Auckland’s Sugartree Apartments accused of discrimination over ‘social housing’ ban
An Auckland apartment complex is accused of discriminating against beneficiaries after trying to force out a 71-year-old tenant amid claims he is the recipient of “social housing”.
Sugartree Apartments on Union St has issued a breach of body corporate rules notice to the overseas-based apartment owner who let his unit to an Auckland City Mission client.
The pensioner signed a tenancy agreement with letting agency A Grade Rental Homes and began his tenancy earlier this month after being referred by community housing agency Airedale Property Trust.
The landlord class have a vast power over the renter class who have bugger all!
Here the Property Management scum are targeting beneficiaries while constantly trying to find ways to endlessly push up rents.
Surely an explosion of food inflation and oppressive rent hikes must be met with militancy!
A nationwide rent strike with clear instructions to the landlords to get the rent paid by Labour would terrify this nation of property speculators and their political handlers.
Burning down ghost houses should be next.
Previously renter militancy couldn’t be collectively harvested to be effective but social media can do that and so much more!
The politicians, landlords and banks have rigged the game for themselves – if we enter a winter of discontent from greedy landlords raising rents, we should strike back on the place that hurts them most, their wallets and their precious assets!
The truth (like everything else in fucking NZ), is that the under regulated free market has been warped by the wealthy for their interests and all Labour attempt is bullshit tinkering on the sides rather than challenge the dominance of neoliberal theology.
We have allowed the commodification of houses to be a means to make wealth and people are chasing that with all the nuance of meth addicts in a P lab.
If Labour wanted actual solutions, these 3 would do it.
1 – FLOOD MARKET WITH MASS STATE HOUSING REBUILD: End the scum landlord subsidy of housing allowances end putting money into the pockets of unscrupulous motel owners by rapidly building 50 000 new state homes. Scum Landlords can do as they please because the level of desperation amongst renters gives them total power. Flooding the market with 50 000 new state houses would rob scum landlords of that desperation.
2 – STATE HOUSE FOR LIFE: Allow beneficiaries to stay in their state home for life so that they can create stable communities and that their desperation is never transported back to Landlords.
3 – DEPOSIT RESTRICTIONS: First time home buys should be required to have 10% deposit, but the more properties you own, the higher the deposit. The reason the speculators can out buy any first time home owner is because they can use their multiple properties to leverage more debt. If you are a property speculator, you need to turn up with a 70% deposit to counter the leverage multiple properties allows them.
If Labour want to actually solve the problem they have to regulate the market and re-set it so that speculation is punished while first home ownership and housing of the poor is championed.
For too long we have allowed the the rich to dictate the rules, if Labour’s kindness is to be meaningful, it needs to challenge that dynamic.
Unfortunately Labour are not looking for solutions, they are looking for the pretence of a solution to ease criticism from their Left.
That’s ‘neokindness’.
A rent strike would force Labour to do something more meaningful than tilting their head to one side and nodding sadly!
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“If Labour want to actual to solve the problem…”
Exactly!
If they wanted to they would. They don’t. Jacinda’s government is all about perception management, nothing more. Hence they are toast come election night 2023!
So if I wanted to vote National, what would THEY do XRAY?
Would they also be toast?
My heart fluttered this morning as I read of you saying you would vote National .I thought you had finally seen the light .
And typically you never addressed the question. Is that a right wing thing?
And typically you never addressed the question. Is that a right wing thing?
Its not about National, Bert, why can’t you see that?
And pray tell sheep shaggers what will Natzos and ACT do on this very issue? I ask not to illustrate that Natzo, Acto and Labour are all guilty as charged on state housing, but to expose your intellectual dishonesty in not also criticising your beloved blue suit wearers while you put the slipper into Labour.
Natzos will not build any more state houses, and they will work for a clamp down on tenants.
p.s. to our esteemed Editor;
I think “burn down” is definitely not the first option for ghost houses and empty commercial property–well run occupations are–people will be housed and able to run small businesses and co-ops. Rent strikes need exacting organisation just like the few areas that have tried Local Govt. Rate Strikes–very difficult to organise effectively without individuals getting hung out to dry.
passing squaters rights would get them filled with tenants pretty quickly…
No comment about why private investors don’t want state house tenants because they don’t uphold their end of an agreement, make meth in houses, destroy others property, are neighbours from hell, Kainga Ora being useless at evicting violent tenants, etc…?
The simplest, easiest, quickest way is
1. the government buys houses on the market to house those on the waiting list – they then get income related rent they can afford.
We have 25,000 on the waiting list, because we have 60,000 state houses (as we did when we had 3 million people), rather than 100,000.
So buy 25,000 and house those on the waiting list. That and that alone fulfills our UN Declaration of Human Rights commitment to house the homeless.
2. the government build 30,000 more over 3 years (15,000 for state housing and the others for Kiwibuild).
3. Oh and enforce a rent freeze on the private sector – if the landlord wants to increase to charge higher rent let them build a new property.
PS The government elimination of mortgage interest deductability is forcing landlords to increase equity in their property holdings OR become businesses (these can claim interest deductability but have to pay tax on their buy and sell ops).
Not a bad idea at all SPC, has to beat the current motel scenario where debt is established against beneficiaries, while moteliers rake in millions of tax payer dollars.
What they are doing now is totally inadequate.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/government-demolishes-more-houses-than-it-builds-national/HTPVPJGOTTLZMJJSBOHMB2JLO4/
Ardern is the problem. She denies a CGT and she denies ghost homes exist. She is a fraud. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/08/jacinda-ardern-not-convinced-by-ghost-home-concerns-despite-data-showing-40-000-vacant-in-auckland.amp.html
You cannot just build 50k houses. Labour wanted to be 10000 a year and couldnt.
Building a house in this country is super hard and expensive. Hence we have a problem.
Empowering people to build more through less legislation/red tape would seem to me to be a more productive way to get more houses built.
Labour’s Kiwibuild was middle class adventurism, developers and the industry basically went on strike, they want higher margin jobs always.
State House mega build could be done but the main political parties do not have the appetite for it as so much of their support comes from boomers and other mortgage holders and landlords. ideologically neo liberal hegemony still prevails.
Flat Packs, tiny houses for homeless, emergency housing in every town and city, apartments and houses for life or transferable between tenants for work, study or vacation could all be done but not until new gens stand up, get organised and fight for it.
For how many years will we state the obvious, build WAY more houses for the homeless before we realise this IS the GAME that all out Govts are playing ON PURPOSE. And then lets consider TraitorKeys MASS immigration to make this EVEN WORSE. But hey, let’s give him a Knighthood. Like Tony (war criminal) Blair.
Act like you care, BUT do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to change the gravy-train that is the NZ rental market. Aka the debt-slaves company store.
Look at their deeds NOT what they say (or LIE when their lips are moving).
Wake up sheeple, OR JUST ACCEPT we live in a non-democratic slave colony and get used to it.
Oh no, have I been fooled all along? Maybe she is a liar? https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/08/jacinda-ardern-not-convinced-by-ghost-home-concerns-despite-data-showing-40-000-vacant-in-auckland.html
Not sure it would be legal to evict a tenant from apartments based on being a social housing tenant.
How do the Body Corporate even know, unless something the tenant is doing has raised concerns?
I’m assuming there is a lot more to this.
Part of the issue is that all tenants need to respect other people living next to them and look after themselves and the property within the rules of tenancy. Some tenants can’t do that.
Tenants not surprised over Christchurch housing complex homicide
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/120088313/tenants-not-surprised-over-christchurch-housing-complex-murder
Christchurch tenants ordered to pay landlord $10,000 after damage, meth use, robbery, abandonment
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/christchurch-tenants-ordered-to-pay-landlord-10000-after-damage-meth-use-robbery-abandonment/TFJPYCOLISIUXX7U7DIM3GOX6Q/
Squalid: Tenant to pay landlord $3K after leaving rental property unlivable
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/squalid-tenant-to-pay-landlord-3k-after-leaving-rental-property-unlivable/KXV2MAAABGMMTDDSQ4G2BNNFMQ/
Bay of Plenty family fears they’ll never sell home after buyers put off by Kāinga Ora tenants next door
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/04/bay-of-plenty-family-fears-they-ll-never-sell-home-after-buyers-put-off-by-k-inga-ora-tenants-next-door.html
Housing New Zealand tenants living in fear that evicted tenant could return
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/86384813/housing-new-zealand-tenants-living-in-fear
Part of why nothing can be done is that the renter advocates on the left can’t acknowledge some tenants are antisocial and what to do with anti social tenants who remove the quality of life for other tenants who are scared for their lives and have belongings taken.
I’m all in favour for looking at preventing antisocial tenants but that probably starts a lot earlier when they are children, probably did not happen overnight. All the social issues in NZ are often highly related and NZ’s short term neoliberal thinking in isolation from results is a big part of the problem. Neoliberalism is all about deferring responsibility and costs and making the social and financial costs of poor policy, fall on someone else’s watch. When things go wrong, nothing happens, but write a report about it.
If tenants are destroying housing etc that is one less house to rent out for the next tenant.
It does not help to advocate to burn down empty houses as that is one less house and we know that the woke have no sense of humour and don’t understand irony or hyperbole. Thus like Dumb lives Matter might start doing burning down housing.
Rents are low in Auckland CBD at present, as after Covid, finally so many cheap rentals for those complaining about high rents.
Auckland Central from bond data show lower rents $360 p/w – higher rents $550 p/w.
The people who used to live in the CBD 20 years ago have been pushed out by poor planning of poorly designed apartments, high body corporate and scam leasehold fees (many a scam and should not be legal) and the Ponzi’s have moved on into other areas of NZ and thus the leftie dream goal, to have the low rents and lower apartment prices seems to be happening.
Of course this seems to be not what people expected as they are then complaining about awful the CBD is now, with high crime and a lack of atmosphere.
Maybe not trying to socially engineer demographics, and make planning so appalling with a lack of amenity in NZ planning rules has come down to, the middle class won’t live there and social housing tenants don’t want to live next to antisocial housing tenants just like everyone else.
Making antisocial housing tenants live in apartments is also a big risk for everyone else as Meth, fire and so forth a much bigger problem in a building with 1000’s of people affected.
High levels of supply of rentals – my guess is that the neoliberals (all political parties) will push another 1 million people into NZ to make sure that housing demand stays high and prices rise.
“I never thought the day would come when several property agents would tell me (a 24-year-old renter in Auckland) I can be fussy about choosing a flat. ”
https://www.renews.co.nz/empty-viewings-and-cheaper-rent-how-my-flat-hunt-went-in-2022/?fbclid=IwAR03OkOH1KegluNes4WIoK0WvXZpFi0NCvyRSf8KLu0xZAo7wT_XmELITpc
NZ housing shortages have always been about demand not supply.
I’ve thought for around one decade now that there should be rent controls in all urban areas, and lenient lending criteria to savers on low incomes. Banks are able to hedge their lending risk with insurance, so there’s no excuses, really. It doesn’t mean that everyone on a low income would be eligible for a home loan, as the applicants would have to meet certain lending requirements but I do believe that a mandatory percentage of all bank loans going to low income borrowers would be reasonable and acceptable.
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