Bill English claims to be keen on rewarding ‘hardworking’ New Zealanders.
Maria and Sam have 5 children, they live in a HNZ house. Their overriding goal in life is for their children to do well at school. We meet them at their wits end on a hot March morning in West Auckland after a yet another demeaning and demoralising meeting with WINZ.
Their house is very small for 7 people but has given them security for 10 years and, until recently, Housing NZ allowed them to pay an income related-rent of around $250. Sam has a 40 hour a week job at $16.80 per hour in a factory. They don’t drink, smoke or gamble but even with subsidised rent, they were struggling to feed their growing family. They were so desperate they took loans with loan sharks just for the basics. With hungry, active young boys they were often at the Salvation Army for foodbank help.
Already hard workers, they got National’s message loud and clear that work is the way out of poverty. So, after her last child, Maria went back to work 5 days a week at McDonalds for $15.80 an hour. This was far from easy for her with 5 young children. You can see, Maria and Sam are exactly the kind of hardworking parents that Bill English approves of.
But what happened next was their rent suddenly went up nearly $200 per week to $442 and they lost $142 a week from their Working for Families. Of course Maria also had less time to care for her family so everyone was under stress. Loans started mounting for the basics of school uniforms stationary, school fees and food, and they got behind in their rent payments. Housing New Zealand was saying to them since they were earning so much they needed to find a private rental. Stress mounted as they could see that a private rental would provide their family no security of tenure and disrupt their children’s schooling.
Rent arears accrued of over $2000 and Housing NZ issued an eviction notice. Their working hours were affected because so much time was spent at appointments with WINZ, community law office, MSD, and Housing New Zealand. Eventually they were advised that Maria should stop work altogether because her income was the problem. It pushed this family over the threshold for income-related rents to apply.
After very time-consuming negotiations, Housing New Zealand agreed that the eviction would be waived and WINZ agreed to lend them the money to repay the arears. This morning they went to WINZ to sign the papers. Sam had to take time off work and they had their youngest child with them which was stressful for them and the child. It took one and half hours because the new case worker they met with kept insisting that the application for a loan for the arears had been declined. Only through their persistence did they finally get the right documents. They were not so lucky with their request for help with food. A food grant that was approved three weeks ago was declined. Why? Sam had just got a 20 cents per hour increase in income that disqualified them.
Maria has cut back to one day work a week to keep a foot in the door of employment, and to just keep their income related rent. But that could be jeopardised if Sam works overtime. Yes, they are paying less rent and get more WFF, but no they can’t survive on just his income. They have just pawned their wedding rings and are attempting to withdraw Sam’s small KiwiSaver fund under hardship provisions
What would you do Mr English?
What would Mr English do? Pray even more for another Christchurch type earthquake I reckon.
Pete; Bull English will copy Jonkeyb and arrange another earthquake aroundthe coastal area as he did last time,
The “Amazon Warrior” (oil explorer “Sonic Boom” ship (that is known elsewhere globally) as causing earthquakes, was around the coast when CHCH and later at Kaikoura both began their earthquakes so expect this earthquake ship back to cause more chaos this year.
http://gisborneherald.co.nz/localnews/2561817-135/call-for-halt-to-seismic-testing
I don’t think we can afford any more of National’s “Brighter Future”. It’s getting tooooo expensive!
“Planet Keyenglish” coming to town soon, with this “twerp” he is another “trader” and seller of all our assets like the last one was.
These creeps need to go before the country crumbles, and we are left as just “tenant’s I our own land”
The bloke is a total zombie horror staggering forward mouthing “tax cuts” “tax cuts” “tax cuts” Go f*ck yourselves greedies and vote this deadbeat back in! 🙁 The poor? just zombie fodder!
This is a great, revealing post, presenting just one of many such cases!
Let us also talk straight re the much repeated refrain, that the Nats have annually increased benefits to “inflation adjust” incomes of those on benefits.
Even the useless MSM have NO clue about the truth when it comes to living on a benefit.
For instance only the base or core benefit (Jobseeker, Sole Parent or Supported Living Payment benefit) ever gets inflation adjusted, the supplements for accommodation, for disability and so forth have not bee increased for ages, and are NOT inflation adjusted.
Bring in abatement regimes, and only the main or core benefit (Jobseeker, Sole Parent, SLP benefit) is not affected by extra income earned per week (up to a certain amount like eighty or a hundred bucks). Any income earned on top of a benefit is likely to lead to reductions of supplements, e.g. the Accommodation Supplement.
So few people end up “better off” when working part time, and not even when working full time, as this example shows.
Once a certain threshold is reached, that is hours worked or income earned, the market rents set in for state or social housing.
We are keeping tens of thousands of poor people debt laden up to their eyeballs, and they are forced to go round and round in circles, but this complex and punitive system we have, it is not only misunderstood by the MSM, I bet Bill English himself does not understand the system his public servants are having to administer.
Welcome to a Kafkaesque society within the nation called NZ Inc.!
Kafkaesque indeed. Through into their story complications of a sick child or redundancy. We have torn up the safety net
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