June McCormack, Byron Bay.
Because the council has approved a two-storey, five-bed five-bath house plus studio and pool to be built two metres away from our house, depriving us of most of our privacy and winter sun, we may have to reconsider living here.
I have spoken to the owner building the house next door and been told it will be ‘holiday let’ as there is no way he would ever want to live in Byron Bay.
With the noise and constant parties that will surely follow, life here may become intolerable and we will be forced to leave, and do what everyone else is doing and rent to holiday makers.
Why not ? When you can get $45,000 for three weeks rent from ‘schoolies’, by cramming 10-15 bunk beds into your house and charging the going rate which is $1,000 per head per week.
I do not want to be forced out of my granny flat but I am sick of phoning the Police at 2am because I am still awake from some nightclub or all night party.
What’s left of our dwindling ‘community’ is slowly being sold to greedy developers who quickly subdivide the blocks, throw up the biggest house they can get away with, holiday let it and move onto the next one.
So you ask me for what purpose my granny flat will be used. Well at the moment it’s where my husband and I reside.
As for the future? Well who knows?
I wonder how many bunks will fit into a granny flat.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
