Revealed: What really happened to the homeless during and after Cyclone Alfred

What happened to the Gold Coast homeless during and after Cyclone Alfred? There was heartbreak. READ THEIR STORIES

Cyclone Alfred was a golden missed opportunity for all levels of government. We could have opened our doors permanently to the homeless.

Instead we farewelled them, with tents on their walkers.

Scott is helping clean-up at the front of Set Free Care at Southport. For six nights he slept inside the Rawlins Street shop. It usually provides only laundry services, clothing and food.

“There were 50 stretcher beds. They put our names on garbage bags (to identify us). It was amazing what Set Free did for us,” he says.

He is 55, grey curly hair flowing down his shoulders, in shorts and bright patchy short-sleeved shirt. Set Free had helped him in Cairns before he left to visit his sick father on the Coast.

“These people work their arses off. They gave us three meals a day. Imagine, street people, all penned up like animals — but it all went to plan.”

Set Free Care Southport’s Ellen Long smiles, recalling those night shifts with about 30 volunteers. “You could hear a pin drop,” she says.

Disaster co-ordinator Patrice Poutu says council had “generously supplied” 100 stretchers.

Set Free Care headquarters in Southport. Gaven MP Meaghan Scanlon and Opposition leader Steven Miles met with the charity's Patrice Poutu and Ellen Long.

Ms Long saw a “beautiful community” where everyone was grateful to be warm and safe.

“The perception I imagine would be that putting people with complex needs under the same roof and sleeping would be chaos — it was tranquil,” she says.

Among them a 15-year-old homeless boy.

“He was great. We were in touch with all the right people for him at the time. He remained here for six days and six nights,” Ms Long says.

Gaven MP Meaghan Scanlon, aware a middle-aged man had moved from a Nerang River park to below her office, drove him first to a council evacuation centre at the Bicentennial Centre.

They were told to go to Set Free Care, exposing a nasty gap in our disaster relief services.

The homeless camp at Southport, on the Nerang River.

Older rough sleepers, regulars at our hospital emergency departments, were dispatched.

A walker was dropped off for a 55-year-old after he arrived by taxi from the hospital.

“We had to send that poor gentleman away, with a tent on his walker and a sleeping bag and he was very distraught at that time,” Ms Long says.

It’s true for some homeless, home is and always will be the street. But Ms Poutu remembers them helping him at night, getting him off the stretcher to the shower.

“It was really difficult for us seeing him walk away with just a tent as his home,” she says.

Government sources say 11 of 22 known to authorities have “engaged” since the cyclone.

Maria Leebeek, the Gold Coast Homeless Network chair, is seeking a proper audit.

Volunteers are asking about the whereabouts of a woman living on the Broadwater.

Asked if many of the homeless were back in parks or sleeping on the streets of the CBD again, Ms Leebeek replied: “Certainly from here, they did.”

Was there an opportunity lost, that we almost got them home, only to lose them again?

“There was no resourcing. The resourcing was focused on keeping people safe during the tropical cyclone. The issue is, where are people now,” she said.

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Originally published as Revealed: What really happened to the homeless during and after Cyclone Alfred