Editorial: Kāinga Ora state housing issues a barometer of our society

Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams has suggested a rethink of the policy which prevents Kāinga Ora tenants from being evicted. Photo / Mark Mitchell, File

EDITORIAL:

New Zealand's state housing provider Kāinga Ora has become something of a whipping child lately.

Case after case has emerged of neighbours being subjected to dreadful and ongoing behaviour from tenants who appear immune from eviction.

The agency is shelling out thousands in compensation to neighbours abused by its unruly tenants and cannot say what it would take for a Kāinga Ora tenant to get kicked out of one of its houses.

Among them are Sarah's elderly parents, Kāinga Ora tenants themselves, who recently had new neighbours in Whangārei.

"From the first night the tenants moved in we had smashed windows, door trims pulled up and a woman being dragged from a car," Sarah said.

One Te Awamutu homeowner says debilitating stress and years of harassment from his abusive Kāinga Ora neighbours have left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, devalued his house and cost him his marriage.

The man says he has called police dozens of times, attended numerous court hearings, had endless correspondence with tenancy managers and written repeatedly to Government ministers trying to have the antisocial tenants evicted or moved on.

Many more traumatised people have contacted authorities and the media but have backed out of giving too much detail in case they expose themselves to revenge.

Officials seem locked into a cycle of trying to resolve flare-ups around residences and moving tenants on when complaints reach a threshold. Re-home and repeat as the issues surface again at the new address.

The sticking point is a "sustaining tenancies" policy, introduced by National in April 2017, intended to avoid state housing tenants becoming more vulnerable through homelessness. Associate Minister of Housing Poto Williams has hinted at reviewing the policy.

While the behaviour from these state housing tenants is unacceptable, to put them and their families out on the streets is only compounding the harm on them and on communities at large.

Agencies need to collaborate to lift these families out of their ingrained resentment and mistrust. Until the underlying inter-generational poverty and its tentacles of community disengagement, crime and substance abuse are dealt with, neighbours from hell will continue to be just over someone's fence.