Perhaps your correspondent Jim Gray (Letters November 3) might consider offering his own ideas to overcome this shameful problem in our town.
There is a widely held stereotype of the homeless, depicting them as hopeless alcoholics or drug addicts - in other words, no hopers, deserving of their fate. This is far from the truth.
The people living in their cars currently in Rotorua are in fact, families with children, including single people and the working poor. Another forgotten group is mentally ill people who have fallen through the cracks in our mental health service.
Rotorua's local economy is sustained by low wages. We tend to be oblivious to the working poor. Our wonderful "boom town" has one of the highest deprivation rates in New Zealand.
[ABRIDGED]
JACKIE EVANS
Rotorua
