Shop-owners on Queen Street share ‘horror stories’
Ella Prendergast
Auckland, February 24, 2018
Shop owners on Auckland’s Queen Street say that they are fed up with threatening and abusive behaviour from rough sleepers.
The boss at McDonald’s does not like to bundle all rough sleepers outside his joint into the same “intimidating” category – but with so many past run-ins, feels he has no choice.
“Smoking cannabis, smoking cigarettes in the restaurant; staff have been threatened in the past and we have had to hire security,” franchisee Prakash Hira said.
Antisocial behaviour
Once or twice, those congregating outside have been given leftover food by patrons, and then enter the store and try to swap it for money, he said.
“They will walk up to a customer and take something off the tray… it is not the customer’s fault, so we have to replace the meal. It is a select few that spoil it for the majority. No matter how much sympathy we may have for some of them, it is sort of wiped away by the ongoing antisocial behaviour,” Mr Hira said.
Generalisation dangerous
Community organisation ‘Lifewise’ said that there is a danger in stereotyping and people should avoid stigmatising behaviours and attitudes.
They say that many people sleeping rough are respectful and blend in to the background.
The Horror Stories
However, shop-owners say that the growing number of rough sleepers on the thriving central city street has left them grappling with how to deal with the situation.
Staff at JayJays feel so unsafe that after clocking out, they will wait half an hour to buddy up with the next person to walk home.
“There have been a couple of times they do what we call the ‘no pants party’ – where they literally just take off their pants,” store manager Stacey Lee-Hunt told Newshub.
Stealing Sprees
Ms Hunt said that she calls police one or two times a week “for general disturbances, drug abuse, alcohol issues or [rough sleepers] abusing people.”
“I have had them try and hide inside my store from police,” she said.
Ms Hunt often sees the same crowd, who she suspects have been on “stealing sprees”, using the phone booth outside to make swaps.
“If I do see they have stolen stuff, I will go back to that store and tell them. We won’t try and get their stuff back because that’s just asking for trouble,” she said.
Customers lost
Every store Newshub spoke to has its own horror story. Dotti has lost customers because the crowd hanging around can be so intimidating.
“They just smoke [synthetic drugs] right there in public view. The smell wafts right into the store… they’re like zombies,” Store Manager Te Aroha Looker told Newshub.
“They will huddle in groups of four or five of them, asleep standing up. They are falling over, their eyes are glazed over.”
Push and Shove
Once a man tried to force a staff member behind the counter, who managed to get him out and lock the doors. A second time, a group of men cornered another man in the store.
“As soon as I heard the word ‘knife,’ I called the Police,” Ms Looker says. It is a call that she had to make nearly 10 times during her six months working there.
The owner of ‘InBody Beauty Spa’ Amy Clarkson told Newshub that one of her clients was harassed for money as she walked to the store.
“Then they spat on her.”
Once, when Ms Clarkson was working alone, a group of people entered her store and stole products.
“It was only me there at the time. It was really quite intimidating; luckily they left,” she said.
Don’t stereotype
A study conducted by Lifewise, titled ‘Inside the Cup,’ gives a voice to those who behave respectfully on the street and blend into the background, and as a result, often get bundled in with the bad eggs.
“You get abuse sometimes,” one rough sleeper said in the report.
The Other Side
“They call you a loser, but you just learn to close your ears. People who do that, they just don’t understand. They come from a different lifestyle. People can walk past and look at you like you are nothing. I do not like it when people look at me like that. One time, someone kicked over my cup and all my coins went everywhere. He did not even say sorry.”
One woman said that she only “hustles for what I need.”
“I do not get greedy. It is normally when I am hungry or when I need women’s stuff. They just lump us together like we are under the same umbrella. They should realise it is the new ones that cause all the trouble.”
Helping Retailers
Rough sleeper George, 56, even engages with shop owners near his ‘spot’, and they sometimes ask him to do odd job for them. He said that he really enjoys that, because he loves to work.
The Report said that people who hustle are often seeking connection with others.
“Many find these connections through their interactions and with the wider Auckland community.
Engage with them
Auckland City Mission says homeless and beggars are “difficult to distinguish and not necessarily related”.
“Someone could be begging but housed,” the Mission’s spokesperson said in a statement.
“For the last 10 years the Mission’s rough sleepers count has shown an increase in rough sleeping in the CBD.”
The Mission’s advice for any shop owner fed-up with a rough sleeper is to talk to them.
“Ask them to move on if they are blocking their doorway. If the person was homeless, they could also let them know that there is the City Mission on Hobson Street that has services that help.”
Police say that there were 4649 callouts to Queen Street last year alone, but they could not say which proportion of those calls involved rough sleepers.
They said that the number of callouts in 2017 was roughly the same as 2016.
Indian Newslink has published the above Report and Picture under a Special Agreement with www.rnz.co.nz
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Photo Caption:
A sleeper on Queen Street
(Photo Courtesy: Getty Images through Newshub)
