Golden Bay is not turning out to be the land of milk and honey one man hoped for. Photo / Tracy Neal
Golden Bay is not turning out to be the land of milk and honey one man hoped for. Photo / Tracy Neal
A Golden Bay trust which promotes sustainable living in harmony with one another has had to declare one of its residents a squatter to get him to leave.
Joseph Angelo has been living on the 7.2ha hillside property Spirit of Nature overlooking Golden Bay since 2013, and more recently in a caravan on the property with his wife and infant.
Despite concerted legal efforts to prove otherwise, he has never been granted any occupation rights by any member of the Trust which owned the property. Angelo had been paying $50 a week to live there, but the Tribunal found that did not mean a tenancy agreement existed.
The long and winding road from Golden Bay just got more complicated for one man, set to be evicted as a squatter. Photo / Tracy Neal
According to social media sites, Spirit of Nature, run by Global Native Aotearoa was established in the 1980s and has been owned by the Bioversity SoNNoS Charitable Trust since the early 2000s.
Its purpose is to uphold a culture of paradise in which everybody can live in freedom and peace, with love for each other and creation – without exploitation, oppression or enrichment, at the expense of nature or society.
Angelo's attempts to be recognised as a legal tenant failed in the Tenancy Tribunal, and now the District Court.
He has now contacted media, claiming he and his family are to be removed as squatters, despite having an "authentic written tenancy with no evidence of termination".
Angelo said he felt the action was in retaliation for asking the Trust to "correct wrongful land register" he claimed should have better reflected that it was "gifted" to charity in 2002.
He also claimed to have carried out "huge amounts of work" on the property.
In February 2021 Angelo sought an order from the Tribunal confirming he had a residential tenancy at the property. A few months later the Biodiversity SoNNoS Trust lodged a cross-application on the basis there was no tenancy.
In May 2021 the Tribunal held that a caravan on the property was Angelo's principal place of occupancy, that it was not "residential premises", and there was therefore no jurisdiction for the Tribunal to find a tenancy.
Golden Bay is not turning out to be the land of milk and honey one man hoped for. Photo / Tracy Neal
Angelo's application for a rehearing was dismissed in July 2021. The Trust then lodged a new application with the Tribunal to have him declared a squatter on the property, which the Tribunal granted.
Angelo then challenged that decision, but it was dismissed last November, prompting his appeal to the District Court.
The Nelson District Court has now also dismissed the appeal.
Judge Tony Zohrab said in his reserved judgment of February 25, that Angelo submitted that the Tribunal's decision was a "miscarriage of justice", that it was "factually incorrect" and that there was no evidence to determine his tenancy.
Judge Zohrab noted in his decision that Angelo claimed he had lawfully been on the property since 2013, and that any eviction, or attempt to evict him was unlawful. He submitted to the court it would be a "miscarriage of justice to throw a woman and a child onto the street".
Angelo also submitted that eviction was against the founder's vision for the property, that the trustees were "not acting charitably", but for their own purposes.
Judge Zohrab said the Tribunal had been thorough and careful in considering the arguments and was also correct to discount the bulk of Angelo's other contentions, many of which were described as being blurred by matters unrelated to the (tenancy) Act, or unrelated to its procedural focus.
