Housing NZ bumper stickers
Prepare to be incandescent with rage…
$1 million bid not enough to buy state house in sought-after area
A supermarket worker says she has raised $1 million to buy her state house in one of New Zealand’s most-desirable neighbourhoods – but Housing NZ is booting her out regardless.
Bella Bowden, 50, believes she was investigated by Housing NZ because her extended family came up with the cash to help her buy the small Mission Bay house she has called home for 11 years.
After she told the government housing agency she had obtained finance to buy the house, Housing NZ officials investigated her circumstances, talking to her neighbours and her boss.
They wrongly claimed she had a partner and a second job, she says, and have ordered her out by tomorrow.
…so, let’s get this straight. These sanctimonious pricks ‘offer’ a state tenant to buy the home she has lived in for 11 years at an eye watering $920,000 under Housing NZs joke deal where they offer state tenants the ‘opportunity’ to purchase the state home they have lived in before booting them out of it so that they can make a quick buck with property developers.
You know they laughed when they sent the letter with the amount of $920 000 in it out to her, but to their shock, she managed to scrape together from friends and family the money to buy it.
So what happens next? Put aside the injustice of their active policy to dangle home ownership in front of state tenants who can’t afford it, instead of accepting her offer, they start a witch hint against her with investigators wishing each other luck in spinning deceitful lies and half truths to not only evict her, these despicable disgusting contemptible scum maggots declare Bella has been dishonest in her circumstances and in fact owe them $122,912 in back rent from 2002.
Housing NZs policy is nothing short of a class hate crime. They want state tenants out so that they can sell the property to developers to make a quick buck and if any tenant ever manages to afford the joke offer, they crucify them. Disgusting.
We are all diminished by their scum bagger. This is the egalitarian NZ of the 21st century and we should all be deeply ashamed.
Yea, I’m raging bout that one, how cruel.
Why is someone who has access to a million bucks living in a taxpayer subsidised house that could have gone to one of the 4000on the waiting list ?
AH , Read the article again David. Especially the paragraph that states
” You know they laughed when they sent the letter with the amount of $920 000 in it out to her, but to their shock, she managed to scrape together from friends and family the money to buy it.”
@David
100% agree. She moves into a state house with access to funds she could of raised earlier from family and friends, but instead she moves into a state house and raises a whopping 1 million dollars. The key word here is that she had access to funds Elwood. There are so many people waiting for state houses with little income let alone financial aid from friends and family, and this is what you highlight, that she asked friends and family. I think HNZ need to re evaluate her circumstances and give the house to those that need it.
while i also wonder why someone who could borrow a million to buy the house they have lived in for 11years i also think good on her but hey Bella why not use that million to become a landlord for other low income familes and well as having your own home HNZ only want to keep slum housing in places where it is socially acceptable while selling off any decent housing look at what they did to mental health services users who were living in community groups homes that would have otherwise been sold this is not new just more blatant this is why we need to change legislation so no one on a low income 55,000 a year by law has to pay more than 25% of their net wages in rent and while we are at iit all politians get the equalivlent of the dole and live in local wellington state houses watch how quickly the trains would be fixed the homes would be fixed etc but more importantly than this vote if you can waste money voting for x factor then vote if you are eligable in the local body elections and the general electiononly when we get 90% or more or eligable people voting will we have a true democracy…
Because she didn’t just have that money lying around. Her family raised it when the “offer” was made.
But HNZ will sell it not offer it to someone on the waiting list then I question what do they do with all that profit ? and why offer it to her in first place
Did you read the linked NZ Herald article? Her whanau helped out. Did you read the article? She stacks supermarket shelves for a living. Did you read the article? She’s not rich. Did you read the article?
Why do you have access to oxygen, David? Obviously not enough to run any of the higher brain functions, but just enough to jerk the knees. You are contemptible.
What an inane comment! Do you have a PhD in stupid?
This is the clearest evidence I’ve seen that Housing NZ is all about ethnic cleansing. Only rich whites are allowed sea views. The housing sales are not to free up capital and put people in other homes. They are to shovel money into the snouts of fat cat developers.
The question now is which of our parliamentary parties isn’t in bed with fat cat developers and will ask the appropriate questions? At a guess, I’d say only Mana and Greens. This disgusting episode has thrown the whole of neoliberal economic policy into sharp focus – it’s us against them and there are no crumbs. Nothing to trickle down.
For a start, the HNZ investigators (PERFed out poaka?) and their immediate superiors should be the subjects of a fair and thorough investigation, after which they should be sacked without compensation. The whole sales program should be stopped. How could we complain about ethnic cleansing in the Balkans when we’re doing it here? This is just sick, so bloody sick I’m seeing red. What country are we in? What happened and when are we going to stop it?
I know enough about Housing NZ and what they are up to, as a person I know got treated like shit by them. He did as a beneficiary lose his privately rented unit of many years due to a private developer buying the whole block, slapping a bit of paint on walls, do a bit of landscape gardening, and then sell the units off one by one for a nice profit, tax free of course.
So the guy was forced to move into a boarding house, that was overcrowded, infested with cockroaches, noisy and unbearable. He was sick and his health got worse in the supposedly “temporary” accommodation he had to take, as no other options existed.
He applied for help with housing through Housing NZ weeks before he had to move. They did not act for 3 months, despite of initial promises to have someone meet with him and assist him with places to look at within weeks of his application.
Then they finally showed him totally unsuitable tiny “boxes” in units, into which he could not even fit his humble belongings. He clearly emphasized health issues he had, but they were ignored, hence inappropriate places shown to him. One place shown was also used as a P-kitchen, in which drugs had been “cooked”. They did not tell him about it when he looked at it. They did some tests and later revealed what the place was used for, but is was apparently “suitable”, with holes in the walls, some walls only painted in spots and the ceiling having traces of leaks.
As he turned that one down, they said he could not be helped, as he had unreasonable expectations. They replied to his questions and criticism re holes in walls, leaky roofs and so by saying, that Housing NZ no longer is responsible to renovate places, they only now ensure basic “health and safety” conditions.
In the very end he had to go to the media, and have one paper write about what was going on, and bingo, days after he was suddenly offered a somewhat more acceptable place, which he moved in to.
What Housing NZ is doing with their selling of houses and properties on the open market is supposed to get the best return from sales, to re-invest for more alternative social housing elsewhere.
But the result is, that poor are driven out of high value areas, and shifted into new ghettos, where they get stacked on top of each other in units or cheaply built apartments. Also do Housing NZ lease properties from private landlords, to let out to their “customers”. So who benefits? It is property speculators, developers, rich buyers, potential on-sellers in a hyped up market and private landlords letting to Housing NZ.
Who loses? Naturally the very people they claim they are helping and housing, having to accept cramped, noisy, crowded and poorly built accommodation in often two to three level blocks. Only some with families will still get traditional houses on sections. Poor are driven out into already poorly valued suburbs and location, ushered into ghettos of the present and the future.
So much for “social” housing in New Zealand 2013 and the future, it is disgusting, really, and sadly only some of those affected, plus some activists and neighbours bother standing up against this social stigmatisation and discrimination happening.
Shame on this government, and shame on those just worried about their personal property values in “good” areas!
Just take a look at TAUPO for gods sake! Look what happened in Nukuhau with pig arse greedy developers, built a property that couldn’t be sold, shoddy workmanship, ridiculously priced, unaffordable to the everyday working person, and who played a hand in this…the WANKING TAUPO COUNCIL! It’s an eyesore, I wouldn’t even house my dog there..GREED, GREED GREED..the property went into receivership, they can’t even get tenants to rent the bloody place.
Disgusting
It’s actually an example of Fascism and reminds me of Kafka. The message? Don’t try and fight the state or you will be crushed by it.
When did this country become so selfish an greedy? I grew up in a small NZ town in the 80’s and it was magical. If one person ha a car – everyone had a car. If one person had food – everyone had food. If one person had a house – everyone had a house. Children never went hungry.
I grew up expecting to help others if I could, and to be helped if I needed it. I always thought that this is what set us apart from the world, what made this country the best to live in.
The state of New Zealand at this point leaves me horrified and ashamed.
Come on New Zealand, we are much better than this!
So this is part of the path to a Brighter Future? I could go and lie in the sun in North Korea and save the wait.
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