WHEN HOUSE IS A HOME

CONFLICT is unavoidable when a council tries to do what is best for the city.

It is understandable the council would want to achieve the best financial outcome in using its resources, but in the case of the Kirra Beach tourist park and a decision to move permanent residents out, the public would also want city administrators to observe an unwritten social contract with the battlers who will be affected.

The council is proposing a 10-year deadline as it moves towards offering just short-term accommodation, with options for park residents including selling their manufactured homes at market value or having them relocated at city expense. To outsiders, that would sound fair.

But as residents – many now aged in their seventies – have explained, it is not as simple as that. Those houses are an investment and since the council has decided to move the goalposts, the structures could lose value. If they sell, rental properties on the Gold Coast are in huge demand and buying a house or unit is probably beyond their means. And if they do take up the option of relocating their structures, where to? Parks are few and far between and if they have to leave the city, where can they go that offers quality of life for pensioners?

Like the moral of the film The Castle, those mobile home structures represent more than mere places to sleep. They are “homes” with happy memories, gardens and everything else the description entails.

The city can achieve its goal, but should find a solution to allay fears. It could allow residents who want to keep living there to stay for the rest of their days or until they have to go into care. The understanding would be that from then on, the site would be for short-term accommodation.

Surely the city budget is not so strapped that some leeway can’t be given.