RESIDENTS at Homeswest’s Coldstores enclave on Queen Victoria Street have called for gates to keep out the junkies and homeless people that are turning it into a living hellhole.

Mayor Ben Lawver has backed the residents’ call after joining the Chook on a tour with resident Franciscan monk Brother Francis Mary this week.

Every corner of the Coldstores was filled with rubbish ranging from abandoned suitcases to food wrappers, stairwells were soaked in urine and graffiti covered most walls, though one frustrated resident had struck back with a message of their own: “This is not a toilet,” they noted of the covered carpark.

“There’s a bit of blood in here today,” Br Francis says as he negotiates a discarded loaf of bread on one of the stairwells.

“You know, normally there’s faeces here.”

• Fremantle mayor Ben Lawver (right) stepped straight out of a weeding session at Samson Park into even more noxious pests, with residents at The Coldstores complex on Queen Victoria Street sharing a despairing tale of drug users and homeless people who’ve turned the one-time social housing model into a filthy toilet. Photo by Steve Grant

That indignity awaits us in a nook off the complex’s main courtyard, just metres from where a couple has apparently been living in their car.

“People put up their tents, and they shoot up a lot here,” Br Francis says.

“There are junkies; people are so over it.

“The rubbish around here, the cleaners don’t like to touch it because they’re not sure about what’s going to be in there.

“It’s faeces, it’s needles, you know…blood.

• Just metres from where this chap decided to pass out in the main car park, the Chook found a pile of human excrement.

Br Francis says he’s quietly confronted drug dealing tenants only to get brushed off, and had to put the hard word on one man masturbating with his front door wide open.

“I said ‘not anyone wants to see that, you’ve got to leave’.”

Fellow resident Crescence has lived in the Coldstores for 15 years and watched the downward spiral, and while she’s trying to raise a young family, says it’s too dangerous to let the kids play outside any more.

Children

“My children they are still young and it’s hard for them to know what’s going on because they don’t have the experience, but my daughter is older now, she says ‘we wish could run this place’ because there’s is fighting all the time.

“With all the shouting and yelling, our children hear this.

“So we’re thinking when they put the gates in it would be better, with not so much movement.”

Both Crescence and Br Francis have been directly impacted by the crime; the online goods she ordered didn’t have much chance when the courier dropped them at her door, while his modest car has been broken into twice.

Br Francis says he’s trying to avoid an “us and them” confrontation and has tried to work with the druggies by offering them a bed on the proviso they stop using, but he says they mostly don’t want to. He’d suggested a toilet be set up so residents weren’t constantly stepping through human waste, but says it didn’t go down well with the authorities.

So he’s pinning his hopes on the gates and has been collecting signatures from residents.

• The deal done, these fellows settle in for a shoot-up in broad daylight. Photos supplied

“The original plan was to put the gates in,” he said.

“They were built into the original plans.

“It was built beautifully.

“I met the architect, who said he designed it so that it’s very quiet here.

“He wanted to make it attractive to look at, with nice spaces.

“No one comes out to use the space now.”

Mr Lawver said he supported the residents banding together to try and get change.

“I really support your present efforts to bring the residents together to say, ‘hey, we want to see this change’.

“That’s a really positive thing.

“It’s not just sitting around whinging or doing nothing about it,” he said.

by STEVE GRANT