Camping hub won’t come back next summer
Nelson’s temporary camping hub won’t be making a reappearance next summer, but work is progressing on a service hub for the homeless.
The temporary camping services hub was set up in Halifax St last summer with funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) Responsible Camping Fund.
It was meant to ease the pressures of freedom camping on the region.
While it was not clear if the hub served its purpose in terms of freedom campers, it proved popular with and useful for local homeless people.
Nelson City Council team leader of parks and facilities assets Paul Harrington told councillors at the sports and recreation committee on Thursday that staff did not recommend repeating the service hub.
‘‘This report started its life before Covid, so we were already going to recommend not doing it again. However, for this year there’s actually no certainty whether this [Responsible Camping] Fund is going to happen this year,’’ Harrington said.
Councillors were told that the difficulty in finding a suitable site, managing the hub, and the lack of clarity on the results, meant the hub should not be repeated.
Harrington said council staff ‘‘couldn’t tell whether [the hub] was having the benefit we were anticipating’’.
‘‘[We expected] that there would be less complaints and less rubbish bins filled and everything... it wasn’t clear if the hub was contributing at all to the problems we were experiencing the year before.’’
Harrington said three major campgrounds had reported decreases in their takings.
‘‘We’ve had feedback which I’ve included in the report from the Ta¯hunanui and the Brook campground.
‘‘Since the report was written I’ve also heard from the Maitai campground and they are along a similar [line], about a third less.
‘‘We don’t know if that was directly related to the hub or not, but that’s certainly the view of the leaseholders and the managers of those camps.’’
Ta¯hunanui Holiday Park reported a drop in bookings, from 1010 in the 2019 summer to 953 in 2020.
However, a silver lining was the benefits for the homeless.
‘‘The homeless community really benefited, just having a space to go to in the mornings and charge phones and have a cup of tea and things like that,’’ Harrington said.
Councillor Matt Lawrey, chair of the community services committee, which is working to establish a permanent hub on the grounds of the Male Room, said the camping hub ‘‘played a very important role in the community last summer, and it highlighted the need for it’’.
The work began with councillor Gaile Noonan and Male Room director Philip Chapman in January, before progressing to the committee where the project was delayed by the lockdown.
Sports and recreation committee chair Tim Skinner said the hub was a ‘‘catalyst’’ for more collaboration.
‘‘[The hub] really helped a lot of local people, in a small way or a big way . . . and it kick-started something which I think wouldn’t have been kick-started in the past.’’