State Tenant debt and having Chris Bishop as your landlord

State tenants owe Kāinga Ora record $21m unpaid rent: one man owes $48,000

A state house tenant owing $48,000 in rent arrears remains in his house, having offered $150 a week to clear his debts.

The man from Upper Hutt tops Kāinga Ora’s list of debtors as the agency’s total rent arrears have risen more than 800 per cent lately to $21 million.

Nick Maling, Kāinga Ora national services general manager, said $21m the figure was the most it had ever been owed and indicated the difficulties people faced in meeting financial obligations in a tougher economic environment.

“This figure reflects the unprecedented challenges New Zealanders have faced in recent years and ongoing pressures on the cost of living.”

Stuff reported that state tenants owed $2.32m by September 2019, so the increase to $21m amounts to 813 per cent. Debts jumped to $17m by September 2022.

We punish State Tenants with this rule to charge them rent they can’t pay just as we punish beneficiaries with penalties and  loans they can never pay back…

The $3.5 billion problem of debt to the Government that’s grinding down low-income earners

According to government figures, about 560,000 low-income earners, mostly beneficiaries, owe about $3.5 billion of combined debt to MSD, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), and Inland Revenue (IR).

More than 70% of that burden rests on households where there are children, too. Māori and Pacific people are over-represented as well.

…the Egalitarian State has turned into a cruel money lender who punishes when we overpay and lock the poorest amongst us into debt with state agencies they can never pay back.

It is a debt trap designed to make the most vulnerable ended to the State until death.

This hard right racist Government has already stopped building State Houses to reintroduce  desperation into the rental market alongside the right to kick tenants out plus tax loop holes for Landlords.

Having Chris Bishop as your landlord, a Politician who lied about renting his house from in-laws to pretend he understood renters, seems like a deal made in hell.

National have already promised to throw disruptive Kianga Ora tenants onto the streets while halting new State House builds which will see a leap in homelessness and increased waiting lists for fewer houses.

We are not interested in solutions to poverty and inequality, we only believe in making any welfare as difficult and toxic as possible so the poor give up turning to the State in the first place.

We have short changed our own people in terms of housing and safety nets so we can feel superior and smug in the tiny lounge rooms of our lonely bitterness on these shaky isles.

We would prefer harm to our fellow citizen just in case we don’t get something they might.

30 years of downward deunionised wage pressure has created a working people who are so poorly paid they look at welfare with envy.

Meanwhile the megalandlords and property speculators laugh all the way to the bank as homeownership continues to fall.

 

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