It is hardly surprising that many state-house tenants in Glen Innes are angry about being asked to leave homes they have inhabited for years.
Disruption is always hard to take, especially if, as is the case with some of the residents, they have been settled for up to half a century. Mana Movement co-vice president John Minto wrote in the Herald this week that "generations of kids have now grown up in these well-treed properties with robust houses on large sections". It must have seemed to these families that the temporary arrangement proviso normally associated with state-house tenancy did not somehow apply to them. Thus, the shock associated with their suburb's redevelopment has been all the greater.
The Tamaki Transformation Programme involves Housing NZ removing or renovating 156 houses to make way for 78 new or renovated state units, 39 homes for community providers and about 140 privately owned homes. The aim is to revitalise the suburb while at the same time selling high-value state houses to private developers and using the money to build new ones elsewhere. There is nothing unusual in the latter. The state, as landlord, is fully entitled to put its houses to the use it sees fit. The only caveats should be that the tenants are given sufficient notice of its intention and offered another state house.
In Glen Innes, that has been done. Some tenants have reacted appropriately. The first houses to be moved were those occupied by tenants who asked to shift early. The problem lies with elderly residents who have dug their toes in because of their mistaken belief that they had a house for life. One provided the telling comment that she wanted to stay in "my house". That is never the case for state-house tenants, no matter how long their family has lived there.