Heritage and social housing

According to the common – and wrong – stereotype, social housing properties are boring, ugly or worse, and generally not worth keeping. On the contrary, quite a few social housing properties and social housing estates are of heritage significance.

The NSW Land and Housing Corporation's own register of heritage properties includes over 3300 entries, of which many are for properties that are also listed on the State Heritage Register, or a local council's heritage register.

 (The Strickland Building – public housing in Chippendale, listed as a local heritage item on the Sydney Local Environmental Plan 2012)

('The Housing Commission Houses' - public housing in South Granville, listed as a heritage item on the Parramatta Local Environmental Plan 2011)

For more information about heritage and social housing, please check out the following:

• Shelter NSW's new Shelter Brief, 'Heritage and Social Housing', which unpacks for tenants what heritage means, how heritage in New South Wales is protected, and what the implications of heritage protection are for social housing asset management.
• The Tenants' Union of NSW's blog post on the Brown Couch about the strange tale of public housing heritage tenancies and their inadvertent exemption from the Residential Tenancies Act 2010.