Chinese apartment owners’ claim of discrimination by body corporate thrown out

The owners of an Auckland apartment claimed they were discriminated against because of their race. Photo / Brett Phibbs

An apartment owner claimed the building’s body corporate was racist because it took her to the Tenancy Tribunal to recover almost $11,000 in unpaid levies.

But the Chinese woman’s claim in the Human Rights Review Tribunal [HRRT] that she and her parents were discriminated against by the body corporate has been thrown out..

An Li Tao and her parents Hua Xi and Naziuo Tao were the owners of an apartment in New Lynn, Auckland when they failed to pay the 2015 levy, according to the HRRT decision released on Thursday.

The trio responded by taking a claim to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, asserting they were discriminated against because other unit owners were not taken to the tribunal despite also owing levies.

One of those apartment owners had underpaid by a cent.

Now, the HRRT has rejected Tao’s claim she and her parents were singled out by the body corporate to recoup unpaid levies because of their race.

At the hearing earlier this year, the body corporate denied those allegations and said there was no evidence of racial discrimination or differential treatment.

According to the facts set out in the ruling, Tao first made the complaint on behalf of her elderly parents eight years ago, claiming the body corporate failed to meet its obligations to the unit owners.

Tao didn’t pay the 2015 levy because she was unhappy with how the block of 35 units was being managed, and encouraged other owners to also withhold the mandatory payments.

In 2016, the body corporate took action against various unit owners who had not paid their levies - a number of the defaulting owners paid the money and their cases were dropped in the Tenancy Tribunal.

Tao and her parents were ordered by the tribunal to pay the outstanding levies of $10,690, and similar orders were made against other unit owners who also failed to pay.

Since then, Tao has pursued six different sets of unsuccessful court action against the body corporate.

The body corporate’s chairman, Jigar Pandya, told the hearing all members signed a generic levy collection agreement and enforcement regime and that it was the various owners who gave the body corporate the authority to collect its levies.

However, Tao alleged the levy collection regime was applied in a discriminatory way and that of the 12 unit owners who had outstanding levies, 10 were taken to the Tenancy Tribunal and they were all Chinese.

In her claim, she said the remaining two not taken to the Tenancy Tribunal were Indian.

One of those unit owners owed just under $3000, while the other was one cent in arrears.

During the course of the hearing, though, Tao admitted taking a unit owner to the tribunal over such a small debt would have been inappropriate.

There was insufficient evidence to prove not taking the remaining owner to the tribunal had anything to do with racial favouritism, and the owners of that unit were successfully taken to the tribunal at a later date.

The head of the management agency that oversaw the body corporate, Douglas Wilson, said the suggestion that Strata Title Administration singled out any ethnicity or another was highly offensive.

“There was no evidence to show Ms Tao, Mr Tao or Ms Xi were treated differently from other owners of units in the body corporate,” the tribunal’s ruling read.

“What happened was the application of the neutral levy recovery process, which had been previously approved by the body corporate.”

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.