Beneficiary protests against housing development

Ioela Rauti, known also as Niki (centre) outside her Housing New Zealand home in Taniwha Street, Glen Innes. Photo / NZ Herald

A 59-year-old beneficiary with heart problems has become the first Glen Innes tenant to vow to fight an eviction notice all the way as a new mixed housing development gathers pace.

Ioela (Niki) Rauti and some of her neighbours and supporters are protesting twice a day at peak commuter times outside her state house at the eastern end of Taniwha St overlooking the Tamaki Estuary.

Housing NZ has agreed to sell her section and 155 other local properties to a consortium of Arrow International, Hopper Developments, Southside Group and Dryden Property, replacing 156 existing houses with at least 270 new homes.

Housing NZ will buy back 78 homes, and IHC subsidiary Accessible Properties will buy five. The first four of the other 187 planned for private sale are now on the market priced around $750,000 each.

Consortium director Murdoch Dryden said other state tenants moved out had agreed to go and a Housing NZ survey had found 80 per cent were happy with their new homes.

But Auckland housing advocates said they were seeing increasing numbers of Housing NZ 90-day eviction notices due to both redevelopments and the end of the "house for life" policy for state tenants who fell behind with their rent.

Labour MP Phil Twyford said written answers to parliamentary questions showed that Housing NZ issued 476 90-day notices last year and 80 in the first four months of this year, compared with only one in the four years up to June 2007.

Ms Rauti, a former chef who grew up in Glen Innes, came back to the three-bedroom family home when her mother was ill about 20 years ago and took over the lease when her mother died in 1999.

She was already affected by heart problems.

"As soon as my mother died they wanted me out, but my specialist said you can't, she's just had a heart operation," she said.

Despite her continuing heart problems, she vowed to fight when she received a 90-day notice telling her to leave by August 12 this year.

"I'm not going to give in. Nobody else has stood up as yet," she said.

"They are offering me somewhere else but I don't want to move. I don't want to keep moving from place to place."

Mr Dryden said the first two tenants would move back into new state houses in the area next month. One of the four completed private houses has also been sold.

State tenants from throughout Auckland are holding a public meeting at the Grey Lynn Community Centre at 7pm today.