‘Horrendous’: Shelter Closures Pour On Housing Pain
Vulnerable citizens deal with a fight to discover food and someplace dry to sleep when flood waters recede and temporary shelters shut.
Nearly 800 individuals have looked for sanctuary in NSW evacuation centres however their status as pop-up homes for some will stop to exist after the impact of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred passes.
Kim Kennedy, Vinnies’ regional housing and homelessness manager for northeast NSW, has been on the cutting edge supporting people sleeping rough in flooded zones.
Her job was made harder on Monday due to damage to Fred’s Place, the Tweed Heads drop-in centre where she is based, with constant rainfall swamping the area.
On any provided day, the centre serves about 130 hot meals to those in requirement but showers and laundry centers are out of commission up until the flood damage is repaired.
“It has been a horrendous time for the homeless neighborhood,” Ms AAP.
“It has actually been really challenging trying to get them any kind of shelter.”
She said the homeless were attempting to discover any dry places they could sleep throughout a northern NSW region currently dealing with an alarming scarcity of inexpensive real estate.
“We’ve been assisting a whole family oversleeping their car,” Ms Kennedy stated.
“Seeing them in this horrendous weather is actually awful.”
The Byron Shire city government area, south of Tweed Heads, had the most rough sleepers of any council location in the state, according to a 2024 federal government street count.
“We absolutely do have a housing issue in the Northern Rivers and we require services,” Ms Kennedy stated.
NSW Premier Chris Minns stated evacuation centres established in schools, universities, gyms and clubs might not function as a long-term fix to entrenched housing problems in the area.
“I am completely aware of the significant obstacles for real estate in the Northern Rivers, however evacuation centres are not permanent options … we do not have the resources, the staffing, the time, the allocation,” he stated.
The centres would close in all areas once regional emergency situation orders were lifted, Mr Minns added.
“So I desire to apologise beforehand but we have to draw a really clear and understood line.”
More than 10,000 individuals were under emergency warnings in NSW on Monday early morning, while 1800 people were separated by floodwaters.
About 10,000 homes and services were still not linked to power as heavy rain continued to fall in lots of locations.
Major flood warnings were still in place for parts of the Clarence and Richmond rivers, while clean-up operations were under way somewhere else.
In Pottsville, between Tweed Heads and Byron Bay, a whale carcass was among the debris that washed up after big swells battered the shoreline for days.
Residents from 17 NSW regional federal government areas who had lost earnings due to the storm would be qualified for federal catastrophe relief funds for as much as 13 weeks, it was announced on Monday.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated the financial support would be backed by mental health services for affected areas.
“We have actually got your back, that’s my message to neighborhoods here,” he stated from Lismore on Monday.
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