Coles has claimed victory in a court case today, barring a homeless man from entering a shopping complex housing one of their stores.
In a joint legal action with another property development group, Coles Property Development have given the boot to Milovan ‘Michael’ Stankovic, a 71-year-old homeless man with leukaemia.
Stankovic, who also has heart disease, arthritis and type ii diabetes, has been at odds with the management at Kellyville Plaza, where the Coles is located, for years while living in a truck in the carpark.
Coles argued that he’d been massively overstaying the centre’s 3 hour parking limit and that apparently they’d received complaints from customers about Stankovic verbally abusing people with disabilities and urinating in the centre’s gardens.
It’s pretty fair that they’d want him gone if he’d been abusing people, but it’s unfortunate that the response to homelessness and the issues with mental illness that usually surround it is legal action to make it someone else’s problem, not support services.
Stankovic represented himself in the trial and argued that he was protected by the Protocol for Homeless People in Public Places, which the NSW government introduced to make sure the homeless aren’t treated like garbage, but the court ruled that it didn’t apply in private spaces like the Coles carpark.
Fair cop that it’s private property but, like Italy showed when it ruled theft wasn’t a crime if the person in question was starving, these sort of things aren’t really black and white in a society where systematic poverty exists.
Source: SMH.
Photo: Getty Images / Quinn Rooney.
