Rotorua Letters to the Editor: Focus on solutions for homeless problem

Homeless in Kuirau Park. Photo / File

If someone goes from pillar to post, they are forced to keep moving from one place to another.

Homeless people were removed from Kuirau Park in March 2020.

It was not a good look for tourists and locals alike seeing people sleeping under cardboard with their worldly possessions stuffed into supermarket trolleys, or partaking in drugs and alcohol and the associated behaviour.

Rotorua's motel mile in Fenton Street then became the haven for the homeless, compliments of central government.

Agencies were then moved from Government Gardens where they gave free meals and food to the city's homeless, to the grass reserve by Central Mall, which was inadvertently "enabling" some bad behaviour.

Issues ranged from staff feeling intimidated walking to their cars after work, fighting, swearing, spitting and reports of vandalism and rubbish left behind.

Now the Rotorua Lakes Council is working on an agreement to allow trusts that feed the homeless to use Kuirau Park.

'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results,' (Albert Einstein).

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Always look at the solution, not the problem. Learn to focus on what will give results.

Tracey McLeod
Lake Tarawera

Hard look

The council should have a hard look at itself after some councillors criticised it for not emphasising the rural sector enough in the draft Covid-19 economic recovery strategy for Rotorua (News, December 12).

I agree the rural sector is extremely well co-ordinated and able to adapt and change and move forward successfully - that's because it has had to be to survive the onslaught of all the rules and regulations it gets thrown at it.

I have to take my hat off to Peter Bentley for voting against what in my view is a one-sided shambles.

He gets my vote of confidence.

Gavin Muir
Springfield

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