A hotel manager says he will no longer accept people seeking emergency accommodation after a resident of an affluent Brisbane suburb urged the community to restore the “safe and quiet neighbourhood” in a letterboxing campaign.
The manager of the hotel in Hamilton, where the median house price is $1.9m, said about seven families, including at least 13 children, stayed there before the new year period.
He said the last family checked out on Tuesday.
It came after the letter was dropped into mailboxes calling on residents to “change our community for the better” and claiming those in emergency accommodation posed a safety threat, according to the Courier Mail.
“We already have seen some action getting certain people removed, and we need your help to get back to the safe and quiet neighbourhood that we had prior to the placement of these people,” the letter reads.
The letter also accused Micah Projects, the not-for-profit that organised the placements, of not adequately screening or supporting the families.
The chief executive of Micah Projects, Karyn Walsh, said the letter-dropping campaign had not helped the situation.
“Having constructive problem-solving, rather than using letter drops in the media, is probably a good thing,” she said.
She denied reports families had been evicted and said they were instead moved into suitable accommodation.
“There is a person who obviously was in more conflict with the neighbours than others and we have talked through with her about where she needs to be and how she needs to reflect on her part of the conflict,” she said.
“But no one was evicted and they weren’t removed.”
According to the hotel owner, he had asked for the families to be moved.
“They were fighting and making noise,” he told Guardian Australia. “The police came quite a few times … It was disturbing the neighbourhood so we decided not to accept these families any more.”
Walsh said there had been difficulties finding accommodation for those experiencing homelessness over the Christmas period.
“Homelessness isn’t good for individuals. It causes a lot of stress and trauma and it’s not good for communities because people aren’t stable,” she said.
Walsh said in the current housing crisis, Brisbane has up to 200 families in hotels at any one time.
“Yesterday afternoon, we had two families arrive who had been living in tents. It’s a really critical program and we appreciate the way the private sector has engaged with us around having brokered rooms, but it’s a complex arrangement.”
A Queensland police spokesperson said they “have not observed a specific increase in reports from the address but are aware of the current temporary accommodation situation”.
