COFFS Harbour Council last week voted to proceed with the proposed upgrade of Sportz Central facility based on a $7.4 million design, cost estimate and proposed additional works.

However, calls to expand the facility’s use to help the community’s most vulnerable fell on deaf ears.

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The Council will seek an additional $1.1 million in funding from the MultiSport Community Facility Fund to deliver the project but rejected an amendment forwarded by Councillor Jonathan Cassell, seconded by Councillor Tony Judge, to use the upgraded facility “to benefit the entire community” not just as a sporting complex but as providing a “real social benefit” to vulnerable members of the Coffs community.

Councillor Cassell asked Council “to investigate the option that we expand on the facility’s use and that we see Sports central to become… a shelter for people in our community experiencing homelessness and also in times of crisis through crisis accommodation.

“It’s important that as councillors we are facing up to the issues in our community and we know that affordable housing and homelessness is a massive issue.

“It’s one of the defining issues of our time and it’s really important that we as councillors are seen to be doing everything we can to make sure that we are not turning away the community unnecessarily,” Mr Cassell said.

“We’ve got a large public facility here that could potentially house people, if you are a female and you would like to have secure shelter, anytime that you can roll out your mat and know that you have secure shelter would be a good time.

“I can’t imagine that people in the community in all honesty would reject or turn away women and children who may need safe housing or at least safe shelter,” Councillor Cassell told the Chamber.

“This isn’t about putting people up and allowing them to stay for days, this is about allowing people an overnight rest and then they move on the next day.

“Our facilities in our community are only being used by one user group or sector of the community.”

Councillor Cassell implored the Council to think “creatively about ways to use these multi-million dollar facilities that have toilets, that have showers, that already have the pre-existing (facilities) to help people feel they can escape extreme weather events”.

Councillor Judge seconded the amendment motion telling the Chamber that the number of homeless people in Coffs Harbour had grown by 160 in the past year.

“The scale is bad enough but the human aspect is just terrible,” Mr Judge said.

He then referred to a news story in the Daily Telegraph about a local woman who was homeless and “lived in constant fear”, sheltering on the verandah at Pete’s Place community centre in downtown Coffs Harbour.

“If we have the opportunity to do something about that and we don’t, I think we’re doing the wrong thing,” Mr Judge said.

“We have the facility…I think we owe it to those people to investigate the option.”

By Paul FOGARTY