City Assist helping keep Hastings CBD a better place for all

They’re a friendly feature of Hastings, pairs of purple-clad City Assist staff walking their rounds, helping shoppers and retailers along the way.

Hastings District Council’s City Assist team has been credited with transforming the CBD’s atmosphere since it was founded nearly nine years ago.

Hastings Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst said in 2013 Hastings’ CBD “was going through some really challenging times”.

“We had a lot of our rangatahi who were disengaged, not in education, training or employment, and just hanging out in town being a bit of a nuisance.

“We also lost our community constables who were patrolling our streets by day, looking after our retail and our business communities.

“We had a big meeting with council, the business community, police, and worked out what we could do for our city now that we didn’t have community policing.

“So we had this incredible trial and it was so successful after six months, everybody wanted to keep it on.

“In fact, all our Flaxmere councillors said, ‘We want it in Flaxmere too’.”

While being video-interviewed for the story in Hastings CBD, the mayor scolded an unruly passer-by who took exception to the video camera. “I’m the mayor, I’m on the camera,” she told the bystander. “Don’t you talk like that in my city.”

City Assist staff walk up to 10km a day checking in with store owners and assisting with problematic behavior, helped by a direct line to the police watchhouse.

Founding city assister Herman Godinet said at first it was “pretty rough”.

“There were people hanging around the ATM machines, there were people going in and out of shops just helping themselves, literally.”

Behaviour has since improved, with City Assist winning praise from both retailers and police.

“We provide a safe environment for the CBD, in terms of people coming in to do their shopping, their business – just generally enjoying the ambience that the city provides.

“We help enhance it by just reassuring people that if anything goes wrong, anything happening that they can see, there is a number they can call us and then we will actively and proactively deal with whatever the situation might be.

“Our mantra is simple – we can’t just actually walk away – so whatever is happening in front of us, we’ve got to find a solution to it.”

City Assist has a car, enabling fast response to calls for help from Havelock North and in Flaxmere, where City Assist is based at the busy Flaxmere Community Centre.

Hazlehurst said visitors were made to feel welcome by City Assist.

“We measure success by the beautiful smiles of the people in town, who come up to me and say how safe Hastings feels, how they’re really proud of our City Assist team, how welcoming the city feels and just enjoying being in Hastings.”

Hazlehurst said many other councils in New Zealand visited Hastings “to look at our City Assist model and Hastings, to see if they can replicate it in their cities”.

While City Assist has helped deal with the symptoms of youth disengagement, it also spurred a successful programme to help youth find employment, Hazlehurst said.

“Our youth were in town, they were disengaged, they didn’t have opportunities.

“I would come and talk to them.

“They wanted to be in employment.

“They didn’t know the connections and actually out of that time, out of City Assist, we set out Mahi For Youth, which is work for our young people.

“Then we set up a store in Hastings, In Heretaunga St, a couple of years later.

“We got funding from the government and the store is still there.

“Our young people come into that shop to be connected to training and employment.”

Godinet said increasing homelessness was creating more issues for City Assist and for some families, problems seem to repeat themselves.

“It’s kind of changed in the last three, maybe four years – the demographic has changed.

“We’re seeing the younger brothers and younger sisters that don’t seem to have any other course in life, to follow what their older siblings have done.

“And that’s the sadness, really. I find that really hard to deal with.”