Police admit motels data they tried to hide ‘paints a very unattractive picture’
A more than 900% spike in police call-outs to just five Rotorua emergency housing motels can finally be revealed after the Ombudsman ruled data requested by Stuff a year-and-a-half ago, which the police admitted “paints a very unattractive picture”, should be released.
Back in January 2022, Stuff asked police to provide data on the number of times they had been called to five motels in 2016 – before their use for emergency accommodation – and also in 2020 and 2021.
Police declined to provide that information, citing privacy reasons and commercial interests.
Stuff referred the matter to the Ombudsman and more than 18 months later, it ruled police should hand over the data.
The numbers revealed that across five motels, which Stuff agreed not to name, there were just 46 call-outs over the whole of 2016.
That figure rocketed in 2020 to 259 call-outs, spiking again the following year to 491 call-outs.
From 2016 to 2021, that was a staggering 967 per cent increase in call-outs.
After investigating the matter the Ombudsman ruled that “New Zealand Police should not have refused the request”.
The written ruling also revealed police sought to keep the figures private as “the data paints a very unattractive picture” for the motels involved.
“This is particularly relevant given that MSD had engaged the services of significantly more motel service providers in the region,” police said.
Rotorua National MP Todd McClay blasted the initial police decision to keep the data covered up, and suggested political interference played a role.
As if anyone in the Labour Government were clever enough to hide data like this, there is certainly political interference, but it’s not from the Politicians, it will from the Bureaucrats covering each others arses.
The exact same thing is happening over in Rehabilitation with John Campbell finding out that what passes as male violence programs is nothing more than an underfunded box ticking exercise.
Which of course is what it is.
The underfunded joke of NZ regulations is no where better exemplified than with Megan Woods comments that the Healthy Homes programme is barely policed and that she just ‘trusts’ Landlords to do the right thing!
There is an unspoken neoliberal straightjacket agreement between the Wellington Bureaucratic Elite and the Political Class, the Politicians won’t force real taxation on the wealthiest to properly fund our social services in return for political cover so that when those underfunded services fail, no one is ever held to account.
Kettling the homeless into Motels with none of the real service wrap arounds was of course always going to fail.
Our box ticking male violence ‘rehab’ programmes are in the exact same situation as well as any policing of Landlords, everything its underfunded and poorly policed and people just fall through the cracks.
We are so focused on underfunding everything and then covering up the problems caused by that underfunding is what Politics actually is in NZ.
Consider how undertaxed we really are and at how successful the neoliberal agenda has been in allowing the mega wealthy to get away with a rigged casino.
Welcome to the Land of the Wrong Uptight Crowd!
There are 38 OECD countries.
NZ is the only country without a CGT.
NZ is one of 13 without an estate or inheritance tax.
NZ is one of 3 without a different tax rate for food.
NZ ranks sixth for net wealth.
NZ tax take, spending and debt are below the OECD average.
The message is clear.
If you want properly funded services and not the current jokes, Tax. The. Rich.
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Bugger this, the police are covering their ministers arses big time, aka poll ratings, which is repulsive and to the casual observer, could be seen as rather corrupt!
Fenton St is the sum total of Labours and Minister Davidson’s disastrous achievements in housing and thanks to their faithful commissioner, the problems they created by concentrating so much dysfunction in such a small place has be hidden.
Of course the good people of Rotorua will know this first hand.
The government stopped doing slum clearance and started creating slums. They sold off entire public housing estates, which immediately turned into slums; they found shabby motels and turned those into a state-funded slum; and then they restricted supply of new homes, to that everywhere else turned into an overcrowded, high-priced hell hole.
I just wish Phil Twyford was reinstated. He would fix all this.
Some of those crowing about this may be just a little hypocritical. Just look at National’s Tania Tapsell, who is pretending that this shows that the current (failed) social housing is bad, while cutting social services across the board.
Have these motels, in which the most vulnerable- including some of the most criminal- of people have been concentrated, people who should be in proper social housing, led to concentrated social problems? Sure.
But many of the problems affecting these people existed before- just in lower concentrations, and further away from areas like the poncy couple blocks off Rotorua’s main drag.
Instead of turning these people out on the street like Tapsell wants to, it’s time to have serious solutions.
One good thing about covid was homeless were allowed into motels whether the prime reason was to help the homeless or help moteliers lacking tourists it was a win win. But that was nearly two years ago, well past time to provide motelled families a house or state house. Meanwhile there are vacant speculator owned houses. Levy a vacant house tax and use the money to build more state houses to drive down rents and house prices.
In my neighbourhoods I am seeing some new state house builds coming to completion. And word is lots of builders facing a construction downturn are lining up to secure state house contracts.
If life gives you lemons … very good.
It’s sad but true that today’s homeless society are housed in motels when under the previous Nact Governments extremely poor management of the economy and their dereliction of duty to all New Zealanders meant Nact left them to live and die on our streets and in cars. And Seymour protests about social housing being built in Epsom is clear evidence a Nact coalition only governs for the wealthy and elite.
The right bloggers on this site are clueless to the fact.
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