Caravan park haven for misfits

Ewen, a resident at Green Acres Caravan Park, Mangere, for 15 years, feels the people around him are family.

Green Acres Caravan Park has been called many names but not many call it beautiful. The police in South Auckland describe it as a boil on their backside because of years of drink, drugs and violence complaints.

Angie Opai, though, gestures past the ageing caravans and broken-down buses with their faded curtains and points out the stunning view to One Tree Hill.

"It's a beautiful property, mate. You should see it at night with the lights all on. It's beautiful."

But the lights have gone out at Green Acres, on the Mangere site near the motorway.

When the Herald visited, it was the sixth day without power for people who make this park their home and are refusing to leave.

The power was shut down the day the police, 45 carloads in convoy on the motorway, launched a sudden raid for drugs. They found them, and some firearms.

Opai, the manager, is not keen to talk at first and she thinks the residents who are left will not be keen on speaking, either. But it turns out that a lot do want to talk, to give their side of the story. They are angry.

The police raid by 110 officers was overkill, they say. Fourteen people were charged and they have mostly gone. Dog control took away everyone's unregistered pets as well, although some of those people left are pleased about that.

Police have said they hope the park dies a natural death and Housing New Zealand has stepped in to help with accommodation.

What the authorities did not reckon on was that while most people would run a mile from Green Acres, the 64 who remain, children among them, like living here.

They say they are innocent, no drugs were found in their caravans, and they do not see why they should move.

Council staff also came on raid day. They ordered that all the illegal wooden awnings - some of which have been up for years to extend cramped living spaces - must be pulled down, and threatened the park with closure.

Piles of wood from these awnings fuel a smoky open fire where residents, now without electric stoves, are boiling water for coffee. They have been cooking out here, too - pots of stew, barbecues and hangi.

They say the council officials did not check each wooden lean-to individually, just ordered the lot torn down.

Now the parts of their lives which do not comply with council regulations are being ripped down.

There is a mix of sadness and defiance. These are people who seek sanctuary from the outside world, who have medical or mental health conditions, or jail records. There are solo mothers, family units, women escaping abuse, and transients. But all say they value the security they have found here and the friendships they have made.

All said the park was their refuge and they do not want to leave - that they will not leave.

One woman in her late 50s has lived here since 1988, almost since the beginning of the park.

Her wooden extensions are bigger than her caravan. In the caravan she has three bedrooms. The illegal lean-to is her lounge. It is tidy and clean and two cats are curled up on chairs.

She came originally because she did not have a place to live and has stayed because "I feel safer in here than I do out there. It's like a marae."

Her loved ones and her memories are displayed on the walls in rows of photographs and on a small deck she has rows of well-tended pot plants.

She refuses to be photographed and begins to cry.

"It makes me sad. This is my house and we have to pull it down. I'm trying to be strong."

She wipes her eyes but the tears come again and the mother of four points out: "We're not all bad in here. There are heaps of good people in here."

They say this over and over. They are not all bad. Yes, maybe there were some who had drugs, maybe the police had to be called sometimes when there were domestics or brawls. But that goes on outside, too, they say, and they look beyond the park into Mangere.

Opai asks: "Where else do people like this go? They are the misfits of society, the people the rest of the public do not want living next door."

Opai was the partner of the park's former owner, Keith Turner, who died a few years ago.

As manager of Green Acres she has been charged with allowing the park to be used for illegal activities under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The Herald spoke to Turner in 1996. Even then he was rejecting police claims that the park was not fit for family life.

His own children were growing up there, he said. Three babies were born each month and there were about three weddings a year.

Turner helped to feed those in need and people had access to counselling and education. There was a preschool and he said he had trained in remedial teaching.

Some residents had criminal records but Turner believed many had reformed.

He tried to help them, find them jobs, give them a chance.

Turner bought the site in the mid-1980s when it was a disused market garden and said he never intended it to be a caravan park.

But, one by one, people came by asking to park their vans or caravans there and he eventually put in sewerage and ablution buildings.

While the authorities now appear to want to close the park, they have also used it to their benefit in the past, placing people they did not know what else to do with.

In 1996 the Herald was speaking to Turner because the then department of Social Welfare had sent a severely disturbed youth to live there.

Around that time police were said to be keeping a "discreet eye" on a young sex offender sent there.

Opai says they have not had those referrals for a while, but she fondly remembers the young social welfare charge too difficult for anyone else to handle.

Some people are so reclusive, she says, they hardly come out of their caravans. Because the electricity has been turned off, others take them plates of food cooked on the fire.

Patricha, 23, sits not far from the fire with her two children aged 2 and 4.

She has lived here about 18 months after leaving the country to move to Auckland to be closer to her parents. She found Green Acres.

Yes, it's rundown, she agrees. But "it's just like a big community and we all stick together. My kids love it here. They don't want to move."

On the day of the raid she says she was told to pack her bags and offered a room in a lodge, just one bedroom for her and the children. She prefers the caravan and the company here and it would cost her another $80 a week at the lodge.

Another woman, sweeping up debris as friends rip her wooden awning apart around her, says no, she is not going to move.

She lives here with her daughter. They came to escape her partner who was hitting her.

The trouble-makers have gone since the police raid and the good people are still left, she says.

But she never felt the place was dangerous, quite the opposite.

"This is one of the safest places to have a child.

"They wouldn't allow the children out of the gate unless they were with an adult. They weren't allowed to be truants. There was hardly any teenage uproar."

Ripping down the lean-to is daunting, she sighs.

"It was built solidly, this one. We thought this one would pass a permit and it didn't." Then she points out a teenager who had turned his life around and had started back at college. His life is upside down again, she says.

Ewen, 54, does not want us in his caravan, "it's a bit of a mess", but he has healthy looking silverbeet growing in the garden outside.

Gardening is good therapy, says the invalid beneficiary who has lived here for 15 years and wants the power back.

"I've got medication that needs refrigeration."

Ewen will not say why he needs medication but says he used to live in hostels and has been happy since he moved here where, even though he keeps to himself, he feels the people around him are family.

"I'm normally a loner, I can't handle people's company."

Opai says what the outside world does not understand is that the park is a caring place.

"Here's a prime example. I have one tenant here, we've had her for six years, I would say. Last year her benefit was stopped, she's a schizophrenic totally - she was on an invalid's benefit.

"When her benefit stopped where was the system to come in and inquire why it had stopped? Since then I've been supporting her, nobody else. She's been safe as houses, she keeps to herself, doesn't socialise.

"That's just one example. I have alcoholics that fall over in the middle of the street. We pick them up, carry them home, tuck them in.

"People don't know what we do in here for people that have come in with these problems."

Opai worries about what will happen if they have to go and live out in society.

And even though everyone here is doing their best to comply with the council demands - she knows they have to - she fears the ultimate motive is for the park to be closed.

She has been told waste management has cancelled her bins.

Every agency has ganged up, she thinks.

"Somebody wants me shut down and they're closing off all my avenues, they really are.

"The garbage bins were the last straw. What the hell am I supposed to do with my rubbish?"