Fortified gang houses debate deferred

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 1

Fortified gang houses debate deferred

Possible planning action on fortified gang houses in Christchurch should be deferred until -the City Council had met workers in gang-related areas to get their advice, said the council’s town-planning committee yesterday. = Cr Geoff Stone, the committee’s chairman, said that any debate on a list of possible planning’moves to protect neighbourhoods from gang i violence Sted by fortifications be deferred. Any response now, before

studies were done, “would only prolong a debate on gangs at a time when it would be more helpful to allow inter-gang tension and gang publicity to die down,” he said. He would rather get advice than “jump in boots and all.”

Mr W. T. Williams, the City Planner, said it would be “wrong and clumsy” for the council to talk about possible legal processes before looking at the underlying problems that led to fortified houses. Cr D. J. Rowlands said

the council should consider what positive things it could do to defuse the situation. It had already helped through group work schemes at the Bottle Lake plantation and on the national marae, on which members of different gangs worked. Councillors could consider questions of whether fortified houses were an “objectionable element” in their neighbourhoods or were permitted uses, as gang headquarters or clubhouses, in residential zones, said a staff planning report.