Letters: Council must act on night shelter

Tiny Deane of Visions of a Helping Hand has closed the night shelter. Photo/File

Thank you to your correspondents Jim Adams and Ray Byford (Letters July 24).

One cannot help but compare Rotorua Lakes Council's approach to the recent failed Mudtopia fiasco (which cost ratepayers thousands of dollars), and for which the council left no stone unturned to stage, and the eight weeks of, in my view, pathetic inaction with respect to the Rotorua night shelter.

During these eight weeks, the council claims to have been "working with" Tiny Deane and his organisation Visions of a Helping Hand.

I believe all it has done is to have obstructed these amazing people with endless bureaucratic red tape.

Can councillors sleep at night with clear consciences in the knowledge that many of their citizens, some of whom are elderly and cancer sufferers, are sleeping rough in 1C temperatures?

In my view, the council must now be shamed into action.
(Abridged)

Jackie Evans
Rotorua

Sadness at closure

It is with sadness I read the homeless shelter has closed.

My opinion is probably coloured by the fact I had a younger brother with paranoid schizophrenia.

If it were not for my mother buying him a small, basic house (back when they were cheap), my brother Ian would have been sleeping on the street.

What makes other towns different to Rotorua is they have managed to put a roof over the heads of their most vulnerable.

My brother's journey began in the womb.

Some people have the odds stacked against them from the day they are born due to many reasons.

I was one of the few white, middle class faces on the Hikoi. I challenge you to see the homeless without judgement.

There but for the grace of God go I.
(Abridged)

Lesley Haddon
Rotorua