A Hamilton solo mother-of-four says she dreads coming home every day after years living next to Kāinga Ora “neighbours from hell”.
Katelyn Park, who lives with her children aged 14, 10, 9 and 6, says that she has repeatedly complained to Kāinga Ora but the agency only responded when she shared a TikTok video about her struggles and it went viral.
The video, posted on May 14, shows her mother, who was visiting the home, being confronted by the Kāinga Ora tenants after she asked them to turn down their music.
The tenants scale the fence bordering the two properties, verbally harassing her mother and spraying her with liquid.
Park’s son can also be heard throughout the altercation, repeatedly asking his mother for a creaming soda, seemingly nonplussed by the confrontation.
The bizarre scenes saw the video go viral and be shared by news sites in Australia and the United Kingdom - but when the Herald contacted the long-suffering mum, she revealed the problems go much deeper.
Park told the Herald she had been living a nightmare for the past five years, constantly under the shadow of her neighbours’ anti-social behaviour, saying she had repeatedly complained about them by phone and eventually email earlier this year.
Mark Rawson, Kāinga Ora’s Regional Director for Waikato, told the Herald that they did not receive the email due to a typo but said they made contact with her after becoming aware of the video.
He admitted that the agency had received other complaints over the past two years about the property, saying that some were made anonymously.
He said he could not provide any further details without a privacy waiver from the tenants but added: “Now that we are aware of this situation, we are taking steps to address it and are working closely with our customer, the neighbour and other agencies, where needed, to achieve an outcome that works for everyone.”
The Herald has heard recordings of the calls Park made to the agency, pleading for help.
Park said that she was “being made to feel like they have more rights to live there than I have to live in my home, where I have been raising my children for 10 years” after Kāinga Ora failed to act.
She told the Herald that in just three weeks earlier this year she had to call police four times, including twice at the request of the troublesome tenants themselves after instances of alleged domestic violence.
On one occasion, Park said one of the tenants asked her to call police after finding the woman sitting on the fence cradling an infant and complaining she had been assaulted.
Park later discovered that the woman had sought refuge inside her home, leaving her baby’s dummy behind.
Just over a week later she was back on the phone to police after she was woken at 4am by her 14-year-old son who told her there was a man banging on his bedroom window “covered in blood”.
She confronted the man while on the phone and said he was “rambling on” and “having a punch up with the air”.
He left and the family struggled to sleep until dawn came and they saw that same man on the back deck of the Kāinga Ora property and realised that what they had thought was blood was facial tattoos.
The man also sported a Black Power gang patch tattooed on his back.
Police were called and the man was arrested for unlawfully being on her property.
Park told the Herald that police had told her that the man was under the influence of methamphetamine.
Police confirmed that the arrest was made.
The callouts earlier this are a fraction of the over 90 callouts police have made to the house during the neighbours’ tenancy. We know that number because Park asked for it, going through the Official Information Act process to show just how regularly police visited the property.
Park also provided the Herald with a long list of examples of antisocial behaviour and evidence to back it up - including rubbish fires being lit in the backyard that flooded her property with smoke.
Her children also witnessed a man who had fled the neighbouring property during a police raid being crash tackled in her backyard earlier this month.
Police also confirmed the details of that incident to the Herald.
“I do not feel safe in my house. My kids do not feel safe in their house,” Park told Kāinga Ora in her email complaint.
She also said that children who live on the neighbouring property have entered her home, damaging her property and deliberately smashing one of her children’s tablets.
She said she “works her ass off” to provide for her family and was not in a position to replace the damaged items.
She claims her pets and children have been harassed and showed the Herald messages from her neighbours admitting to taking shortcuts through her property, hopping her fence to get back to their place.
Elsewhere in the complaint, Park said the saga was affecting her mental health.
“I just cannot cope with this any longer,” she wrote.
“I dread coming home every day.
“It’s awful, they can’t go out in the backyard,” she said of the effect on her children.
She said her son’s quiet requests for creaming soda as chaotic scenes raged around him were proof that her children were sadly becoming acclimatised to the violence.
“It’s now become normal for them, it shouldn’t be that way, it’s not normal behaviour”.
Another neighbour supported Park’s version of events, telling the Herald he had also reported the tenants to Kāinga Ora, as well as other agencies.
Glenn, who asked for his surname to be withheld, told the Herald that the tenants were “neighbours from hell”.
He said he had called police multiple times and was concerned for the safety of children living at the home.
“I can hear them crying,” he said.
Mark Rawson from Kāinga Ora said the agency takes “disruptive behaviour” seriously and aims to respond quickly and effectively to it.
“While our first approach is to support a change in behaviour, we have many other tools in our toolbox – including using tools available under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA), where appropriate,” Rawson added.
“We would encourage any neighbours who have concerns about disruptive behaviour at Kāinga Ora properties to contact us directly so we can take steps to address the situation.”
Having contacted the agency and seeing no results, Park is planning her next steps.
She is planning a move to Australia but that would leave her mother, whose name is on the title of their home, facing having to sell the house with the added complication of their noxious neighbours.
“Kāinga Ora workers wouldn’t live next to this but yet they expect me to,” Park said.
“They just need to admit they’ve done wrong, they will do better and compensate me for all the stress and bull**** I’ve endured.”
A petition for police body cameras has gained nearly 15,000 signatures.