Kainga Ora told to strike new balance

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The Government’s crackdown on unruly state house tenants will be welcomed by many long-suffering neighbours, some of whom are living a nightmare existence — but will it still leave a huge social problem?

The Housing and Finance Ministers have sent a letter demanding that Kainga Ora Homes and Community take a tougher stance on unruly tenants. They are critical of the Sustaining Tenancies Framework, which National actually introduced in 2017, and want it replaced “to strike a different balance between the benefits of sustaining the tenancy of a disruptive tenant, and the impacts of that approach on neighbours.”

Housing Minister Chris Bishop said the move was in line with a commitment set out in the National-Act coalition agreement.

Bishop pointed to hundreds of serious complaints every month, with the most recent statistic being 335 serious complaints per month — including intimidation, threatening behaviour and worse. But in all of 2023 only three tenancies were ended due to disruptive behaviour.

New Zealanders were sick of hearing terrifying and heartbreaking stories from neighbours of abusive and anti-social Kainga Ora tenants, he said. It was completely unacceptable that people should live in fear.

He also wants a stronger approach to state house tenants who fail to pay rent, and urged the organisation to fill untenanted homes as quickly as possible and meet the social housing targets for the next two financial years.

Kainga Ora tenants have for a long time been complaining of living in fear, something that is backed up by things like the video circulating of a drunk man arguing with teenage neighbours and then striking the apartment complex with a hammer.

Some tenants say they are doubtful that Kainga Ora has the capacity to act, claiming that some property managers have been intimidated.

Unsurprisingly, Act leader David Seymour said the directive did not go as far as Act would have, but went further than it would have without Act.

The Green Party says the Government is being cruel to some of our most vulnerable, and “seeking to define a category of undeserving poor people”.

The conundrum is that while there is much sympathy for the neighbours, what will happen to families once they are evicted and what effect will it have on vulnerable, innocent children?

Getting tough on unruly tenants is only part of the problem — there are much bigger social issues here.

The housing situation worsened considerably under the last Labour government and it is obviously going to be a continuing headache for the new coalition one.