Tenants ‘let down’ by candidates
Palmerston North renter Kat Steeneken has rated four political party candidates a fail over their lack of solutions for dealing with the ‘‘immoral’’ treatment of tenants.
She was one of three speakers at a Manawatu¯ Tenants Unionhosted Vote 2020 election meeting in Palmerston North on Wednesday night, attended by about 30 people.
Steeneken said she had been battered by her experiences with her latest property manager.
But fear of being blacklisted and having nowhere to live had put her off taking a case to the Tenancy Tribunal.
National’s William Wood, Labour’s Tangi Utikere, the Greens’ Teanau Tuiono and NZ First’s Antony Woollams, from Rangitı¯kei, mostly talked about how they would work to solve the housing crisis, which would give tenants more choices.
Steeneken said she thought they had missed the point about tenants who needed help immediately.
Her problems started with a property manager’s insistence a garage she used for storage should be demolished, which she said she would agree to so long as it was replaced. She then received a 90-day notice to vacate and could not find another place.
When she agreed some other sort of storage building would be enough, the notice was withdrawn.
She pursued a complaint to the tribunal, but the ‘‘aggressive’’ behaviour of the property manager’s manager and fear she would be blacklisted if she continued convinced her to drop the action at the last minute.
Now, the rent’s going up $100 a week as soon as the rent freeze ends.
Steeneken said as a social worker, counsellor and mediator she had to be qualified, trained and belong to a professional body that would hear complaints about her work and discipline her if she was found in breach of ethical obligations. ‘‘Property managers are not required to be answerable to any professional body and do not have any kind of codes of ethics.
‘‘Property managers are in an exceptional position of power, yet they’re not required to do a single thing to do that job.’’
Another speaker who asked to be identified only as Joshua told of two flatting situations in Wellington where he felt the tenants had been unfairly rorted by landlords.
He said even if they had complained and won their case, they would have been blacklisted and unable to find a flat again.
A third speaker, Kathleen Stephens, talked about the struggle to find warm, affordable housing where her grandchildren could live and thrive, and the urgency for politicians to act immediately.
Asked what they would do to protect tenants against unfair blacklisting, Tuiono said tenants’ advocates should be better resourced. Woollams spoke up for reform of the tribunal, although he accepted some tenants needed to be blacklisted.
Utikere said reforms of residential tenancy law were a step in the right direction and Wood said there were bad people in every sector, no matter what the law said. ‘‘We need to make sure people have alternatives, so they are not in the situation where they cannot find another home. It’s an issue of supply ... so that people have that choice.’’
Asked to commit to pledges posed by meeting chairman Lawrence O’halloran, only Tuiono and Woollams agreed they would require compulsory regulation of property managers.
Wood did not support pledges about healthy home standards, residential tenancy reforms, a housing warrant of fitness and limits on further rent increases.
Two things they all agreed on was that the cost of housing was one of the biggest causes of poverty in New Zealand and that officials should substantially increase the construction of Kainga Ora housing.
Wood said successive governments were guilty of dropping the ball on the housing issue. National would invest in state housing, in supporting community housing providers and repealing the Resource Management Act to fix the supply problem.