Howls of indignation over state housing evictions based on spurious meth testing have masked the reality of New Zealand’s two-speed P standard. Veronica Crichton admitted that she and her friends had been smoking meth in their Gate Pa, Tauranga home. She even got her landlord to help her evict one P-affected flatmate. She and another … Read more
Dr Lance O’Sullivan has issued a challenge to Phil Twyford after concluding state housing is a direct cause of kids becoming chronically ill. I recently moved from Northland to Auckland and coming from there I thought I knew what poverty was. On my second day of working as a GP here in Auckland I was … Read more
New Zealand was poised for drug reform in 2007, but reform never came. Why do we still adhere to drug prohibition, which will be remembered as one of the most arbitrary, barbaric and brutal systems of oppression in human history? ‘Drug’ Prohibition is an archaic system of control conceived in the 1950s that’s had a devastating … Read more
If a review of our public housing agency is to be taken seriously, it will need to look beyond just the immediate scandal and seek to understand how its priorities mutated into those of a callous busybody, writes Joseph Nunweek If you’ve been reading this site and its familiars in the past fortnight, you’ll be … Read more
It’s an unfurling scandal which saw tenants evicted and millions spent on cleaning homes. Now it appears a tenant was kicked out after seeking help for his addictions, writes Russell Brown. In June 2015, Jesse B became one of the hundreds of Housing New Zealand tenants to have an order made against them at the Tenancy Tribunal … Read more
The minister in charge of Housing New Zealand has given the agency a dressing down after it took an Auckland pensioner to the Tenancy Tribunal twice over a small table that sits on her front porch. Zac Fleming writes for RNZ. Vivienne Wright’s square, black faux-marble table, which her cat uses to get inside and … Read more
As Housing NZ prepares to develop the corner near Russell Brown’s house in Point Chevalier, he muses on the redevelopment, gentrification and spiralling growth in real estate values of the Auckland suburb he calls home. Last week, I wandered around the corner to watch the news crews assemble outside Jacinda Ardern’s Point Chevalier home in … Read more
Renters owning dogs is a divisive issue, especially among landlords. But what happens when your landlord is the government? A few days ago, new Minister of Housing Phil Twyford announced that residents of Housing New Zealand homes will soon be allowed to have dogs. At the moment Housing NZ tenants aren’t allowed dogs except in … Read more
As summer drops away with the leaves a family in West Auckland prepares to endure another winter in substandard government housing, in a place that feels far from a home. Don Rowe visits and hears their story. “We drove past where our old house was the other day and they’ve built a new one. My … Read more