Asylum seekers' secret homes in community
GEMMA JONES and CLEMENTINE CUNEO
The Daily Telegraph
February 26, 2013 12:00AM
MANY of the 9000 asylum seekers living in the community have been found sleeping in garages, on couches and in boarding houses.
Asylum Seeker Attack :The Union/ GetUp funded Federal Labor Green Loon Independent minority Co Party Government has placed 80 illegal immigrant males next door to teenage female students. WHY?
Sydney Australia, Labor's Malmo in the Pacific?
A group that houses some of those on bridging visas said asylum seekers were in inappropriate accommodation.Paul Bottrill, of House of Welcome in Carramar, said: "We have, in the last quarter, had 55 referrals - many were staying in backpacker hostels, sleeping on couches or in garages."
About 55 refugees have also been housed at the Macquarie University campus where a student was sexually assaulted in her room last week.
Police have confirmed they are investigating whether an asylum seeker was involved.
The victim's housemates revealed yesterday that before the attack they had begged for the accommodation operator, Campus Living Villages, to reconsider housing middle-aged male asylum seekers near young female students.
Last night the company said it had since offered to move "affected residents" but none wanted to go.
The refugees are staying at the campus under a program driven by the Red Cross, which has been contracted by the federal government to provide initial accommodation for asylum seekers.
Under that same program, Sydney lodges and hotels are taking asylum seekers for as little as $20 a night.
Dulwich Hill Lodge owner Frank Bilotta said he had asylum seekers sleeping up to eight to a dorm for stretches of between four and six weeks.
"The Red Cross book them in and then they bring them," he said.
"They could pay me more but unfortunately that is the way it is at the moment."
Rooms at Ryde's AMG Motel and Serviced Apartments cost between $120 and $180 per night but a staff member said it was full with asylum seekers.
"We are full up right now with the immigration people. They are fine, no trouble to us at all," the staff member said.
Campus Living Villages said last night the number of asylum seekers staying on Macquarie University campus had fallen from 55 to 45 as students began arriving for the academic year.
Security had been bolstered since the sexual assault, it said.
But student Daisy Stone, who was in the house last Thursday when her friend was attacked at 3.30am, said the victim and her housemates wanted the men moved."It is so inappropriate to have a house full of 19- and 20-year-old girls, living in the middle of all these middle-aged men," she said.
"Only us and the townhouse next door are women, the rest are all refugees. We aren't racist, we just don't think it's right to house us in the middle of them.
"It should never have come to this, but something really has to be done so this doesn't happen to someone else.A BOAT with 68 asylum seekers was intercepted off Ashmore Island on Saturday.
