‘Horrendous’: Shelter Closures Pour On Housing Pain

Vulnerable locals face a fight to discover food and someplace dry to sleep when flood waters recede and momentary shelters shut.

Nearly 800 individuals have looked for haven in NSW evacuation centres however their status as pop-up homes for some will disappear after the impact of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred passes.

Kim Kennedy, Vinnies’ regional real estate and homelessness manager for northeast NSW, has actually been on the front lines supporting people sleeping rough in .

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 continuous rainfall inundating the area.

On any offered day, the centre serves about 130 hot meals to those in need but showers and laundry facilities are out of commission up until the flood damage is fixed.

“It has actually been a horrendous time for the homeless neighborhood,” Ms Kennedy told AAP.

“It has actually been actually challenging attempting to get them any type of shelter.”

She said the homeless were searching for any dry locations they might sleep across a northern NSW area already handling a dire shortage of affordable housing.

“We have actually been helping out an entire household sleeping in their vehicle,” Ms Kennedy stated.

“Seeing them in this horrendous weather is truly 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 problem in the Northern Rivers and we require services,” Ms Kennedy said.

NSW Premier Chris Minns stated evacuation centres set up in schools, universities, health clubs and clubs could not act as a long-term fix to entrenched real estate problems in the area.

“I am fully familiar with the substantial difficulties for real estate in the Northern Rivers, however evacuation centres are not irreversible services … we don’t have the resources, the staffing, the time, the allocation,” he stated.

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

“So I desire to apologise in advance however we need to draw a very clear and understood line.”

More than 10,000 people were under emergency warnings in NSW on Monday morning, while 1800 individuals were separated by floodwaters.

About 10,000 homes and companies were still not connected to power as heavy rain continued to fall in many areas.

Major flood warnings were still in location for parts of the Clarence and Richmond rivers, while clean-up operations were under way somewhere else.

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

Residents from 17 NSW local government areas who had lost earnings due to the storm would be qualified for federal disaster relief funds for up to 13 weeks, it was revealed on Monday.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the monetary support would be backed by psychological health services for impacted locations.

“We’ve got your back, that’s my message to neighborhoods here,” he said from Lismore on Monday.

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