Sanity returns

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Housing Minister Chris Bishop today announced the Government had ordered Kāinga Ora’s board to scrap the Sustaining Tenancies Framework, which aimed to sustain tenancies with a goal to avoid evictions and exits into homelessness, while also balancing obligations to neighbours and wider communities.

Labour prioritised tenants who terrorised their neighbours over their victims. They instituted a policy of basically no consequences for bad behaviour which was a disaster.

It didn’t only victimise neighbours. It also created a backlash against Kainga Ora housing projects, as communities don’t want neighbours who can terrorise them with impunity. Decades of goodwill for state housing projects got wiped away by this disastrous policy.

Bishop claimed the framework had removed incentives for tenants to improve their behaviour. He cited the “most recent stat” that there had been 335 serious complaints per month, which included intimidation, harassment and threatening behaviour. In 2023, three tenancies had been ended due to disruptive behaviour, Bishop claimed.

So around 0.1% of serious complaints result in evictions.

“At a time when there are over 25,000 people on the social housing waitlist, Kāinga Ora should not be prioritising tenants who abuse their home or their neighbours above families who are anxiously waiting for a home,” he said.

Yes Labour had a policy that prioritised gang members who terrorise their neighbours over families who are waiting for the privilege of a state house, and will be good neighbours.

Greens housing spokeswoman Tamatha Paul believed the Government was “seeking to define a category of undeserving poor people”.

Normal Greens ideology. The fact is people who terrorise their neighbours are undeserving. Greens views criminals as victims and victims as, well collateral damage.

“This politics of punishment from the coalition must come to an end before it does irreparable damage to communities who have historically been let down, time and time again, by successive Governments.”

The communities being let down are the 98% of state house tenants who don’t terrorise their neighbours.

Paul said it would be cruel if the Government evicted more state housing tenants during a cost-of-living crisis and following changes to benefit increases which mean beneficiaries will receive less over time.

Anyone evicted is replaced by a family that benefits from the income related rent. And it is easy not to get evicted. Its called not acting like a sociopath.

A resident on Auckland’s North Shore said his family were “over the moon” at the Government’s announcement after having constant problems with a neighbouring Kāinga Ora property when new tenants moved in last year.

William Macneil said an abusive Kāinga Ora tenant on electronically monitored bail lunged at him with a large “butcher’s knife” and threatened to kill Macneil’s family by ramming their house with a car in September last year.

Labour and Greens don’t want this to result in eviction.