GET BEHIND PEOPLE PODS

HER coalface is the Southport CBD. It’s growing upwards very quickly, as taller buildings are approved in the priority development area, and downwards just as fast for some as they reach the end of the road on their Gold Coast journey.

Veteran councillor Dawn Crichlow each day is confronted with tough decisions. She is being asked to remove council-built benches and seating areas outside shopfronts after complaints about the increasing number of homeless camping there.

A few streets north of her office, at the Southport Opportunity and Community Shop in Stevens St, Cr Crichlow is on a firstname basis with the volunteers.

“Watch your step,” the veteran councillor says loudly as she heads to a section of the shop to point out some bikes for disabled youths.

Out the back is the shop’s manager, Peter Whiffin, who has operated a building company and is the owner of a gift – he can invent and create workable machines.

His people pod – a plyboard and fibreglass camper on wheels hooked up to a bike – will attract its critics and cynics if Cr Crichlow gets approval to park these mobile temporary homes in the Mal Burke car park.

But is there another immediate solution? The homeless have been sleeping in the car park stairways. They are stretched across the concrete outside the CBD’s church fronts.

It is difficult to get accurate figures but the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates more than 1700 people are homeless on the Coast, an increase of

14 per cent across a five-year period.

More accurate is the reporting from welfare providers. Most estimate about 100 people are regularly turning up to free breakfasts in the CBD on a daily basis.

Of those, they reckon between 35 and 40 people are genuinely homeless. The pods could help those clients. A lot of them are young kids leaving violent homes, some experiencing the onset of mental health issues.

Council and charity groups need to run with this idea of a bicycle hooked up to a mobile home. Yes, there will be potholes with its launching, but it could save a young life.