Activist facing sale ‘staying put’
Penny Bright says she’s not going anywhere, although her home is listed for mortgagee sale over unpaid rates.
The Kingsland home owned by the self-proclaimed “anti-corruption whistleblower” had been listed on Barfoot & Thompson’s website, with a tender closing next Tuesday.
It is advertised as a “mature, splitlevel house” with weatherboard cladding on a “mature, rear section accessed by right-of-way drive”.
The home was listed after the Auckland Council asked the High Court to sell it to recoup tens of thousands of dollars unpaid rates and penalties accumulated since 2007.
It followed an unsuccessful appeal by Bright and a statutory six-month stand-down period for the council.
At the start of the year the council’s acting group chief financial officer, Matthew Walker, told the Herald taking enforcement action to recover unpaid rates was “the last resort”.
He said the council had written to Bright regularly over the past six months offering to resolve the matter.
Speaking to the Herald yesterday, Bright blasted the listing as “not fair”.
“I believe I’m being maliciously picked on as an anti-corruption whistleblower,” she said.
The Aucklander set up a Givealittle page and aimed to raise $21,000, which would cover her outstanding rates as well as the cost of the page. By last night the page had raised $6000.
Bright said she had worked fulltime “in the public interest” since paying off her house in 2000.
She said it was only the second time the Auckland Council had applied for a forced rating sale against a freehold property.
In January 2016, the District Court entered judgment for the council against Bright for $34,182.56 for outstanding rates and penalties, plus costs of $13,249.20. — Alice Peacock