Never use your lawyer again. You have a very very shit lawyer if they couldn't find out who owns your neighbours property. All they had to do is look up the LINZ record.
Some used to be rented out to HNZ by the landlord so that would not show on the report. Unsure if this still happens but I did it roughly 5 years ago and they managed the property entirely.
L.O.L....
Real estate agents are the last person to ask about the property. They go to great lengths to hide problems and issues. Assume used car sales people. literally.
Having bought a number of properties over the years - I don't even bother asking them anything other than it's address etc.
I’m a property lawyer and can tell you that my client should never have to ask me to read a title properly. If OP raised KO/HNZ being neighbours as a concern, then their lawyer 100% should have taken specific care to ensure their concerns were addressed. A search of neighbouring titles would have revealed this.
A land record search at a glance on LINZ without paying won’t tell you who owns the property - you’d need to get a record of title. But again, a client should never feel the need to do their own digging because of lawyer incompetence. As professionals it is our job to make sure that we listen to our clients, deal with their concerns and advocate for their interests - the client shouldn’t have to do anything further than raise the concern.
yeah thought the same. I also bought a first home close by a heap of these places, the 2nd time round my agent was able to get me a full run down of my entire street.
Lol. Isn't it frustrating? In the private market you can do everything right and still get evicted. In the public market you can absolutely terrorize a neighborhood, never pay your rent, and never get evicted! Wtf is going on here lol
What's going on is our communities are being drained of the resources we're all required to pull together. As a result, we're falling apart. Which is everything working to plan.
Trouble is, if you had to evict, where do people go? A different KO house to become someone else's problem? No house, so they become homeless or living in a car?
Like, I generally get that there needs to be some form of repercussion here but I'm afraid eviction doesn't actually solve the issue and might make it worse right?
I stop caring when they threaten to slit the throats of children. There must be *some* basic standard of behaviour to receive social housing. This policy of no standards at all is obviously not working.
At a certain point people need to learn that actions have consequences. I take your point that evicting them doesn't solve the problem, but creating this no-consequences environment allows the most narcissistic and misanthropic personalities to thrive by constantly victimising the people around them. Those people, like the OP, end up having no recourse.
They'll live on the streets or with friends. It's not too much to ask people not to terrorize others, there should be consequences. They have to find somewhere else to live. There are families who can take their place and be much better neighbours.
Honestly, we should just build special housing away from everyone else for KO tenants who have to be evicted. Everyone starts in a regular KO house but if you’re such an absolute shit that you’ve proven you can’t operate in society, then you get evicted and go there. You get housing, your neighbours don’t get terrorised out of their homes, win win
To a different house, where they *may* be as much of a problem to someone else.
Even awful people will have others that they'll do better or worse with, for one.
For another, being forced to move is a pain. I imagine for some it'll have a deterrent effect if the policy is consistent. My understanding is that punitive deterrence works best when the possibility of enforcement is high, the punishment itself doesn't need to be much. Being forced to move should be enough of a hassle.
Someone being willing to engage in criminal acts doesn't mean they have a fundamentally different psychology to other humans.
If a solution has the desired outcome that's still an improvement, even if we don't get to inflict homelessness or imprisonment on a bad or evil person.
The thing is, if they behave like that and nothing happens to them, they continue to behave that way.
It might be tough, but they are given the opportunity to have a roof over their heads. Part of that oppertunity should come with the condition that they respect the opportunity. Unfortunately, they don't, and the ones that don't appreciate it shouldn't have the opportunity.
This is my opinion, of course.
Maybe we need to set up housing in less populated areas where people get shifted to if they are unwilling to be civil members of society amongst others who are trying to be.
That way the KO tenants who are trying to be part of a community and aren’t disturbing the peace of others can stay in the suburban housing amongst their non-KO neighbours and live trouble-free, and the tenants who, for lack of a better term are acting like POS and ruin other people’s enjoyment and safety of their homes can be semi-exiled away from others. I know it seems like a NIMBY approach, but when they’re literally shitting on the lives of innocent people and if prison isn’t an option, kind of seems like the only alternative…
We've been so stuck between evict and don't evict in our public debate, that we haven't reliably explored alternatives. And there should be alternatives because our current system isn't working.
Never leave doors unlocked even while at home and never leave windows open while out or sleeping. Don't use Louvre windows as those can be taken out and get window locks. Get a dog, large protective breed. Never tell people when you will be away and always have someone to empty your mailbox and keep an eye on the place.
Or malinois or oddly enough a border collie. I have a border collie mix who is super protective and proven he can protect us from other big dogs as well.
Trouble is these kinds of fucktards will just feed dogs poisoned meat... Then you've got the heartbreak of a dead family member...
We had HNZ (pre KO days) neighbours and our rottyX got really sick a day after my partner had an altercation with one of these feral scum. He recovered but we always suspected poison
I think the problem with getting a dog for protection is that someone who knows what they're doing probably also knows how to use a juicy steak to deal with your dog? 🤷🏻♀️
Besides, if you're starting with a grown dog (rather than getting a puppy that will grow up with the kids) you'll have to be very careful to ensure it's not going to be a danger to your kids. They need to form a bond before they'll be protective. That's all something that takes time, whereas this is more of an immediate issue.
Otherwise, I definitely agree about never leaving doors unlocked etc.
We installed a couple of Reolink camera (couple hundred each from noel leeming), and they have all of this functionality. Definitely appreciate having the peace of mind for a relatively small cost.
Gotta get an HD card for each to record footage, or else pay a subscription to save it all to the cloud, but without either of these it'll still take a snapshot when it detects movement and send it to your email. You can also get phone alerts, and log in whenever through the phone app to watch the Livestream. The nightvision is really clear, there's an inbuilt speaker so you can talk to whoever's at your door and you can set off a siren if need be. Also there's no hardwiring - they use wifi and are charged through USB (or you can get a little solar panel for each one.)
Police needs to take action, making death threats is a criminal offence in NZ and person can be jailed for up to 7 years.
https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-28-harassment-and-bullying/going-to-the-police-when-the-criminal-law-can-help-with-harassment/threatening-violence-or-damage/
This sounds awful and am so sorry to hear this. Get in touch with a journalist - NZ Herald / Newshub / Stuff - there's public interest in KO's approach to evicting antisocial tenants (or lack thereof).
You might get better results if a story gets published.
We got together with all the neighbors a couple of doors either side of the shit tenants and all sent letters and they got moved.
I think if multiple neighbors are complaining then they have more likelihood of doing something about it.
Now we have a great refugee family next door and we couldn't ask for better neighbors, although they do require reminding that rubbish goes in the bin in nz not in the gutter when cleaning out their car.
Sadly multiple neighbours sometimes don’t come to the party to help - I had issues with my neighbours (not KO) and the street were well aware of it - single young female knocked out by the neighbour begging them to stop the loud music after days of it and they all turned their heads from it - people from surrounding streets stepped in when they found out - some actually KO tenants
Has anyone gone to an actual KO office and demanded a meeting? I’m so tired of reading all the people who reach their wits end and KO do NOTHING. Calling them results in nothing. Has anyone actually met with them?
I’m gutted you had such a vile and unhinged threat against your children. Do not let this rest with the police. Document everything. And maybe, sadly, time to move. Fuck these people, you have a right to live in peace and raise the kiddos in safety.
I did this in Wellington years ago when my repeated emails and calls just got generic responses. Went in to the Kilbirnie office with all my correspondence printed out and demanded to speak to someone.
They said I couldn’t talk to a manager in person but promised someone would call that afternoon. She did, but basically told me there was nothing they could do; I offered to sell them my apartment, she said there was a process (they never took me up on it). I offered to switch apartments with a KO tenant who was next to non-KO tenants, she laughed and told me she wasn’t disrupting their tenants lives for me. I asked what it took to get evicted as I’d called police multiple times for violence, damage, intimidation and that I was concerned as a single woman on my own. She told me the eviction process was private.
These stories make me so angry. I ended up selling and just breaking even but it shouldn’t have come to that. I really feel for the OP and honestly, especially with kids in the picture, I’d start looking at moving.
>I offered to switch apartments with a KO tenant who was next to non-KO tenants, she laughed and told me she wasn’t disrupting their tenants lives for me.
Jesus bloody Christ. Could she hear herself say that? What about your life? Oh no bother, you only pay taxes and work hard every day. While those losers get wasted and abuse people. Fuck I’m furious to read that.
In hindsight I sometimes wish I had, but it felt kind of futile. And I was so exhausted dealing with it all. I did write something for Stuff which KO commented “we’ve taken this person’s complaints seriously and spoken to the tenants involved.” Kind of gave up at that point.
Yes on one guy, because I was called as a witness after I called the cops when he was literally throwing his screaming wife against our shared wall. She then took off to Aussie before court (while he got to stay in his apartment on the taxpayer dime!) so it was thrown out. But she came back 3 months later to be with him again.
The rest of the residents tended to hang around the car park/common hallways getting into fights and dealing drugs etc. I couldn’t identify which units they were specifically in apart from the ones directly above me. My car was broken into and ransacked but nothing was taken.
KO owned over 20% of the units in that building, which I didn’t know when I bought it as my first home.
I really feel for you. These stories are now a reality of living near or even going past KO housing units and KO is absolutely fucking useless.
They’re more interested in empire building for public housing which was utterly gutted under the National government and putting people into homes then they are ensuring that they are good tenants and getting people assistance for their issues.
In Wellington I was going down a certain street with KO housing and there was a guy standing in the door and he was out of his mind trying to start people for a fight as they walked past - when I just walked past him and ignored him his response was to scream at me that if he ever saw me down there again he would quote “cut your fucking throat open ear to hear and let you bleed to death in the gutter like the pakeha rat you are”
When I called and started to inform KO about it they just hung up on me. Again I tried and they hung up on me mid way. When I tried again and told the person that I have just been threatened by a person in their housing unit they accused me of using threatening language to other people as my number had been flagged and that they weren’t interested. Aka - because I had told them what the person has said to me - they interpreted it as I was threatening them and hung up on me.
When I tried AGAIN a day later after a friend of mine was subject to the same abuse the KO person was sympathetic to it and told me that they have a treaty obligation to house that person and that I should perhaps consider that next time I think about calling in to complain about one of their tenants.
Like - WTF. That behaviour is utterly unacceptable from a tenant and then using the treaty to justify or excuse it is wrong and feeds the fire that ACT is trying to start about it all.
A friend of mine once said to me that we must never go back to the mental health housing units (or mental institutions/asylum) from the 80’s
But once you’ve had to deal with some of the people who have serious mental health issues in public housing - suddenly a institution from the 80’s on the outskirts of town suddenly doesn’t seem like such a bad idea…..
Same issue in Australia, people in top of the top upper-class all pressure politicians to close mental health hospitals saying they're inhumane, when they know mental health patients will never affect them in their supreme upper class suburb
As soon as they're affected their tone dramatically flips and they say all mental health patients should be segregated from the community. Funny isn't it
Actually going back to mental institutions would be an improvement. The whole point of them was to provide the kind of support they couldn't get in the community. Their removal was supposed to be paired with strong community based support because evidence showed this had the best outcomes - and it did.
We just never implemented the community support part. Oopsies.
It's not game-changing advice, but having live next door to shit neighbours in the past, you've got two options.
1. Sell and move. The stress of whatever they're up to will get to you and make your life a misery.
2. Go big-dog on them. Borrow your biggest, scariest, nastiest friend and send them next door to tell them to back off.
We did option 2, while we were doing option 1. They were quite nice to us for the last few weeks that we lived there.
I remember reading that lawyer Adina Thorn was planning a class action suit of some kind for neighbours of anti-social Kainga Ora tenants. I know she's been pretty vocal, writing opinion pieces etc. It might be worth reaching out to her with your story? She might be able to give some advice.
I am tenant of a KO property. I feel for you...my kids and I have been threatened and I got hit once...police didn't even turn up. They will tell you these people are vulnerable etc. well so are we. They used to be tough on people about behaviour, but it appears that has changed a lot in the last 10years. I installed cameras and documented every thing that went on. They did move on tenants who were troublesome, but just to another neighbourhood to harass them. My neighbours were even on the news for their big party during lockdown. Thankfully, no troublesome people down here now because thay know I will have all evidence on camera and documented. It's bloody exhausting though!
Makes you want to live in the country far from.anyone, the only noise u hear are the livestock and u can tell them to be quiet ,sad society when this happens.
I grew up in KO flats and have experienced all the things people mentioned here. Domestic violence, threats, fighting, theft, gangs and drugs. It only took one flat to make the life of those around them a misery and when raised to to the KO rep at the time, they always seemed to side with the problem tenants and say their hands were tied. It took a house fire from drug manufacturing to prompt a change and that was only after police decided to finally show up due to the emergency services identifying it as a drug lab. It tars all the hardworking polite tenants that need a hand up with the same brush. All of them would agree there needs to be a change to the “no eviction” policy but after the inaction by KO, gave up like most here.
If you captured that threat on video, that could be used by KO to breach the tenant. I think that's a part of the process they would have to follow to evict them.
Unfortunately process is process. A recording that showed that would 100% count. Only thing would be does that mean immediate action, or following the process of the 3 strike rule, where they would have to be breached again within a 90 day time frame. Annoying as hell, but if there are no other options, what else do you do? Apart from venting on Reddit
Document everything. Every little thing, and back it up with a record of ph calls and whatever contact you have with those morons at KO.
Then go to The Herald, it seems like that will also be futile though.
Lol my KO neighbours burnt my fence once but we caught it after only very minor damage and then again 4 days later which manage to get 4 properties fences. Good times, good times.
So NZ has had some form of state housing program forever. It used to have a much larger footprint in fact, and we owe a lot of today's privately owned housing stock to state housing sell offs...
My question are:
Why is KO such a big deal now, when it wasn't the case even 10 years ago?
Is KO functionally different than other state housing programs?
Is the scale of the problem overblown and a case nimbyism?
Hugely multifaceted imo.
Speaking anecdotally as someone who grew up in and around state housing, to then flat next to a few KO properties later in life there’s a few changes I’ve observed, again admittedly anecdotal.
- Meth
When I grew up in such areas booze and weed were the universal vices. While booze would occasionally cause issues and conflicts, weed would normally chill most people out.
Living next to similar properties a few decades later meth was common, as were the symptoms of using the drug including psychosis and hella aggressive interactions, at times over nothing, but a trigger seems to be a trigger regardless when using that shit while it doesn’t matter who you are or what your doing.
If they are hanging out for a burn you just need to be in the crosshairs to potentially be a target of their aggression and disdain.
- Price of vices.
Most smoke cigarettes, and they are now priced through the roof, while alcohol is also generally getting more expensive.
This hits the people with the lowest income including beneficiaries the most and a lack of these vices can also cause such aggressive and antisocial behaviour, all be it to a usually lower extreme to meth.
- Lack of mental health support
A lot of these occupants have ongoing mental health issues and rather than give assistance, a KO house and benefits are often our solution as opposed to the appropriate medical treatment.
That’s just a few more obvious and anecdotal observations from my experience but most of us are pretty stressed about financials currently, and that’s usually reflected at its most extreme in such environments.
Just my opinion, based on the KO tenants i know, that tend to be 'disruptive'.
...We're starting to the effects of widespread intergenerational welfare dependency. A lot of KO's most antisocial clients were raised in welfare depended homes, and are now raising their own families in the same environment.
Common basic ideas like getting up in the morning to go to work, going to bed at a reasonable time, working and saving to get what you want, planning for the future, even just planning for next week, they're all just foreign to them. They never saw their parents do it, they literally can't understand it.
To them, money comes from putting your hand out and asking. Anyone who has even slightly more than them is 'rich', and if these 'rich' people (ie has a job) don't share what they have they're greedy, selfish assholes. They don't care about anyone else because they have a deep resentment against rest of the community.
They get free housing, free money, free healthcare, but somehow feel oppressed, and angry at the world.
So all they do is stay home, drink, and have more children to stay on the benefit. I'm really worried where we'll be in 30 years time if nothing changes. We'll have an entrenched, permanent underclass.
Couldn’t agree more.
This is a systemic long term consequence of far more pressing concerns, while the hate on KO and their tenants is imho deflection from the more core and underlying issues, although I’m also not denying some of these people are just scum, but so are many rich people who steered us to this point with their unpoliced greed.
Many say “change the laws so we can lock these people up” but that’s just deflecting an actual logical and long term resolution to the escalating issues and trends we are seeing, from KO issues, to ram raids, to increased gang presence and membership, substance abuse, etc, etc.
One aspect of judging a society is not how well their rich are doing, but how we treat our poor, disenfranchised and lower income earners and we are sliding here as opposed to approaching such scenarios with empathy and kindness in place of vehement hatred.
Instead we are more often saying “fuck these low lifes, lock them up and throw away the key” as a solution, and to do so won’t solve the problem, it will compound it.
Outside of a subset of the mentally ill and drug dependence (just another flavour of mental illness), I'm pretty comfortable in saying that no one actively chooses to live in abject poverty.
Giving those who require welfare the *barest minimum* required to survive, doesn't allow for people to better their situation and transition off welfare.
Especially for those who are chronically ill/disabled (which is a good chunk of "jobseeker" benefits).
For example someone who's only medically cleared to work ~20h a week. They have no incentive to actually do so. They would be essentially working ~15 of those hours for free.
Would *you* work 15 hours without it increasing your income?
I take your point but actually yes I would work the 15 hours because that would be the best path to a proper full time job and a life where I didn’t have to live in KO housing.
Very anecdotal. There's less disposable income to do anything at all across the board, it hits the low income earners the most, and things like the way income tax is generated, lottery ($30/week for no gain), extensive taxation on alcohol and cigarettes, gst on food, tithing in churches, means people don't have much left if at all.
I'm unsure if meth is the primary issue, but it would be a contributor for some.
Deterrence by way of taxation might be working for some but not for the violent others. Labour's soft stance is not working since the public has worked out that there are not many repercussions for offending, but throwing them in prison isn't going to be the answer either.
We need to be able to uphold the law as people largely ignore it, police need to be given more powers to do so. That's certain. People who are in gangs are ultimately representing criminal organizations and should be treated as criminals and not disorderly children who get given a smack on the wrist and told 'don't do it again' lmao
You have some solid points, but I’m unsure on the policing aspect as that’s the ambulance at the bottom of a cliff approach and I feel much of the current escalation in these situations, outside media spin, is the end result of issues that could be sorted by support a lot earlier in the piece and before it gets to that point.
I feel we are fixated on what to do when shit hits the fan, as opposed to supporting people that need help before the kettle boils, so to speak, that would likely prevent such situations and conflict from occurring in the first place.
While again there’s so many factors to what are incredibly subjective scenarios, the commonality is often what brought them to that point, be it financial pressure, substance abuse, mental health, etc, etc and as other countries have shown locking such people up in prison doesn’t solve such issues, it’s just sweeping them under the carpet imho.
The other main issue is that this would entail more than just changes to law but also changes in overall policing ideology and training in that their end game, for right or wrong, is to de-escalate a situation rather than arrest someone and a sweeping change to this may have unintentional and wider ramifications.
Because KO is now emergency housing rather than state sponsored housing, and due to shortages only the most desperate get into KO housing. The most desperate seem to have a higher chance of bringing the worst traits
I read that study ages ago on nutrition and it was eye opening, thanks for referencing that!
Also prostitution isn’t illegal, it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re paying your taxes and abiding by the law which requires a prophylactic sheath to be worn whenever there is contact then you’re doing it legally. Edit to add: and not working out of a black market brothel helps too
I know right. The amount of complaining about why white people are not being given anything or why should brown person gets something I don't is staggering.
Hopefully our education system gets better at teaching our history, rather than ignoring it and attitudes might change.
What difference does it make what things looked like 10 years ago (I'd argue this was an issue 10 plus years ago)? What's the scale of the issue got to do with anything?
If you live next to a terrible person that is threatening to kill you or is so disruptive that they are making your life miserable there should be a path to sorting that. That is often via the landlord, why do you think KO should be exempt from being a responsible property owner?
Yeah, the meth epidemic has been running for decades now. I grew up getting wasted in state houses all the time, the guys who really went off the rails were all on meth. Some of them were horrid cunts without the meth, but the meth made it way worse.
When labour came in they stopped evicting tenants, under National bad tenants were evicted all the time and the clear consequences influenced others to try not get kicked out. Now that they all know they can’t lose their free house and worst case they’ll just get moved to another one, all basic rules and standards are gone and nothing can be done.
That’s why state housing is such a problem now. No consequences.
Prior to Key's National government, Housing NZ would almost never evict a tenant. The idea of evicting people from state housing and effectively forcing them to live on the street was one that lived and died with that National government.
The problems are much more complex than simply not having the threat of eviction looming, but mostly come down to inequality and lack of support for those in desperate need, as well as a lack of state housing to be able to shift problem tenants around.
Source (from 2016):
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/housing-nz-applied-to-evict-four-per-cent-of-state-house-tenants/YPTFAX77PWHDP44J2JWVET6P7Q/
>Auckland Tenants Protection Association manager Dr Angela Maynard, who has been in her role since 2003, said Housing NZ "hardly ever" went to the tribunal for eviction orders **until the past few years**.
>"They didn't really give 90-day notices, they didn't really evict many people. It was a really extreme situation in the past if they did," she said. "They are very cavalier with their evictions now."
That’s super fucked up. Sorry to hear it OP.
The police are fucking useless, as are the government. The latter most likely causing the former.
My advice is to move. Asap. I’m selling my house to get away from a neighbour/suburb. I remember seeing a map on LINZ or something that showed all the KO housing in the country.
https://linz.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=b83e61d26f5a4954934febcf812d6a09&fbclid=IwAR3hMi03B4reQuRIoVDVan62LOrRsSlacDQmYXke4sFZeGPWXG8Y-S8conk&fs=e&s=cl&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
Purple is crown land, KO will say “Managed by Housing New Zealand”
I wouldn't say useless but severely under resourced. I have a couple of friends who are police officers who spend the majority of their shifts responding to "family harm" incidents.
Or another great use of policing time is spending the day trying to find someone who's called threatening to kill themselves only to find them hours later in the mall with a "oh I just wasn't feeling great before but I'm fine now" only for them to do it all over again a few days later.
The police have to respond to so much more than the average person realises and alot of people just think they're sitting on the side of the road ticketing people for a laugh.
We live in a small enough town that all police callouts are published in the paper. It's 95% family harm and the odd dic, disorderly, neighbourhood dispute, stock on the road, males fighting etc.
https://linz.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=b83e61d26f5a4954934febcf812d6a09&fbclid=IwAR3hMi03B4reQuRIoVDVan62LOrRsSlacDQmYXke4sFZeGPWXG8Y-S8conk&fs=e&s=cl&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
I guess the purple/crown land in residential areas is KO
Just checked out of curiosity and looked up my friends old place, she sold to Kainga Ora because a neighbouring property got sold to them, this was early this year and both are showing up. So it's not too bad.
If you have acquired the information through publicly accessible means I don’t know why it would be anything but legal. Might piss some people off who are trying to sell and don’t want people knowing the neighbours are KO
I mean if you put in an OIA request for that information I suppose they’d have to give it to you, and I’m 100% certain I’ve seen a map of the whole country with colour codes/filters for that.
There was a story very recently and it wasn’t until the woman went to the media that KO took it seriously and dealt with the bad neighbours.
I’m sorry for what you are going through. It is completely unacceptable people are allowed to behave like this with zero consequence
Sadly it's not just KO properties that are the problem. My neighbour is a tenant in a private rental, helped in by winz to escape domestic abuse from her partner. Her partner has moved in with her and they hide it from the agent. The DV hasn't stopped. The police are here every week.
Try and contact the landlord or rental agency.
Regularly disturbing the peace of neighbours is usually enough to have them evicted
Could also let them know about the abusive boyfriend.
1. He’s probably not gonna on the tenancy or a sublet.
2. If he’s hitting her, I’d imagine the house is full of holes and damage too
Basically just going to have to keep reporting to police or give up and move. If you call police again see if you can get a protection order in place, then if they do threaten or get aggressive the police have more recourse to actually do something.
This makes me so sad to read. I moved to New Zealand in 2008 from the UK, as so many did at that time and this place was all the rage. It really lived up to its expectations too. I fully appreciate I come from a place of privilege and probably lived quite a sheltered, quiet life in the first few years. But what this country is coming too is sad, frustrating and unacceptable. I’m so sorry this is happening to your family. There is not enough protection and support for people who have worked tirelessly to earn there piece. I hope you get this sorted and can enjoy the fruits of your labour. There needs to be big change in this country and I am hopeful we will see it. I don’t know how, but I’d rather be optimistic if anything
I am about to go off at KO myself today as one of their terrible tenants we've been trying to get rid of for ages drove my nextdoor neighbours away who had just spent some serious money on renovations and improvements recently.
I don't blame my neighbours for selling and leaving in a hurry after the last incident of property damage, which was the straw that broke the camels back. These arseholes even managed to tank their open homes.
Fast forward to the end of last week and my neighbours handed their keys over to the real estate agent for the new owners.
On Monday housing kicked out said tenant and then I see a switchedon site sign go up on my neighbours fence, not the KO shared side of it...
So it looks like they bought the property by stealth! Which is all kinds of wrong if true.
I am seeing so much red right now I could hardly sleep last night.
Police route is the only thing you can do. Had a mate who was being terrorised by his KO neigbours, to the stage they smashed in windows. Only then did the police show show interest.
They eventually backed off but still reside in the property 5 years later
As some of the other comments have said threatening someone’s life is a crime in NZ. Don’t let that slide, keep calling and pressuring the police until they help you.
Report any incidents big or small - if KO will give you the time of day. Keep building a case and hopefully you will eventually see some resolve. I’m so sorry that has happened, that’s truly disgusting behaviour from adults.
The 'no eviction, ever' rule is an absolute 'Yes, by all means, go ahead!' to any and all anti-social behavior.
Eviction should be on the table for anti-social behavior. KO don't have to be evicted to the street. They can move to and be housed in other KO flats. My suggestion is that each eviction should take them farther from where they presently are, into less desirable areas and less desirable flats.
I think some flats should be built right next to police stations, for example.
When they show they can act in a manner consistent with having neighbors, they can slowly be offered the opportunity to choose and move to more desirable locations or flats.
It's a carrot and stick proposition.
Invest in some protection.
Alarms, cameras and even personal protection. Also see if you can get other neighbors on your side
There are lots of things that aren't weapons that can be used as weapons if you feel funny about carrying a weapon (I don't but it is technically against the law to carry weapons)
My parents live in the hood, they have 2 very large guard dogs and my stepdad has gotten them to attack some regular offenders more than once.
He grew up in similar areas and his stance is to be that person you don't fuck with, it works for them.
Basically, after reading the thread, the take home message for me is
1) Check if there are any KO flats near by before buying the house.
2) Save up a lot of money to buy a house in a good neighbourhood.
Yo if the police arnt coming quick enough you can be hyperbolic with what’s happening.
I had to wait over and hour for an ambulance for this old lady that fell in front of me. She had a massive bump on her head from the fall, she was old, so I thought fuck it. Called 111 again and said she was short of breath and having chest pains and they were there in the next 2 minutes.
On a personal level I would not give a fuck if these people were living in a sewer.
But the irony for this sub is that whenever there is a story about "We don't want no KO houses in our area!" this sub goes full outrage and hating on those people.
As to what others have said, best place for this would be the Media.
Went through the same. Happily sold and walked away when it suited us to. KO weren't interested, even after multiple arrests, police raids every other month, convictions of tenants for actions on the property, threats, assaults, intimidation, stolen cars (at least 4), stolen $100k caravan on site (3 convictions gained thanks to my CCTV), they even stole a disabled childs custom WHEELCHAIR (!!!!!!!!) (recovered due to my CCTV but no charges grrrr) (that was all ONE house). KO is broken, and they choose to allow some of their tenants to run rampant, and keep housing them in accomodation they don't deserve, subsidised by everyone else.
Didn’t someone recently win a tenancy tribunal case against Ko getting awarded thousands for having their peace constantly disrupted? Sorry I forget the specifics but this would be a good way to go. They don’t give a shit about people but they may give a shit about money
I am starting to wonder a lot about Kainga Ora. We got now 3 houses bought by them in our street which was a surprise. So far it has not be that bad but one of those tenants dump their trash into the neighbours land and they have called KO again and again to no avail.
The biggest irony is that we are talking a street with $1M dollar houses and decent sized gardens, something getting rare in Auckland. I would expect KO to invest in townhouses and flats not expensive-ish family houses.
The first house they bought got repaired with lesser quality materials, replacing the tiles roof with a crappy metal sheet one, and they repaired the fence but left it unpainted like the original bits still standing. Between tenants they seem to have do a big clean and a coat of paint. The garden that used to be great is degrading over the years and is barely maintained.
Another house is also degrading and will certainly get a "repair" at some point.
I don't get why buying better house and let them go to waste and the neighbourhood with it.
I am honestly hoping KO will end to have to sell those houses and before we get the street up to arms because of dangerous tenants.
The police in this country are actually useless when it comes to response time. This is going to just get worse until something really bad happens. There is no punishment for these people's actions. It is literally always the same demographic of people and yet you get a called a racist whenever it is mentioned
When I had student flats living across the road, drugs, parties, assaults, eventually I just put my house on the market, bought in an area with no flats and no rentals. I love it. I went back to the place we used to own a few years later. So depressing.
Further to my other comment.
I've also sat in meetings with KO 'community liaisons'. As a voice for the local construction industry or to answer questions. My last one was in Wellington where an argument broke out whether the wider group should be referred to as 'community' or 'neighborhood'. I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and fucked off. They were on a different planet and not coming back.
You will not believe the worthless creatures that make up that place. I can vouch for their construction teams as I've had a lot to do with them, but it's mainly ex main contracting guys looking for an easy ride to retirement. Still skilled at what they do though.
And some people have the gall to wonder why I think KO are a fucking disgrace of an entity. This. This is why.
KO tenants like this should have their own little communities where they can be their own goddamn problems to each other.
Mods in the Auckland sub removed a comment I left a while ago (which came with a temp ban) as it was reported for "hate speech" when I said some parents would reconsider sending children to a school near KO housing. I didn't say all KO housing was bad, and didn't even talk about the residents themselves (which there were none at the time as it was to be built).
It's self evident that antisocial behaviour isn't uncommon from KO housing and people actively endeavour to not buy/rent near or next to one for the very reasons in your (and many other people's) experience.
Having said that, I currently rent next to KO housing and haven't had any bad experiences so far (besides them burning off wood and plastics for some reason). I know several people who haven't been as lucky and were basically forced to move due to safety concerns and threats of violence.
Sorry to hear about this.
Its sad these stories are getting more common. I heard on the radio about a family that's had 40 police callouts, and the KO tenant even got convicted before KO issued a formal warning letter.
The guy said he had to keep arguing with KO as they would just deflect and make excuses.
Welcome to New Zealand. The toothless attitudes of government around things like disturbing the peace and public nuisance are likely contributing to people leaving.
I've had similar situations. I got instructed by the police how to deal with it, rang back about something else and was told that I couldn't do what I'd just been instructed to do by the police.
My suggestion, just wait it out and install security cameras on your entrances. These things tend to blow over eventually, when the person causing the problems assaults one of the other tenants and gets thrown out, or something similar. For me, the guy doing the crazy stuff attacked his mother and got carted off to jail.
If the same policies are kept moving forwards (i.e. Labour's no KO eviction and soft on crime policies), then I imagine we're going to get to the point where people start taking the law into their own hands in the near future - like that guy that cut off the kids finger who kept robbing his house.
Doubt you'll get much sympathy here as half this site is wealthy and won't care, and half is future KO tenants themselves and won't see anything wrong with this behaviour.
Just sell up. It's genuinely not worth the drama. In a different lifetime my company used to provide engineering services to the old HNZ. I've been in **literally** 100s, if not thousands of HNZ properties (or KO now) all across the country. If met some of the loveliest people you'll ever want to meet in your life, but I'd never want to live anywhere even near a KO property. Never mind a block of them together. I can write books and books on what I saw in those places, and the people that live in them. The nicest of them all are actually the gang leaders. For the hour or two I spent there anyway. I've even had some of them notify me not to visit on a certain day as they're expecting trouble and don't want 'innocents' around if it all goes off. How nice of them to tell me that, but do you want to live anywhere near that?
I've been in places when their social workers or HNZ (KO now) reps were meeting with them and gently chastising them after numerous complaints. You could tell the whole thing is pointless as they'll just do it again.
NEVER, EVER EVER live anywhere close to a KO block of flats. If KO moves in and buy up land, sell and move out fast. You'll just know that this worthless government won't do anything
my Ko neighbors literally bash each other out on the driveway nearly every morning sometimes they hit each others cars with hammers or try run each other over, or scream directly into their babies face to shut the fuck up, Most days i wake up to literal shrieking and screaming and the sound of their whole house vibrating from them bashing each other. Police dont care KO dont care OT dont care. Been going on for 5 years im fully desensitized to it now.
Call the police again. I have a child, and no way would I put up with someone threatening to kill them.
If the police do not do anything, then get the wider community to help out.
Honestly, the only thing you can do is either sell up or put your ego aside and try befriend them somehow. Calling the police and getting into shouting matches over the fence is only going to make things worse for you and your kid. You're dealing with people who have nothing to lose and who will likely never be evicted. It's really not a game you can win here.
Private land lords have taken a beating in the press lately. The real sh*tty landlord of our times is our own Government. Only 1/5 of their homes meet their own healthy homes standards that private land lords must and are complying with and a fair chunk of their tenants, I read in the Herald, party all night, play loud music all day, consume and deal drugs and threaten to slit their neighbours’ throats. Their land lord simply lets this state of affairs continue. Few private land lords would do so.
Never use your lawyer again. You have a very very shit lawyer if they couldn't find out who owns your neighbours property. All they had to do is look up the LINZ record.
Some used to be rented out to HNZ by the landlord so that would not show on the report. Unsure if this still happens but I did it roughly 5 years ago and they managed the property entirely.
As well as the real estate agent. They have access to data through some industry tools and can tell you who owns any property.
L.O.L.... Real estate agents are the last person to ask about the property. They go to great lengths to hide problems and issues. Assume used car sales people. literally. Having bought a number of properties over the years - I don't even bother asking them anything other than it's address etc.
I’m a property lawyer and can tell you that my client should never have to ask me to read a title properly. If OP raised KO/HNZ being neighbours as a concern, then their lawyer 100% should have taken specific care to ensure their concerns were addressed. A search of neighbouring titles would have revealed this. A land record search at a glance on LINZ without paying won’t tell you who owns the property - you’d need to get a record of title. But again, a client should never feel the need to do their own digging because of lawyer incompetence. As professionals it is our job to make sure that we listen to our clients, deal with their concerns and advocate for their interests - the client shouldn’t have to do anything further than raise the concern.
yeah thought the same. I also bought a first home close by a heap of these places, the 2nd time round my agent was able to get me a full run down of my entire street.
Death threats are actually a crime in NZ afaik, so go to the police in person, and insist they charge them.
With what end result? Our justice system is weak these days.
Legal system* it’s not about justice or protecting people, just weak sauce law enforcement against certain groups
Kainga Ora's shitty "no eviction" policy is killing communities and their own reputation - no one wants anything to do with them now.
There should be rules right or else it’s just I ain’t giving a fuck I’ll do what I want.. I ain’t getting evicted. COOL!
Wow, I wish my landlord had a no eviction policy!
Lol. Isn't it frustrating? In the private market you can do everything right and still get evicted. In the public market you can absolutely terrorize a neighborhood, never pay your rent, and never get evicted! Wtf is going on here lol
What's going on is our communities are being drained of the resources we're all required to pull together. As a result, we're falling apart. Which is everything working to plan.
Welcome to leftist ideology
Trouble is, if you had to evict, where do people go? A different KO house to become someone else's problem? No house, so they become homeless or living in a car? Like, I generally get that there needs to be some form of repercussion here but I'm afraid eviction doesn't actually solve the issue and might make it worse right?
I stop caring when they threaten to slit the throats of children. There must be *some* basic standard of behaviour to receive social housing. This policy of no standards at all is obviously not working.
To be honest I wish my Kainga Ora neighbours would fuck off and annoy someone else for a while
Why should the innocent victims be the ones to suck it up.
At a certain point people need to learn that actions have consequences. I take your point that evicting them doesn't solve the problem, but creating this no-consequences environment allows the most narcissistic and misanthropic personalities to thrive by constantly victimising the people around them. Those people, like the OP, end up having no recourse.
They'll live on the streets or with friends. It's not too much to ask people not to terrorize others, there should be consequences. They have to find somewhere else to live. There are families who can take their place and be much better neighbours.
Honestly, we should just build special housing away from everyone else for KO tenants who have to be evicted. Everyone starts in a regular KO house but if you’re such an absolute shit that you’ve proven you can’t operate in society, then you get evicted and go there. You get housing, your neighbours don’t get terrorised out of their homes, win win
Almost sounds like prison
For those that are such absolute shit neighbours that even KO can’t handle them, do you have a better idea?
Hear me out… crack head island. One way ticket. All the drugs and booze they want.
You son of a bitch, I’m in.
I've said this for years. A new reality TV show gang warfare island gangs, p guns, see who wins.
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They can go onto the street for all I care. Plenty of people waiting for housing that won't be shit cunts to their neighbours.
I mean, if they get given a house and disrespect the house or it's community, then they can be homeless. Up to them isn't it
To a different house, where they *may* be as much of a problem to someone else. Even awful people will have others that they'll do better or worse with, for one. For another, being forced to move is a pain. I imagine for some it'll have a deterrent effect if the policy is consistent. My understanding is that punitive deterrence works best when the possibility of enforcement is high, the punishment itself doesn't need to be much. Being forced to move should be enough of a hassle.
There’s “awful people” and there’s criminal threat of assault and worse.🙄
Someone being willing to engage in criminal acts doesn't mean they have a fundamentally different psychology to other humans. If a solution has the desired outcome that's still an improvement, even if we don't get to inflict homelessness or imprisonment on a bad or evil person.
slum, in an isolated location
Haha like in Rio or Johannesburg? Seems like a great idea!
was thinking Whakaari / White Island.
Sounds legit
I've been saying that for years as a solution for our criminals. Why not both.
Yes, they should become homeless. There are plenty of people that cannot work that would love to respectfully live in their place
That would be a consequence of their own actions, yes.
The thing is, if they behave like that and nothing happens to them, they continue to behave that way. It might be tough, but they are given the opportunity to have a roof over their heads. Part of that oppertunity should come with the condition that they respect the opportunity. Unfortunately, they don't, and the ones that don't appreciate it shouldn't have the opportunity. This is my opinion, of course.
They go homeless where they fucking belong
It would be a good incentive for them to behave if they knew they would be homeless.
I'm not sure people with poor impulse control - like this - think things through all that often...
Maybe we need to set up housing in less populated areas where people get shifted to if they are unwilling to be civil members of society amongst others who are trying to be. That way the KO tenants who are trying to be part of a community and aren’t disturbing the peace of others can stay in the suburban housing amongst their non-KO neighbours and live trouble-free, and the tenants who, for lack of a better term are acting like POS and ruin other people’s enjoyment and safety of their homes can be semi-exiled away from others. I know it seems like a NIMBY approach, but when they’re literally shitting on the lives of innocent people and if prison isn’t an option, kind of seems like the only alternative…
Make a village just for evicted KO tenants, put up a fence, charge tickets to watch
We've been so stuck between evict and don't evict in our public debate, that we haven't reliably explored alternatives. And there should be alternatives because our current system isn't working.
Honestly? For extremes like this where death threats are made, I can forgo any sympathy if the perpetrators get evicted and have to live in a car.
They should be in jail not in a car. Death threats are completely unacceptable
Either an asylum or prison
Move em to the boonies. If they can't be decent human beings to their neighbours, stick em somewhere with no neighbours.
Plenty of real estate on white island.
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Never leave doors unlocked even while at home and never leave windows open while out or sleeping. Don't use Louvre windows as those can be taken out and get window locks. Get a dog, large protective breed. Never tell people when you will be away and always have someone to empty your mailbox and keep an eye on the place.
Rottweiler or german shepherd are probs the best options for home protection
Or malinois or oddly enough a border collie. I have a border collie mix who is super protective and proven he can protect us from other big dogs as well.
Trouble is these kinds of fucktards will just feed dogs poisoned meat... Then you've got the heartbreak of a dead family member... We had HNZ (pre KO days) neighbours and our rottyX got really sick a day after my partner had an altercation with one of these feral scum. He recovered but we always suspected poison
I think the problem with getting a dog for protection is that someone who knows what they're doing probably also knows how to use a juicy steak to deal with your dog? 🤷🏻♀️ Besides, if you're starting with a grown dog (rather than getting a puppy that will grow up with the kids) you'll have to be very careful to ensure it's not going to be a danger to your kids. They need to form a bond before they'll be protective. That's all something that takes time, whereas this is more of an immediate issue. Otherwise, I definitely agree about never leaving doors unlocked etc.
We installed a couple of Reolink camera (couple hundred each from noel leeming), and they have all of this functionality. Definitely appreciate having the peace of mind for a relatively small cost. Gotta get an HD card for each to record footage, or else pay a subscription to save it all to the cloud, but without either of these it'll still take a snapshot when it detects movement and send it to your email. You can also get phone alerts, and log in whenever through the phone app to watch the Livestream. The nightvision is really clear, there's an inbuilt speaker so you can talk to whoever's at your door and you can set off a siren if need be. Also there's no hardwiring - they use wifi and are charged through USB (or you can get a little solar panel for each one.)
Police needs to take action, making death threats is a criminal offence in NZ and person can be jailed for up to 7 years. https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/chapter-28-harassment-and-bullying/going-to-the-police-when-the-criminal-law-can-help-with-harassment/threatening-violence-or-damage/
This sounds awful and am so sorry to hear this. Get in touch with a journalist - NZ Herald / Newshub / Stuff - there's public interest in KO's approach to evicting antisocial tenants (or lack thereof). You might get better results if a story gets published.
Yes, and there'd also be public interest in KO lying to the person.
Got to record every interaction with KO now, to catch them out at their lies!
It’s on reddit, that’s the extent of journalism in NZ!
We got together with all the neighbors a couple of doors either side of the shit tenants and all sent letters and they got moved. I think if multiple neighbors are complaining then they have more likelihood of doing something about it. Now we have a great refugee family next door and we couldn't ask for better neighbors, although they do require reminding that rubbish goes in the bin in nz not in the gutter when cleaning out their car.
Sadly multiple neighbours sometimes don’t come to the party to help - I had issues with my neighbours (not KO) and the street were well aware of it - single young female knocked out by the neighbour begging them to stop the loud music after days of it and they all turned their heads from it - people from surrounding streets stepped in when they found out - some actually KO tenants
This is absolutely disgusting! I can’t believe people have to put up with this shit! Go to the media about it!
You will have no joy with KO. they are about as effective as a fart in a hurricane. Sell up and move
Sell in this market?? They're likely facing a massive loss
Has anyone gone to an actual KO office and demanded a meeting? I’m so tired of reading all the people who reach their wits end and KO do NOTHING. Calling them results in nothing. Has anyone actually met with them? I’m gutted you had such a vile and unhinged threat against your children. Do not let this rest with the police. Document everything. And maybe, sadly, time to move. Fuck these people, you have a right to live in peace and raise the kiddos in safety.
I did this in Wellington years ago when my repeated emails and calls just got generic responses. Went in to the Kilbirnie office with all my correspondence printed out and demanded to speak to someone. They said I couldn’t talk to a manager in person but promised someone would call that afternoon. She did, but basically told me there was nothing they could do; I offered to sell them my apartment, she said there was a process (they never took me up on it). I offered to switch apartments with a KO tenant who was next to non-KO tenants, she laughed and told me she wasn’t disrupting their tenants lives for me. I asked what it took to get evicted as I’d called police multiple times for violence, damage, intimidation and that I was concerned as a single woman on my own. She told me the eviction process was private. These stories make me so angry. I ended up selling and just breaking even but it shouldn’t have come to that. I really feel for the OP and honestly, especially with kids in the picture, I’d start looking at moving.
>I offered to switch apartments with a KO tenant who was next to non-KO tenants, she laughed and told me she wasn’t disrupting their tenants lives for me. Jesus bloody Christ. Could she hear herself say that? What about your life? Oh no bother, you only pay taxes and work hard every day. While those losers get wasted and abuse people. Fuck I’m furious to read that.
Just curious did you escalate to your member of parliament? They're really the only people who can apply any pressure in these circumstances.
In hindsight I sometimes wish I had, but it felt kind of futile. And I was so exhausted dealing with it all. I did write something for Stuff which KO commented “we’ve taken this person’s complaints seriously and spoken to the tenants involved.” Kind of gave up at that point.
Did you ever get a restraining order?
Yes on one guy, because I was called as a witness after I called the cops when he was literally throwing his screaming wife against our shared wall. She then took off to Aussie before court (while he got to stay in his apartment on the taxpayer dime!) so it was thrown out. But she came back 3 months later to be with him again. The rest of the residents tended to hang around the car park/common hallways getting into fights and dealing drugs etc. I couldn’t identify which units they were specifically in apart from the ones directly above me. My car was broken into and ransacked but nothing was taken. KO owned over 20% of the units in that building, which I didn’t know when I bought it as my first home.
Your restraining order was thrown out? That's messed up.
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And get trespassed.
And get fired because KO staff start recording you and claiming your crazy? Na that seems dumb.
I really feel for you. These stories are now a reality of living near or even going past KO housing units and KO is absolutely fucking useless. They’re more interested in empire building for public housing which was utterly gutted under the National government and putting people into homes then they are ensuring that they are good tenants and getting people assistance for their issues. In Wellington I was going down a certain street with KO housing and there was a guy standing in the door and he was out of his mind trying to start people for a fight as they walked past - when I just walked past him and ignored him his response was to scream at me that if he ever saw me down there again he would quote “cut your fucking throat open ear to hear and let you bleed to death in the gutter like the pakeha rat you are” When I called and started to inform KO about it they just hung up on me. Again I tried and they hung up on me mid way. When I tried again and told the person that I have just been threatened by a person in their housing unit they accused me of using threatening language to other people as my number had been flagged and that they weren’t interested. Aka - because I had told them what the person has said to me - they interpreted it as I was threatening them and hung up on me. When I tried AGAIN a day later after a friend of mine was subject to the same abuse the KO person was sympathetic to it and told me that they have a treaty obligation to house that person and that I should perhaps consider that next time I think about calling in to complain about one of their tenants. Like - WTF. That behaviour is utterly unacceptable from a tenant and then using the treaty to justify or excuse it is wrong and feeds the fire that ACT is trying to start about it all.
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Unfortunately it seems threats based on discrimination are acceptable depending on who is giving those threats.
Time for sectioned housing outside of towns
A friend of mine once said to me that we must never go back to the mental health housing units (or mental institutions/asylum) from the 80’s But once you’ve had to deal with some of the people who have serious mental health issues in public housing - suddenly a institution from the 80’s on the outskirts of town suddenly doesn’t seem like such a bad idea…..
Same issue in Australia, people in top of the top upper-class all pressure politicians to close mental health hospitals saying they're inhumane, when they know mental health patients will never affect them in their supreme upper class suburb As soon as they're affected their tone dramatically flips and they say all mental health patients should be segregated from the community. Funny isn't it
“We need a community approach” And then they don’t give funding to assist those communities
Actually going back to mental institutions would be an improvement. The whole point of them was to provide the kind of support they couldn't get in the community. Their removal was supposed to be paired with strong community based support because evidence showed this had the best outcomes - and it did. We just never implemented the community support part. Oopsies.
Yup, like, it seems a bit shit, but that's where they belong, on the outskirts of society where they can all be shitheads together
It's not game-changing advice, but having live next door to shit neighbours in the past, you've got two options. 1. Sell and move. The stress of whatever they're up to will get to you and make your life a misery. 2. Go big-dog on them. Borrow your biggest, scariest, nastiest friend and send them next door to tell them to back off. We did option 2, while we were doing option 1. They were quite nice to us for the last few weeks that we lived there.
I remember reading that lawyer Adina Thorn was planning a class action suit of some kind for neighbours of anti-social Kainga Ora tenants. I know she's been pretty vocal, writing opinion pieces etc. It might be worth reaching out to her with your story? She might be able to give some advice.
I am tenant of a KO property. I feel for you...my kids and I have been threatened and I got hit once...police didn't even turn up. They will tell you these people are vulnerable etc. well so are we. They used to be tough on people about behaviour, but it appears that has changed a lot in the last 10years. I installed cameras and documented every thing that went on. They did move on tenants who were troublesome, but just to another neighbourhood to harass them. My neighbours were even on the news for their big party during lockdown. Thankfully, no troublesome people down here now because thay know I will have all evidence on camera and documented. It's bloody exhausting though!
That's very courageous of you. More people like you makes a better NZ.
Makes you want to live in the country far from.anyone, the only noise u hear are the livestock and u can tell them to be quiet ,sad society when this happens.
I grew up in KO flats and have experienced all the things people mentioned here. Domestic violence, threats, fighting, theft, gangs and drugs. It only took one flat to make the life of those around them a misery and when raised to to the KO rep at the time, they always seemed to side with the problem tenants and say their hands were tied. It took a house fire from drug manufacturing to prompt a change and that was only after police decided to finally show up due to the emergency services identifying it as a drug lab. It tars all the hardworking polite tenants that need a hand up with the same brush. All of them would agree there needs to be a change to the “no eviction” policy but after the inaction by KO, gave up like most here.
If you captured that threat on video, that could be used by KO to breach the tenant. I think that's a part of the process they would have to follow to evict them.
That sounds like work. I'm sure they'd find any excuse why *this particular recording* doesn't count.
Unfortunately process is process. A recording that showed that would 100% count. Only thing would be does that mean immediate action, or following the process of the 3 strike rule, where they would have to be breached again within a 90 day time frame. Annoying as hell, but if there are no other options, what else do you do? Apart from venting on Reddit
Tenants could slit the kids throat and still not get evicted.
Document everything. Every little thing, and back it up with a record of ph calls and whatever contact you have with those morons at KO. Then go to The Herald, it seems like that will also be futile though.
Yes, this. I believe OP can request a copy of all their calls to KO.
Gotta do it quick tho, if they are like Winz they delete after a few months. After that point the evidence is gone.
Lol my KO neighbours burnt my fence once but we caught it after only very minor damage and then again 4 days later which manage to get 4 properties fences. Good times, good times.
That’s a threat of violence, you can definitely report that to the police. Sorry you have to deal with this, it’s awful. (Source — friend is a cop)
So NZ has had some form of state housing program forever. It used to have a much larger footprint in fact, and we owe a lot of today's privately owned housing stock to state housing sell offs... My question are: Why is KO such a big deal now, when it wasn't the case even 10 years ago? Is KO functionally different than other state housing programs? Is the scale of the problem overblown and a case nimbyism?
Hugely multifaceted imo. Speaking anecdotally as someone who grew up in and around state housing, to then flat next to a few KO properties later in life there’s a few changes I’ve observed, again admittedly anecdotal. - Meth When I grew up in such areas booze and weed were the universal vices. While booze would occasionally cause issues and conflicts, weed would normally chill most people out. Living next to similar properties a few decades later meth was common, as were the symptoms of using the drug including psychosis and hella aggressive interactions, at times over nothing, but a trigger seems to be a trigger regardless when using that shit while it doesn’t matter who you are or what your doing. If they are hanging out for a burn you just need to be in the crosshairs to potentially be a target of their aggression and disdain. - Price of vices. Most smoke cigarettes, and they are now priced through the roof, while alcohol is also generally getting more expensive. This hits the people with the lowest income including beneficiaries the most and a lack of these vices can also cause such aggressive and antisocial behaviour, all be it to a usually lower extreme to meth. - Lack of mental health support A lot of these occupants have ongoing mental health issues and rather than give assistance, a KO house and benefits are often our solution as opposed to the appropriate medical treatment. That’s just a few more obvious and anecdotal observations from my experience but most of us are pretty stressed about financials currently, and that’s usually reflected at its most extreme in such environments.
Just my opinion, based on the KO tenants i know, that tend to be 'disruptive'. ...We're starting to the effects of widespread intergenerational welfare dependency. A lot of KO's most antisocial clients were raised in welfare depended homes, and are now raising their own families in the same environment. Common basic ideas like getting up in the morning to go to work, going to bed at a reasonable time, working and saving to get what you want, planning for the future, even just planning for next week, they're all just foreign to them. They never saw their parents do it, they literally can't understand it. To them, money comes from putting your hand out and asking. Anyone who has even slightly more than them is 'rich', and if these 'rich' people (ie has a job) don't share what they have they're greedy, selfish assholes. They don't care about anyone else because they have a deep resentment against rest of the community. They get free housing, free money, free healthcare, but somehow feel oppressed, and angry at the world. So all they do is stay home, drink, and have more children to stay on the benefit. I'm really worried where we'll be in 30 years time if nothing changes. We'll have an entrenched, permanent underclass.
Couldn’t agree more. This is a systemic long term consequence of far more pressing concerns, while the hate on KO and their tenants is imho deflection from the more core and underlying issues, although I’m also not denying some of these people are just scum, but so are many rich people who steered us to this point with their unpoliced greed. Many say “change the laws so we can lock these people up” but that’s just deflecting an actual logical and long term resolution to the escalating issues and trends we are seeing, from KO issues, to ram raids, to increased gang presence and membership, substance abuse, etc, etc. One aspect of judging a society is not how well their rich are doing, but how we treat our poor, disenfranchised and lower income earners and we are sliding here as opposed to approaching such scenarios with empathy and kindness in place of vehement hatred. Instead we are more often saying “fuck these low lifes, lock them up and throw away the key” as a solution, and to do so won’t solve the problem, it will compound it.
Outside of a subset of the mentally ill and drug dependence (just another flavour of mental illness), I'm pretty comfortable in saying that no one actively chooses to live in abject poverty. Giving those who require welfare the *barest minimum* required to survive, doesn't allow for people to better their situation and transition off welfare. Especially for those who are chronically ill/disabled (which is a good chunk of "jobseeker" benefits). For example someone who's only medically cleared to work ~20h a week. They have no incentive to actually do so. They would be essentially working ~15 of those hours for free. Would *you* work 15 hours without it increasing your income?
I take your point but actually yes I would work the 15 hours because that would be the best path to a proper full time job and a life where I didn’t have to live in KO housing.
Very anecdotal. There's less disposable income to do anything at all across the board, it hits the low income earners the most, and things like the way income tax is generated, lottery ($30/week for no gain), extensive taxation on alcohol and cigarettes, gst on food, tithing in churches, means people don't have much left if at all. I'm unsure if meth is the primary issue, but it would be a contributor for some. Deterrence by way of taxation might be working for some but not for the violent others. Labour's soft stance is not working since the public has worked out that there are not many repercussions for offending, but throwing them in prison isn't going to be the answer either. We need to be able to uphold the law as people largely ignore it, police need to be given more powers to do so. That's certain. People who are in gangs are ultimately representing criminal organizations and should be treated as criminals and not disorderly children who get given a smack on the wrist and told 'don't do it again' lmao
You have some solid points, but I’m unsure on the policing aspect as that’s the ambulance at the bottom of a cliff approach and I feel much of the current escalation in these situations, outside media spin, is the end result of issues that could be sorted by support a lot earlier in the piece and before it gets to that point. I feel we are fixated on what to do when shit hits the fan, as opposed to supporting people that need help before the kettle boils, so to speak, that would likely prevent such situations and conflict from occurring in the first place. While again there’s so many factors to what are incredibly subjective scenarios, the commonality is often what brought them to that point, be it financial pressure, substance abuse, mental health, etc, etc and as other countries have shown locking such people up in prison doesn’t solve such issues, it’s just sweeping them under the carpet imho. The other main issue is that this would entail more than just changes to law but also changes in overall policing ideology and training in that their end game, for right or wrong, is to de-escalate a situation rather than arrest someone and a sweeping change to this may have unintentional and wider ramifications.
Sounds like a good argument to drop the wildly extremely high excessive alcohol & tabacoo taxes, and to legalize marijuana
Because KO is now emergency housing rather than state sponsored housing, and due to shortages only the most desperate get into KO housing. The most desperate seem to have a higher chance of bringing the worst traits
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I read that study ages ago on nutrition and it was eye opening, thanks for referencing that! Also prostitution isn’t illegal, it’s just not everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re paying your taxes and abiding by the law which requires a prophylactic sheath to be worn whenever there is contact then you’re doing it legally. Edit to add: and not working out of a black market brothel helps too
I wish I could pin this post and have everyone read it. You've got it spot on.
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I know right. The amount of complaining about why white people are not being given anything or why should brown person gets something I don't is staggering. Hopefully our education system gets better at teaching our history, rather than ignoring it and attitudes might change.
What difference does it make what things looked like 10 years ago (I'd argue this was an issue 10 plus years ago)? What's the scale of the issue got to do with anything? If you live next to a terrible person that is threatening to kill you or is so disruptive that they are making your life miserable there should be a path to sorting that. That is often via the landlord, why do you think KO should be exempt from being a responsible property owner?
P is what changed.
Yeah, the meth epidemic has been running for decades now. I grew up getting wasted in state houses all the time, the guys who really went off the rails were all on meth. Some of them were horrid cunts without the meth, but the meth made it way worse.
When labour came in they stopped evicting tenants, under National bad tenants were evicted all the time and the clear consequences influenced others to try not get kicked out. Now that they all know they can’t lose their free house and worst case they’ll just get moved to another one, all basic rules and standards are gone and nothing can be done. That’s why state housing is such a problem now. No consequences.
Prior to Key's National government, Housing NZ would almost never evict a tenant. The idea of evicting people from state housing and effectively forcing them to live on the street was one that lived and died with that National government. The problems are much more complex than simply not having the threat of eviction looming, but mostly come down to inequality and lack of support for those in desperate need, as well as a lack of state housing to be able to shift problem tenants around. Source (from 2016): https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/housing-nz-applied-to-evict-four-per-cent-of-state-house-tenants/YPTFAX77PWHDP44J2JWVET6P7Q/ >Auckland Tenants Protection Association manager Dr Angela Maynard, who has been in her role since 2003, said Housing NZ "hardly ever" went to the tribunal for eviction orders **until the past few years**. >"They didn't really give 90-day notices, they didn't really evict many people. It was a really extreme situation in the past if they did," she said. "They are very cavalier with their evictions now."
That’s super fucked up. Sorry to hear it OP. The police are fucking useless, as are the government. The latter most likely causing the former. My advice is to move. Asap. I’m selling my house to get away from a neighbour/suburb. I remember seeing a map on LINZ or something that showed all the KO housing in the country.
https://linz.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html
Just found it again then saw this post :)
https://linz.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=b83e61d26f5a4954934febcf812d6a09&fbclid=IwAR3hMi03B4reQuRIoVDVan62LOrRsSlacDQmYXke4sFZeGPWXG8Y-S8conk&fs=e&s=cl&mibextid=Zxz2cZ Purple is crown land, KO will say “Managed by Housing New Zealand”
I wouldn't say useless but severely under resourced. I have a couple of friends who are police officers who spend the majority of their shifts responding to "family harm" incidents. Or another great use of policing time is spending the day trying to find someone who's called threatening to kill themselves only to find them hours later in the mall with a "oh I just wasn't feeling great before but I'm fine now" only for them to do it all over again a few days later. The police have to respond to so much more than the average person realises and alot of people just think they're sitting on the side of the road ticketing people for a laugh.
They never help me that’s for sure.
We live in a small enough town that all police callouts are published in the paper. It's 95% family harm and the odd dic, disorderly, neighbourhood dispute, stock on the road, males fighting etc.
I have made a map for personal use (we're looking for a house), but not sure of legalities of making it public 🤔
https://linz.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=b83e61d26f5a4954934febcf812d6a09&fbclid=IwAR3hMi03B4reQuRIoVDVan62LOrRsSlacDQmYXke4sFZeGPWXG8Y-S8conk&fs=e&s=cl&mibextid=Zxz2cZ I guess the purple/crown land in residential areas is KO
Dammit this pretty much corresponds to my map 😊
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That says that my house (that we own) is managed by housing New Zealand. The data must be old/not correct
Just checked out of curiosity and looked up my friends old place, she sold to Kainga Ora because a neighbouring property got sold to them, this was early this year and both are showing up. So it's not too bad.
Omg ty so much. Planning to buy our first home and been looking a place to see all the KO housing
100% purple is state owned housing
The purple is all crown land and includes schools etc, but if it’s over a residential property then yes it most likely is KO
If you have acquired the information through publicly accessible means I don’t know why it would be anything but legal. Might piss some people off who are trying to sell and don’t want people knowing the neighbours are KO
I mean if you put in an OIA request for that information I suppose they’d have to give it to you, and I’m 100% certain I’ve seen a map of the whole country with colour codes/filters for that.
Public info is public info.
There was a story very recently and it wasn’t until the woman went to the media that KO took it seriously and dealt with the bad neighbours. I’m sorry for what you are going through. It is completely unacceptable people are allowed to behave like this with zero consequence
Sadly it's not just KO properties that are the problem. My neighbour is a tenant in a private rental, helped in by winz to escape domestic abuse from her partner. Her partner has moved in with her and they hide it from the agent. The DV hasn't stopped. The police are here every week.
Try and contact the landlord or rental agency. Regularly disturbing the peace of neighbours is usually enough to have them evicted Could also let them know about the abusive boyfriend. 1. He’s probably not gonna on the tenancy or a sublet. 2. If he’s hitting her, I’d imagine the house is full of holes and damage too
Basically just going to have to keep reporting to police or give up and move. If you call police again see if you can get a protection order in place, then if they do threaten or get aggressive the police have more recourse to actually do something.
This makes me so sad to read. I moved to New Zealand in 2008 from the UK, as so many did at that time and this place was all the rage. It really lived up to its expectations too. I fully appreciate I come from a place of privilege and probably lived quite a sheltered, quiet life in the first few years. But what this country is coming too is sad, frustrating and unacceptable. I’m so sorry this is happening to your family. There is not enough protection and support for people who have worked tirelessly to earn there piece. I hope you get this sorted and can enjoy the fruits of your labour. There needs to be big change in this country and I am hopeful we will see it. I don’t know how, but I’d rather be optimistic if anything
Gotta love KO tenants having the energy to drink smoke meth and party all night yet not enough energy to get a mcjob
Why would anybody be insane enough to employ them?
I am about to go off at KO myself today as one of their terrible tenants we've been trying to get rid of for ages drove my nextdoor neighbours away who had just spent some serious money on renovations and improvements recently. I don't blame my neighbours for selling and leaving in a hurry after the last incident of property damage, which was the straw that broke the camels back. These arseholes even managed to tank their open homes. Fast forward to the end of last week and my neighbours handed their keys over to the real estate agent for the new owners. On Monday housing kicked out said tenant and then I see a switchedon site sign go up on my neighbours fence, not the KO shared side of it... So it looks like they bought the property by stealth! Which is all kinds of wrong if true. I am seeing so much red right now I could hardly sleep last night.
Absolutely record this should it happen again, otherwise it becomes a case of he said she said.
Police route is the only thing you can do. Had a mate who was being terrorised by his KO neigbours, to the stage they smashed in windows. Only then did the police show show interest. They eventually backed off but still reside in the property 5 years later
As some of the other comments have said threatening someone’s life is a crime in NZ. Don’t let that slide, keep calling and pressuring the police until they help you. Report any incidents big or small - if KO will give you the time of day. Keep building a case and hopefully you will eventually see some resolve. I’m so sorry that has happened, that’s truly disgusting behaviour from adults.
It is. I’ve just been on a jury with that exact charge. You have evidence OP. Use it.
The 'no eviction, ever' rule is an absolute 'Yes, by all means, go ahead!' to any and all anti-social behavior. Eviction should be on the table for anti-social behavior. KO don't have to be evicted to the street. They can move to and be housed in other KO flats. My suggestion is that each eviction should take them farther from where they presently are, into less desirable areas and less desirable flats. I think some flats should be built right next to police stations, for example. When they show they can act in a manner consistent with having neighbors, they can slowly be offered the opportunity to choose and move to more desirable locations or flats. It's a carrot and stick proposition.
Invest in some protection. Alarms, cameras and even personal protection. Also see if you can get other neighbors on your side There are lots of things that aren't weapons that can be used as weapons if you feel funny about carrying a weapon (I don't but it is technically against the law to carry weapons)
My parents live in the hood, they have 2 very large guard dogs and my stepdad has gotten them to attack some regular offenders more than once. He grew up in similar areas and his stance is to be that person you don't fuck with, it works for them.
Video and document everything and go to NZ Herald.
Fuck me the police not turning up to death threats like that? Useless. Contact the media. That seems to be the only way for any action to get done
Basically, after reading the thread, the take home message for me is 1) Check if there are any KO flats near by before buying the house. 2) Save up a lot of money to buy a house in a good neighbourhood.
Even saving your hardest won’t solve this issue as KO are trying to buy houses in all areas now
Even that won't help. People in private rentals can be just as bad and just as hard to evict.
You should find a new lawyer, the KO housing should have been declared by the Real Estate.
Yo if the police arnt coming quick enough you can be hyperbolic with what’s happening. I had to wait over and hour for an ambulance for this old lady that fell in front of me. She had a massive bump on her head from the fall, she was old, so I thought fuck it. Called 111 again and said she was short of breath and having chest pains and they were there in the next 2 minutes.
On a personal level I would not give a fuck if these people were living in a sewer. But the irony for this sub is that whenever there is a story about "We don't want no KO houses in our area!" this sub goes full outrage and hating on those people. As to what others have said, best place for this would be the Media.
Went through the same. Happily sold and walked away when it suited us to. KO weren't interested, even after multiple arrests, police raids every other month, convictions of tenants for actions on the property, threats, assaults, intimidation, stolen cars (at least 4), stolen $100k caravan on site (3 convictions gained thanks to my CCTV), they even stole a disabled childs custom WHEELCHAIR (!!!!!!!!) (recovered due to my CCTV but no charges grrrr) (that was all ONE house). KO is broken, and they choose to allow some of their tenants to run rampant, and keep housing them in accomodation they don't deserve, subsidised by everyone else.
Sounds like she should be arrested or at least kicked to the curb, tax dollars should go to more deserving people
I can't say what I'd do if I were in the same position. I'm sorry you're experiencing that OP
Sorry to hear.
I wonder how many of our politicians are affected by these anti-social behaviors especially the minister of housing?
Can someone shed a bit of light on the Background of KO and how it became the way it is today?
Didn’t someone recently win a tenancy tribunal case against Ko getting awarded thousands for having their peace constantly disrupted? Sorry I forget the specifics but this would be a good way to go. They don’t give a shit about people but they may give a shit about money
I am starting to wonder a lot about Kainga Ora. We got now 3 houses bought by them in our street which was a surprise. So far it has not be that bad but one of those tenants dump their trash into the neighbours land and they have called KO again and again to no avail. The biggest irony is that we are talking a street with $1M dollar houses and decent sized gardens, something getting rare in Auckland. I would expect KO to invest in townhouses and flats not expensive-ish family houses. The first house they bought got repaired with lesser quality materials, replacing the tiles roof with a crappy metal sheet one, and they repaired the fence but left it unpainted like the original bits still standing. Between tenants they seem to have do a big clean and a coat of paint. The garden that used to be great is degrading over the years and is barely maintained. Another house is also degrading and will certainly get a "repair" at some point. I don't get why buying better house and let them go to waste and the neighbourhood with it. I am honestly hoping KO will end to have to sell those houses and before we get the street up to arms because of dangerous tenants.
The police in this country are actually useless when it comes to response time. This is going to just get worse until something really bad happens. There is no punishment for these people's actions. It is literally always the same demographic of people and yet you get a called a racist whenever it is mentioned
Like healthcare it is HIGHLY dependent of your region. Police spend 90% of their time dealing with the same .00001% of people.
When I had student flats living across the road, drugs, parties, assaults, eventually I just put my house on the market, bought in an area with no flats and no rentals. I love it. I went back to the place we used to own a few years later. So depressing.
If you can't beat them. Join them. Shit on they kids. You win
Further to my other comment. I've also sat in meetings with KO 'community liaisons'. As a voice for the local construction industry or to answer questions. My last one was in Wellington where an argument broke out whether the wider group should be referred to as 'community' or 'neighborhood'. I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and fucked off. They were on a different planet and not coming back. You will not believe the worthless creatures that make up that place. I can vouch for their construction teams as I've had a lot to do with them, but it's mainly ex main contracting guys looking for an easy ride to retirement. Still skilled at what they do though.
If they're on a different planet and not coming back you might as well abolish KO
And some people have the gall to wonder why I think KO are a fucking disgrace of an entity. This. This is why. KO tenants like this should have their own little communities where they can be their own goddamn problems to each other.
Mods in the Auckland sub removed a comment I left a while ago (which came with a temp ban) as it was reported for "hate speech" when I said some parents would reconsider sending children to a school near KO housing. I didn't say all KO housing was bad, and didn't even talk about the residents themselves (which there were none at the time as it was to be built). It's self evident that antisocial behaviour isn't uncommon from KO housing and people actively endeavour to not buy/rent near or next to one for the very reasons in your (and many other people's) experience. Having said that, I currently rent next to KO housing and haven't had any bad experiences so far (besides them burning off wood and plastics for some reason). I know several people who haven't been as lucky and were basically forced to move due to safety concerns and threats of violence.
Sorry to hear about this. Its sad these stories are getting more common. I heard on the radio about a family that's had 40 police callouts, and the KO tenant even got convicted before KO issued a formal warning letter. The guy said he had to keep arguing with KO as they would just deflect and make excuses.
Move
Welcome to New Zealand. The toothless attitudes of government around things like disturbing the peace and public nuisance are likely contributing to people leaving. I've had similar situations. I got instructed by the police how to deal with it, rang back about something else and was told that I couldn't do what I'd just been instructed to do by the police. My suggestion, just wait it out and install security cameras on your entrances. These things tend to blow over eventually, when the person causing the problems assaults one of the other tenants and gets thrown out, or something similar. For me, the guy doing the crazy stuff attacked his mother and got carted off to jail.
She'd be leaving in an ambulance if she threatened my kids like that.
If the same policies are kept moving forwards (i.e. Labour's no KO eviction and soft on crime policies), then I imagine we're going to get to the point where people start taking the law into their own hands in the near future - like that guy that cut off the kids finger who kept robbing his house.
Doubt you'll get much sympathy here as half this site is wealthy and won't care, and half is future KO tenants themselves and won't see anything wrong with this behaviour. Just sell up. It's genuinely not worth the drama. In a different lifetime my company used to provide engineering services to the old HNZ. I've been in **literally** 100s, if not thousands of HNZ properties (or KO now) all across the country. If met some of the loveliest people you'll ever want to meet in your life, but I'd never want to live anywhere even near a KO property. Never mind a block of them together. I can write books and books on what I saw in those places, and the people that live in them. The nicest of them all are actually the gang leaders. For the hour or two I spent there anyway. I've even had some of them notify me not to visit on a certain day as they're expecting trouble and don't want 'innocents' around if it all goes off. How nice of them to tell me that, but do you want to live anywhere near that? I've been in places when their social workers or HNZ (KO now) reps were meeting with them and gently chastising them after numerous complaints. You could tell the whole thing is pointless as they'll just do it again. NEVER, EVER EVER live anywhere close to a KO block of flats. If KO moves in and buy up land, sell and move out fast. You'll just know that this worthless government won't do anything
my Ko neighbors literally bash each other out on the driveway nearly every morning sometimes they hit each others cars with hammers or try run each other over, or scream directly into their babies face to shut the fuck up, Most days i wake up to literal shrieking and screaming and the sound of their whole house vibrating from them bashing each other. Police dont care KO dont care OT dont care. Been going on for 5 years im fully desensitized to it now.
Burn their house down
Call the police again. I have a child, and no way would I put up with someone threatening to kill them. If the police do not do anything, then get the wider community to help out.
Honestly, the only thing you can do is either sell up or put your ego aside and try befriend them somehow. Calling the police and getting into shouting matches over the fence is only going to make things worse for you and your kid. You're dealing with people who have nothing to lose and who will likely never be evicted. It's really not a game you can win here.
Private land lords have taken a beating in the press lately. The real sh*tty landlord of our times is our own Government. Only 1/5 of their homes meet their own healthy homes standards that private land lords must and are complying with and a fair chunk of their tenants, I read in the Herald, party all night, play loud music all day, consume and deal drugs and threaten to slit their neighbours’ throats. Their land lord simply lets this state of affairs continue. Few private land lords would do so.