Rivervale could be the next Victoria Park. But business owners say they’ve been abandoned

Inside Richie Harrop’s coffee shop in Rivervale, it is easy to forget the outside world.

Quiet and modern, a steady stream of customers walks through the door all morning to collect their brew and pastries.

“It’s changed a lot, but there’s such a strong community around here,” Harrop says.

The appeal of Rivervale is obvious. It is located just 10 minutes from the Perth city centre, and borders the bustling East Victoria Park strip. By all accounts, Harrop says, it is prime property.

“I was looking for a spot for a while, and I had a lot of friends who moved here a couple of years ago, and they said ,‘Kooyong Road doesn’t really have a cafe; it’s a bit rundown, so there’s a good opportunity there’,” he says.

“I’d heard a lot about Rivervale over the years, and I wasn’t really keen on even looking, but then I came and had a look at the space, and I saw the potential, especially the gardens - and then I walked the streets and chatted to people.

“It’s worthwhile. It’s bigger than the shop.”

However, for Harrop, the suburb is facing an ever-increasing problem.

On any given day outside of Harrop’s coffee shop, the concentration of nearby public housing has brought with it a host of issues.

CCTV from outside of Harrop’s shop and on the neighbouring Kooyong Road show a man screaming obscenities at another, and a group of teenagers in a fist fight.

Dirt bikes careen up a footpath at all hours of the day, and nearby cars are rifled through in the early morning. A woman in a wheelchair clutching a Coke bottle belches loudly as she swears, and two other men grapple outside the front of the IGA.

Other businesses report needles discarded at the rear of the shopping strip, a woman who would go into the laundromat and help herself to other people’s clothes, and the staff at the local nail salon requesting escorts to get to their parked cars.

For a suburb that is on the brink of being great, Harrop started becoming frustrated about the increasing anti-social behaviour four months ago.

It has gotten to the point, he says, where he knows the “notorious” characters as regular visitors to the strip.

“There was one particular incident where … this guy, he was trying to get money [off another man] so he was threatening to kill him,” he says.

“[The other man] was with a six-year-old boy, and he was threatening to kill the kid – and that’s what started this whole saga. I was like, we’ve had enough of this shit.”

For Harrop, it is particularly frustrating as he knows the community is so strong.

It’s a sentiment Vince Hyunh, who runs the local fish and chip shop a few doors down from Harrop, agrees with.

“I’ve never had a sense of community like this,” he says.

A Balga boy, Hyunh says he knows firsthand what it is like to watch a burgeoning suburb begin to build itself up.

He says while the Rivervale shopping strip often faces the brunt of anti-social behaviour from the nearby houses, it has never stopped the local businesses from trying to step in to help.

“[This woman], she sat outside the front of my shop for three and a half hours, just yelling,” he said.

“I went out, and I was like, ‘Oh, did you want some chips?’

“She took it, and she just threw it everywhere.”

Both Hyunh and Harrop have also tried to connect local people sleeping rough with the appropriate supports, and have consistently called police in an attempt to get in touch with the wraparound services that should be in place for an area with so much public housing.

However, Hyunh says it is becoming difficult to operate his business.

“I’m a part-time cook, part-time bouncer. [Anti-social behaviour] is a once a week occurrence. We’ve had to physically drag someone out of the store, and like they scare my kids half to death,” he says.

“This strip – it’s not like multinationals. It’s all mum-and-dad-owned businesses. All their hard-earned savings has gone into their business, so we’re passionate about the strip.

“We’re passionate about business, and we’re passionate about not scaring people away from the strip. We want it to be thriving.”

Hyunh shares Harrop’s view that while the community continues to push through and look out for each other, it was time for stronger intervention.

The local businesses said the City of Belmont had been incredibly supportive in taking steps to ensure the safety of the area – including allocating money to lighting solutions and monitoring anti-social behaviour – but the state government had not been as forthcoming.

Harrop says he has been bounced between the Department of Housing and Works, Communities and even Child Protection, but it has been impossible for anyone to take any meaningful action.

In correspondence seen by this masthead to local Labor MLA Cassie Rowe, business owners along the Kooyong Road strip are adamant about getting one point across: they are not against public housing, but those who are struggling in Rivervale are often expected to travel into the city to access help.

“We’re not anti-social housing; we’re against anti-social abandonment,” Harrop says.

Business owners have attempted to coordinate an urgent meeting with all the relevant departments, but Harrop says it has proved a challenge - as has getting the relevant data to support his advocacy.

Rowe did not respond to questions from this masthead about a potential sit-down interview to view footage taken from the businesses, but did provide a written response.

“I absolutely understand the concerns of my community. As a local, I have seen some of these behaviours first hand. To be clear – some of the incidents that locals have raised with me are completely unacceptable,” she said.

“There’s never an excuse for theft, harassment and violence, period.”

Rowe said she had made herself available to residents and business owners.

Harrop says he is still chasing a sit-down meeting with Rowe and other agencies to coordinate a response in Rivervale.

“What we all want to see is the best outcome for Rivervale and its residents – I want people to be able to feel safe and to be able to go about their business,” Rowe says.

“In working closely, as I have been since first being elected, with the City of Belmont, WA Police and Department of Housing. And whilst I appreciate that sometimes it’s not obvious when action has been taken when we are dealing with complex situations, and progress is slower than we would all like, but we’ve been able to implement some early responses, and increase police presence in hotspots.”

Rowe said WA Police had been conducting high-visibility patrols at the shopping precinct, and she had met with the Department of Housing and Works to explain issues that had been brought to her attention.

Rowe said she urged anyone experiencing issues with tenants should contact the department, and anyone who witnesses criminal behaviour at the strip should contact the police.

Harrop says the response is not good enough.

“The big question for me is: when something goes wrong in social housing community, who owns the problem?” he says.

“Housing is not the same as housing management … just because you put a roof over someone’s head, the job’s not done. You can’t wash hands of it.

“Vulnerable people shouldn’t be abandoned, but neither should the communities around them.

“The real failure is the gaps between agencies. That’s the biggest thing, I think.

“It’s a patchwork of different providers with different responsibilities and different levels of intervention,” he says.

WA Police did not respond to queries about how many times officers had been called to the shopping strip in recent months.

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.