‘Horrendous’: Shelter Closures Pour On Housing Pain

Vulnerable residents face a fight to discover food and someplace dry to sleep when flood waters recede and short-term shelters shut.

Nearly 800 people have looked for sanctuary in NSW evacuation centres but their status as pop-up homes for some will stop to exist after the impact of ex-tropical cyclone .

Kim Kennedy, Vinnies’ regional housing and homelessness supervisor for northeast NSW, has actually been on the cutting edge supporting people sleeping rough in flooded zones.

Her job was made harder on Monday due to harm to Fred’s Place, the Tweed Heads drop-in centre where she is based, with constant rainfall flooding the space.

On any provided day, the centre serves about 130 hot meals to those in requirement however showers and laundry centers run out commission up until the flood damage is fixed.

“It has been a horrendous time for the homeless community,” Ms Kennedy informed AAP.

“It has actually been truly difficult trying to get them any kind of shelter.”

She said the homeless were searching for any dry places they might sleep across a northern NSW region currently handling an alarming scarcity of budget friendly housing.

“We have actually been helping out a whole household sleeping in their car,” Ms Kennedy stated.

“Seeing them in this horrendous weather condition is really horrible.”

The Byron Shire city government location, south of Tweed Heads, had the most rough sleepers of any council area in the state, according to a 2024 government street count.

“We absolutely do have a housing issue in the Northern Rivers and we need solutions,” Ms Kennedy stated.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said evacuation centres established in schools, universities, gyms and clubs could not serve as a long-lasting fix to entrenched real estate issues in the region.

“I am totally familiar with the considerable challenges for real estate in the Northern Rivers, however evacuation centres are not long-term options … we do not have the resources, the staffing, the time, the allocation,” he stated.

The centres would close in all locations once local emergency orders were lifted, Mr Minns added.

“So I wish to apologise beforehand but we have to draw an extremely clear and understood line.”

More than 10,000 people were under emergency warnings in NSW on Monday morning, while 1800 people were isolated 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 location for parts of the Clarence and Richmond rivers, while clean-up operations were under method somewhere else.

In Pottsville, in between Tweed Heads and Byron Bay, a whale carcass was among the particles that cleaned up after huge swells battered the shoreline for days.

Residents from 17 NSW local 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 said the financial backing would be backed by mental health services for impacted areas.

“We have actually got your back, that’s my message to communities here,” he stated from Lismore on Monday.

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