‘Horrendous’: Shelter Closures Pour On Housing Pain

Vulnerable residents face a battle to find food and someplace dry to sleep when flood waters recede and short-lived shelters shut.

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

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 task was made harder on Monday due to damage to Fred’s Place, the Tweed Heads drop-in centre where she is based, with continuous rains swamping the area.

On any offered day, the centre serves about 130 hot meals to those in need but showers and laundry centers run out 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 really tough attempting to get them any kind of shelter.”

She stated the homeless were attempting to find any dry places they might sleep throughout a northern NSW region currently dealing with an alarming lack of cost effective housing.

“We’ve been assisting a whole family oversleeping their car,” Ms Kennedy stated.

“Seeing them in this horrendous weather is really dreadful.”

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

“We definitely do have a housing problem in the Northern Rivers and we need services,” Ms Kennedy stated.

NSW Premier Chris Minns said evacuation centres established in schools, universities, health clubs and clubs could not work as a long-term fix to entrenched housing problems in the region.

“I am fully familiar with the significant difficulties for housing in the Northern Rivers, but evacuation centres are not permanent solutions … we don’t have the resources, the staffing, the time, the allowance,” he said.

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

“So I wish to apologise ahead of time however we have to draw a very clear and understood line.”

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

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

Major flood cautions were still in place 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 washed up after huge swells damaged the coastline for days.

Residents from 17 federal government locations who had actually lost earnings due to the storm would be qualified for federal disaster relief funds for as much as 13 weeks, it was announced on Monday.

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

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

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