Government promises harsher action against antisocial Kāinga Ora tenants
Monday, 18 March 2024
The National-led coalition government has scrapped the sustaining tenancies framework, which ensured social housing providers to do all they could before evicted a tenant.
Dropping the framework was in the National-ACT coalition agreement.
It was set up in 2017 under the National government to held reduce evictions.
Housing Minister Chris Bishop has instructed Kāinga Ora, the government's public housing landlord, to stop using its sustaining tenancies framework, a homelessness prevention service and act more harshly towards those behaving antisocially.
The sustaining tenancies framework was set up by the previous National government, but Bishop said it “hadn’t worked” because there was no incentive for tenants to change their behaviour.
But neither Bishop and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon would confirm how many people would be evicted into homelessness, nor whether children would also be evicted with their parents.
Bishop said it was “unacceptable” only three tenants were evicted from social housing last year, when there were 335 serious complaints per month, but also said he did not want to see more evictions.
“I don't necessarily want to see the number of evictions go up. But I want to see the number of incidents go down I want to see higher or tenants behaving better in the properties,” he said in the Beehive in Wellington on Monday.
He would be waiting to see what recommendations were made in a review of Kāinga Ora, due at the end of this month, and led by Sir Bill English.
Bishop and Finance Minister Nicola Willis sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora which set out core functions it expected the agency to focus on on Monday.
Those were strengthening the management of disruptive tenants, addressing a concerning escalation in rental arrears, tenanting vacant properties as quickly as possible, delivering new social housing places in line with targets, and delivering value for money in its spending and delivering savings as required.
About 100,000 people are estimated to be experiencing homelessness, and more than 25,000 are on the Kāinga Ora social housing wait list.
Bishop has also asked the agency to recoup rent from tenants who are in arrears.
Between 2017 and 2023, the total debt owed to Kāinga Ora by its tenants increased from $1 million to $21 million, and the number of tenants owing rent nearly doubled from 4,248 to 9,519. At the end of last year, more than 450 Kāinga Ora tenants each owed more than $10,000 in rent, he said.
“Frankly, this isn’t in anyone’s best interests – not taxpayers, and not the tenants themselves – so Kāinga Ora needs to address the current rental arrears issues and prevent future arrears from escalating.”