I refer to your article about the young people from Gerringong urging Kiama Council to consider redevelopment of the former nursing home located in Havilah Place. Whilst I have sympathy for their housing problems, I don't believe that the site they have identified is an appropriate solution. As I have pointed out on previous occasions in writing to your paper about this site, the land on which those buildings are located was donated by a local developer, Tony Freeman, in the 1970s to the Kiama Aged Care Council.

I have unfortunately no detail as to how and why ownership reverted to Council (if indeed it has); but I am aware that some services currently in existence in that building, are shared with the residential retirement village known as Blue Haven Terralong.

Given that your paper has also identified the dearth of residential aged accommodation in this community, and given the circumstances of the initial gift of this land and the purposes for which it was donated, a reasonable person could only conclude that any future development of the site would be a logical extension of the existing retirement village - in other words Blue Haven Stage 6. If you look at the history of the development of Blue Haven, as documented by Nick Hartgerink in 2019 for Kiama Council, you would note that when the most recent Stage of Blue Haven was developed, Council received a windfall that enabled the construction of the Pavilion, on the showground headland.

A properly functioning Council should be able to identify this business opportunity, and any subsequent profit could then be used to create 'social housing' elsewhere within the municipality.

A. Holder 

Kiama