Golf club bid gives hope to homeless

CLARENCE City Council will investigate what more it can do to help those in the community sleeping rough after it was suggested the council take advantage of an empty golf club.

Alderman Richard James suggested the council work with service providers to use the vacant building at the Rosny Golf Club as accommodation.

“We are all aware of the small tent city in Kangaroo Bay, which has been in that carpark now for a few months,” Mr James said.

“During that time there has been determination from Clarence residents to say why is that happening within the City of Clarence?

“We can call upon the special services of the Salvation Army, St Vincent de Paul, to try to work with Clarence to at least have a pocket of people who currently experience homelessness in the city to really take them on board and actually use the vacant golf club building.”

General manager Ian Nelson said there was one vacant building on the former golf course land that was not suitable for accommodation.

The motion was amended by James Walker to instead have council staff create a report to inform how homelessness could be addressed.

“This is a step in a much broader process that we would have wished to take at some point to investigate the feasibility of bringing accommodation options on to the Eastern Shore because, at the moment, most of them are concentrated in Hobart CBD,” Mr Nelson said.

“We know historically quite a number of homeless people used to travel back to the CBD to obtain accommodation because there wasn’t any on the Eastern Shore.”

Wendy Kennedy said it was a good idea to identify suitable spaces.

“I think in my first few months on council I actually brought up in questions without notice, the amount of people I saw living rough in the dunes at Seven Mile Beach,” Ms Kennedy said.

“The majority of them were women my age, some had children, no shelter available whatsoever on the Eastern Shore at that stage.”

Heather Chong said more needed to be done than picking a building and putting people in it. “If we got rid of that reference to that golf club building I would absolutely be supporting this,” Ms Chong said.

The amended motion was carried 8-3.