on the community elders of the troubled housing estate in Sydney’s Rosemeadow to “take ownership” of the area’s problems, as more arrests were made yesterday overthe wild street brawl in thesouthwestern suburb on Monday night.

With riot police preparing to patrol the impoverished enclave for the fourth straight night, local area commander for Campbelltown, Superintendent Stuart Smith, compared the violence in Rosemeadow to previous NSW public housing estate riots at Dubbo and Macquarie Fields in terms of the intensity of the violence and the nature of the affray. “The community needs to take ownership now. We are not the aggressors in this,” Superintendent Smith said.

Radburn — a style of urban design taking its name from a 1930s middle-class New Jersey community where houses are positioned in reverse to face communal parks or pathways rather than roads — was adopted in Australia in the 1970s as a template for public housing estates. However, housing industry experts said yesterday the NSW Government’s proposal was “misguided”.

POLICE have called on the community elders of the troubled housing estate in Sydney’s Rosemeadow to “take ownership” of the area’s problems, as more arrests were made yesterday overthe wild street brawl in thesouthwestern suburb on Monday night.

With riot police preparing to patrol the impoverished enclave for the fourth straight night, local area commander for Campbelltown, Superintendent Stuart Smith, compared the violence in Rosemeadow to previous NSW public housing estate riots at Dubbo and Macquarie Fields in terms of the intensity of the violence and the nature of the affray. “The community needs to take ownership now. We are not the aggressors in this,” Superintendent Smith said.

Several community elders met police yesterday afternoon in a bid to ease the ongoing tension between authorities and locals.

But Superintendent Smith said one of the issues exacerbating the violence was that youths were coming in from surrounding suburbs and getting involved in the street battles. “We have to let the elders get their community settled.

“Every time one of these things happens people come in from neighbouring areas, especially youths,” Superintendent Smith said.

The animosity between locals, the police and the media flared again yesterday afternoon as six more men, ranging in age from 15to 27, were arrested over Monday’s brawl, which left four residents with stab and gunshotwounds.

The Public Order and Riot Police were abused as the arrests were made, while at nearby Campbelltown Local Court, where a 16-year-old boy was charged with various firearms offences, affray and causing grievous bodily harm, the family of the teenager attacked journalists, telling them to “f..k off” and throwing soft drinks at them.

Superintendent Smith said more than 30 riot squad police would be in the area overnight and a high police presence would be maintained for a number of days. The riot squad was needed to guard against retaliatory attacks after this week’s drug and alcohol-fuelled fracas, he said.

“There is a lot of rumour as to what started it,” he said.

“It seems to be a number of tit-for-tat incidents which built into a crescendo. The heat and the grog lit the candle.”

In a move designed to lessen the social malaise that has beset Rosemeadow, where unemployment, violence, welfare dependency, and drug and alcohol addiction is rife, the NSW Department of Housing this week announced plans to demolish five homes and `de-Radburn’ almost 90 other properties in the area.

Radburn — a style of urban design taking its name from a 1930s middle-class New Jersey community where houses are positioned in reverse to face communal parks or pathways rather than roads — was adopted in Australia in the 1970s as a template for public housing estates. However, housing industry experts said yesterday the NSW Government’s proposal was “misguided”.

Kurt Iveson, senior lecturer in urban geography at the University of Sydney, said episodes of unrest in areas of concentrated public housing, including the2005 riots at Macquarie Fields, were often wrongly followed by calls to demolish the estate.

“We find ourselves in the bizarre situation in which public housing is being demolished at the same time that we are experiencing an acute housing affordability crisis,” he said.

Dr Iveson said design alone did not account for the difficulties faced by residents in some public housing estates, and the problem lay more with the fact that only the poorest of the poor and the terminally unemployed qualified for public housing.

“Demand for public housing is so acute that even families whose household income comes entirely from social security are not guaranteed access to public housing.”

Vivienne Milligan, associate professor with the University of NSW’s CityFutures research centre, said Australia had a very small social housing system by international standards.

The lack of available housing meant that in housing estates such as Rosemeadow, there was no longer any social diversity, shesaid.

“While demolishing the estate and reallocating residents is one option, another is to allocate a mix of incomes to an estate, so you don’t have one kind of community in income and social terms,” Professor Milligan said.

Credit: John Stapleton, Lauren Wilson