Over at Chris Trotter’s blog, Bowalley Road, he recently had a post on the problems that state housing provider Kāinga Ora (KO) is having with “unruly tenants”.
Specifically the problems they’re having with gang members terrorising their neighbours, often very aged neighbours, and the seemingly complete inability of KO to do anything about it. Chris claims that it’s a case of the Labour Minister, Poto Williams, being “entirely captured by her officials”.
No! It is the entirely logical outcome of a modern Left-wing approach to crime that sees criminals as merely a by-product of a bad society, who cannot and should not be punished further.
To that end I saw a comment there from one “Swordfish”, which Chris did not publish but advised to be taken to reporters. Being somewhat familiar with the commentator I tracked him down to his blog, Subzero Politics (which I don’t frequent), and specifically the story of his parents and KO. I won’t re-produce the whole thing here but hopefully the NZ blogosphere will spread this wide enough that the MSM might take an interest in it. It’s horrifying.
My Parents (aged 90 & 91) have been forced to endure 4 years of constant, prolonged violent intimidation and extreme anti-social behaviour (the latter including being very regularly kept awake until dawn, sometimes over 2 or 3 consecutive days) from the Kainga Ora tenant on the other side of their dividing-wall in a two-house Unit (My Parents have lived in their house for almost 60 years & have owned it since the 1970s).
His parents have been driven into a very poor state of health as a result of all this, largely coming from one man, with assistance from an occasional friend of his. “Swordfish” has kept a detailed diary of events and there have been multiple calls to the Police.
Based on my diary entires, my Parents have suffered precisely 116 – let me repeat that … 116 !!! – really large-scale explosions of violent intimidation since their neighbouring tenant arrived in late 2017. Together with several hundred mid-level, more minor & sporadic acts of violence & intimidation. The latter occur on an almost daily basis, except when he is away. This tenant has always been very violent & aggressive in his everyday behaviour, clearly a deeply-ingrained facet of his personality.
These have involved violent confrontations with others, sometimes out on the street, with what can only be described as insane behaviour inside his own house, which apparently shares a concrete brick wall with the parents. In the last three years his rage has been directly aimed at the parents.
In the very worst of the Major Explosions (and there have been 7 of these = out of 18), in the midst of his multi-hour intimidation, he has gone right along their fenceline, down to their letterbox & driveway, aggressively strutting back & forth straight outside their house, violently swearing & making loud threats – just the most blatant violent intimidation – interspersed with loud declarations of dominance / fighting prowess (essentially Maori Warrior-style ‘Proclaiming’) … and on 3 separate occasions he has actually rushed onto their front lawn in the middle of his explosion & vandalised their property (in one of the worst cases, for instance, smashing their concrete fence with a sledgehammer at 2am.
But there’s been plenty going on inside his house, at all hours of the day. “Swordfish” lists some of these activities, including:
1) Uber-Violent slamming into the dividing-wall with full force (punching, thumping, pounding and full body-slamming)
(2) Throwing very heavy objects or weights at the dividing-wall with full force (we don’t know exactly what the objects are but the noise is always so shocking that it sounds like some kind of heavy steel builder’s tool or similar … like something really heavy & substantial being thrown or slammed into the wall with full force … like he’s trying to smash a hole right through the dividing-wall … just makes my Parents jump 10 feet in the air with total shock)
(3) Driving large or heavy objects (presumably the same things as above) into the bedroom floorboards with all his strength
(4) Doing very aggressive haka-like stomping in the bedroom right next to the dividing-wall with full force … clearly aiming to scare & intimidate.
….
Twice his parents were so terrified that they fled to their neighbours across the road to phone the cops.
To me, one of the saddest aspects is the following:
My Parents are not only lifelong Labour voters but also long-term Party members with a long family history in the Labour Movement … they’ve been viciously betrayed by this Govt … having voted Left all my life, I swung into Non-Voting at the last Election.
I cannot help thinking this is the experience of many older Labour voters (and in the USA, older Democrat voters), who do not realise just how fundamentally their Left-wing parties have changed. These sad old people have been let down by almost every arm of the government (save the healthcare system) in every way in their twilight years. If even the cops are powerless then what hope is there for these people, and many others like them, judging by other stories?
What a hell of a way to end up and it will not just be Left-wingers who end up being betrayed. I can only hope that I’ll have enough wealth in my latter days that I won’t be reduced to depending on our governments in any way in the future.
No Minister 
The sickening thing about this, among many, is that a life-long Labour voter was driven to not voting. Not voting? For Heaven’s sake, get a grip. Not voting isn’t going to do it. Voting ACT will, and that’s not the voter leaving Labour, it’s Labour leaving the voter. To change things,a nothing, you’ve got to act. Act! ACT.
Too quick. A nothing is actually anything.
[shrugs shoulders]
What would ACT or National do here? What laws do we lack to stop this, if any? Is it really no more than “poor management” from the top down? Would it help if Coster and the KO head were told to stay with the old couple for a week or two?
Personally my Day-One plan would be firing not just the head honchos of the Police and Kāinga Ora, but their top three or four management layers, just to prevent any more such people getting the job. In fact I’d do that to every single government department, ministry and quango, with – as in the case of the Ministry of Health – wiping out some units entirely and re-building something much smaller from scratch.
But I suppose that is not the accepted way of doing things in government.
This is how a society run by leftists goes. The fat-cat nomenklatura at the top live fine care free lives, us in the middle why obey the law and pay taxes are increasingly micromanaged to death and bled dry, all the while the ferals at the bottom can ignore the law, act with no sense of civic responsibility whatsoever and are subsidized to do so – particularly if they are mouldi.
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
Have an in-law who is a solicitor at Kainga Ora. Confirmed that nobody is kicked out ever. Not since 2017.
Icing on the cake: they have many, many gang “clients” who never bother to pay rent. They cannot be evicted under the current management.
So… gang members, living on benefits, making tax-free black market money through crime, are living in Kainga Ora houses and terrorising their pensioner neighbours. And the taxpayer is providing it for them rent-free.
New Zealand they way you voted for it and have it. A government installed by Winston, then cemented into place by female voters…
I reckon this will be the undoing of Labour. People, right across the board, are really brassed off with the fact that gang members and their associates are able to run amok with zero consequences. Not so long ago gang behaviour was quite tightly confined to specific areas. Now they are everywhere, with a doubling of numbers in the last 4 years. For many young people in deprived neighbourhoods gang membership provides opportunities for money and “glamour” that might otherwise be absent, and all with no consequences.
I suspect gang members and more particularly associated women with children get special preference for Kianga Ora housing, given that they are not able to be in the private rental market due to their behaviour. Because Labour has a no eviction policy, I imagine there has also been an enormous increase in non payment of rent. Why bother when there are no consequences of doing so. The only control will be that benefits probably have KO rent deducted.
The fact that Chris Trotter is making an issue of this is because he senses that the government is rapidly alienating traditional Labour voters, particularly those who are in the workforce and follow social norms. Or for that matter, beneficiaries who also do so.
When a centre-right party has a message that resonates directly with these groups, these voters will desert Labour, just as they have done in the US and the UK. Boris is particularly instructive for NZ, given the cultural similarities. He had a message that reached these voters directly. Clearly it was motivated by Brexit, but there is more to it than that. Jim Bolger also senses there is a shift here. It is less about the specific policy (Jim would be way too wet for Tom) but more about specifically reaching these particular voters.
Nicola Willis may be able to package a set of policies that hits the spot. Sometimes it is not the Leader who is decisive in a parties fortunes, but rather someone who has an overall policy prescription that meets the contemporary need. Probably the best example in my lifetime was Roger Douglas. He was never going to be the Leader of Labour but he was undoubtedly the decisive thinker in Labour from the early 1980’s to the late 1980’s.
Cassandra … all ACT has to do is to back National over its long standing policy which saw unruly tenants moved out and moved on (and I don’t personally care if they end up in caravan parks … actions beget consequences). As I’ve blogged before … being granted a State House id a privilege not a right and with that privilege comes obligations. In 2017 and on being elected Labour reversed that policy. The chickens are now coming home to roost … the crazy thing about this, as outlined by Swordfish, is that Labour’s core constituency (not the gangs) are the ones bearing the brunt of Arderns ‘kindness’.
Jeez thanx Vet, thank you very very much. We spend time in Caravan Parks quite often and what have we done to deserve that. At least it is easy to ascertain the likely hood of a house that is stationary being occupied by these outstanding clients of the State and therefore quite simple to avoid but to park up and ten minutes later find the people parked next to us not such nice people could be upsetting to be Frank.
I am sure there might be some very attractive parts of the Bay of Islands that would appeal to their innermost desires, what say you.
Oh Joy Vet now we have a wet squish who will fit well into the go-along-to-get-along disappointment of a National party
A threshold for acceptable behaviour must be established and if tenants abuse that, eviction applied. Where the evicted go is their problem. They’ve forfeited the right to state assistance. If they continue to behave anti-socially elsewhere – creating a public nuisance – they should be apprehended and dealt with by an effective justice system. Until tenants understand boundaries, they won’t value a roof over their heads. If there are young children involved, they should be removed to safety. Forget all this ideological indulgence. Children only get one chance.
The problem, as always, is that National supporters talk tough but when the Party is in Government it can’t quite summon up the courage to act. National needs some stiffener and I’m afraid it’s not Mr Luxon. Perhaps Bridges can encourage him.