UPDATE, 2,30pm
Byron Shire users of temporary accomodation are to be sheltered this Christmas, a Homes NSW spokesperson told The Echo this afternoon.
NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson said she was pleased to advise that one of her department’s commercial providers in the Byron shire had agreed to negotiate their rates.
‘Based on this new rate, Homes NSW will continue to undertake bookings with them,’ Ms Jackson said via an emailed statement.
‘All current clients will remain until a longer-term housing option is identified.’
EARLIER: Tourism operators running hotels and motels have been accused of charging the state government higher rates than tourists to accommodate some of the most vulnerable people in the state in the lead-up to Christmas.
NSW Housing and Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson indicated on Monday morning the government was no longer prepared to let private business operators rip off taxpayers and exploit a declared housing crisis.
‘These providers were charging us exorbitant rates because we wanted to help house people needing emergency accommodation,’ Ms Jackson said via email.
‘In some cases hotel owners were charging the NSW Government substantially more what they are charging tourists,’ she said, ‘this is not acceptable to me or anyone in our community’.
Instead, the government was focused on expanding partnerships with non-profit homelessness service providers, Ms Jackson said.
The minister said non-profit services offering case management and other essential support delivered immediate shelter, helped people transition into long-term housing and access critical services.
‘It’s a far more sustainable and effective solution than relying on expensive, for-profit providers,’ Ms Jackson said, ‘hotels and motels should only ever be used as a last resort’.
The minister’s comments come in response to a Byron Shire Council media release last week and calls from Mayor Sarah Ndiaye in relation to an alleged loss of temporary housing providers in the shire.
Byron Council accuses state government of cancelling temporary housing services
The Byron Shire Council was urgently calling on the minister last week to reconsider what they said was the sudden closure of the only three temporary accommodation providers in the shire.
The closures were included in a list of eight provider closures across the Northern Rivers, out of what were 36, the council said.
Byron Shire Mayor Sarah Ndiaye was quoted saying it was an unwelcome Christmas present for people already doing it tough, with the Byron Shire having recorded the highest number of people sleeping rough in NSW in the 2024 Street Count.
‘Taking away the very meagre services that are available, even if I understand they perhaps they aren’t as feasible in this area because the cost of land and of hotels and everything are really expensive, that doesn’t mean you abandon those people,’ Councillor Ndiaye told Bay FM’s Community Newsroom* on Friday.
‘That means you come up with better solutions,’ the mayor said.
‘We haven’t been part of this process of ceasing the use of these three providors,’ she said.
‘From what we can see, it’s really just left our homeless community with nowhere to go.’
Glamping as a last housing resort
More than 500 households are said to be relying on temporary housing in the Byron Shire, with some expected to have to move to areas like Tweed, Ballina, and Lismore.
Anna Lockwood, of the Ending Rough Sleeping Collaboration Byron Shire, was also quoted in the council’s release saying less than two per cent of local housing stock was social housing.
The mayor told Bay FM the council was willing to be ‘flexible and try to make things work in these difficult circumstances’.
‘We’ve done that before,’ she said, ‘we’ve had some meanwhile use in one of the backpackers while it was waiting for its DA to go through and we had 25 or 26 units being occupied there one year when we hit this critical time of Christmas’.
‘We worked with one of the showgrounds and got some glamping tents and provided some accommodation.’
Cr Ndiaye was quoted in the council media release calling on the government to urgently reconsider the closures until after the holiday season to ‘prevent further harm to those already struggling’.
Minister accuses council of misrepresentation
NSW Minister for Housing Rose Jackson was asked for comment and whether people in need of housing were being required to vacate hotels, motels and other holiday accommodation for holiday visitors.
Ms Jackson responded via a list of dot points by publication deadline, promising another update this afternoon.
She told The Echo she was deeply disappointed by what she described as an outright misrepresentation of the government’s approach, which included, she said, a ‘record amount of funding to homelessness services in this year’s budget as well as expanding homelessness outreach to Byron Shire’.
The state government has announced $2 million in funding for the Fletcher Street Cottage in Byron Bay over the past two years and has extended a Social Futures pilot outreach program for rough sleepers.
This isn’t the first time tourism operators on the Northern Rivers, particularly in the Byron Shire, have been accused of a lack of morals when it comes to those in urgent need of housing.
Flood and landslide disaster survivors in 2022 temporarily sheltered in hotels and motels throughout the region were obliged to vacate in favour of prior bookings for visitors at the time.
Private residential landlords were also understood to take advantage of the increased demand by charging insurance companies higher rates than usual, up to thousands of dollars per week, to house insured disaster survivors.
Ms Jackson said she challenged those making claims about the government’s decision to stop supporting the private business model to explain why they believed the public should pay more to for-profit motel and hotel providers for rooms rather than to not-for-profit organisations that she said worked collaboratively with the government to deliver lasting solutions.
* Mia Armitage also produces Bay FM’s Community Newsroom
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. 
