Help for evicted girl

Press, 24 June 1981, Page 1

Help for evicted girl

Maria Mackay, the 17-ycar-old girl evicted from a flat in Hurley Street by police on Monday night was last evening thanking the people who had offered her help.

"I am amazed that people cared about something like that, - ’ she said. "I suppose it takes a case like me to make people realise that there are people without money and jobs. - .’

About 10 people telephoned “The Press” yesterday with offers of accommodation, food, clothing, money, and jobs.

Last evening, she was trying to get in touch with them to thank them and perhaps "work something out.”

She spent much of yesterday talking to the news media, and she admits to being rather "disoriented” by the sudden exposure. Last night she. was staying in. the same flat where'she slept on a couch on Monday night. Seven people are living in the three-bedroom flat, and she said that she did not want to stay.

"I want to go back to Hurley Street,’ - she said. After applying for the unemployment benefit two weeks ago, she expected to receive $7 tomorrow from the Social Welfare Department. "They said that I would get $4O. a week from next week,” Maria said. Maria has an appointment with Mr L. A. Gough, of the Public Trust Office, at 11 a.ni. today. Mr Gough will discuss whether she is eligible for a grant from the Arthur Hall Memorial Trust set up by a Christchurch businessman in

1912 for orphaned, destitute girls. If she is eligible the trust would not give her money, but could pay for her accommodation, clothes and food, he said. As far as he knew, less than half a dozen girls had applied for it in Christchurch, he said.

Maria said that she had i $4OOO held for her in trust 1 until she is 20. She was not I receiving any interest on the < money, and could not use it. She returned to Hurley t Street yesterday to pick up i her bed and her Siamese cat, I Harley. I

Members of the Te Whanau Trust helped her move. “They have been really tremendous,” she said. The City Missioner, the Rev. P. Cpughlan, said yesterday that Maria was not an unusual case. ■ "We see one or two like her every day." he said. “She is not an isolated case, just part of a problem which is becoming very serious in the city.” High unemployment and the scarcity and expense of rental accommodation were hitting young people in Maria's predicament, he said.