People to occupy elderly tenant’s house as court date determines her fate – Tāmaki Housing Group

Ioela ‘Niki’ Rauti and her supporters will start another occupation of her home at 14 Taniwha Street, Glen Innes today at 10:30am to stop her eviction.

Niki will appear in the Tenancy Tribunal at 9:00am where the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company will be attempting the acquisition of a possession order. This will give bailiffs and police the right to evict her and change the locks.

Niki has been standing up against this eviction because the redevelopment of her community is leading to the displacement of people.

The privatisation of public land and ongoing demolitions of houses under this redevelopment company is geared towards enabling the wealthy to profit in the midst of a crisis.

The processes of redevelopment and major state housing reforms have deliberately confused people in an attempt to distract the public from the fact that state housing is being privatised.

The land where Niki’s home stands is owned either by the Tāmaki Redevelopment Company, Tāmaki Regeneration Ltd, or Tāmaki Housing Association Limited Partnership. It is not clear, as documents and contact details shift from one to the other.

“How is Niki, and all the others, supposed to get her head around this when none of us can decipher who the landlord is?,” says Lisa Gibson, member of the Tāmaki Housing Group who will be representing Niki’s arguments in the Tenancy Tribunal this morning.

“We’ve got two University of Auckland Masters’ theses about this, we’ve been working on this for hours with all the letters and media reports in front of us – and we still don’t know who the landlord is. Who’s her landlord? How can she know who has the right to evict her?”

Niki’s case will be put before the Tribunal with a half day set aside for the hearing.

Amidst the Auckland housing crisis, we should be outraged at eviction and fighting together to increase state housing, not enable the Government to sell public land to developers whose motivation is profit.

All people deserve a home, not just those who can afford to own their own. Security of tenure ensures the wellbeing of people and the wellbeing of whole communities.