Lesley Allan, who had to move out of her home of the past year with just hours’ notice, said Freedom Whare had given its residents — herself included — the stability they needed to begin their journey to recovery. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Lesley Allan, who had to move out of her home of the past year with just hours’ notice, said Freedom Whare had given its residents — herself included — the stability they needed to begin their journey to recovery. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Eleven people with mental health and addiction issues have been left homeless after their Kaikohe accommodation was closed down at short notice by the Far North District Council.
The decision to issue a Dangerous Building Notice is thought to have been influenced by a fire at Loafers Lodge, a Wellingtonhostel, that killed five residents a few weeks earlier.
The closure of the first-floor boarding house on upper Broadway left staff scrambling to find the residents somewhere else to live.
The ground-floor day centre, Whakaoranga Whānau Recovery Hub, remains open but eight men on the residential rehab programme are now staying in cabins urgently delivered to the hub director’s unpowered rural Kaikohe property.
One woman is staying at a trustee’s home in Ngāwhā while another two are staying with friends.
The amount of warning the council gave about the closure is disputed.
The council says the building owner’s agent was notified on May 19, after an inspection by Fire and Emergency NZ, that a Dangerous Building Notice would be issued. The notice was served at 9am on May 25, then withdrawn and re-issued at 4pm.
However, director Rhonda Zielinski, who is also a trustee of the charities that run the Freedom Whare boarding house and the recovery hub, said the building owner was informed only on the evening of May 24. She then passed on the news to hub staff.
When council staff served the notice at 9am the next morning Zielinski asked for time to tell her staff and clients before they saw the sign. The closure sign was removed then put back at 4pm.
Several clients or tangata whaiora (“people seeking health”) were only recently out of jail and on electronically monitored bail, which complicated the scramble to find them new accommodation.
It was fortunate they were able to change their e-bail addresses that day or they could have been arrested for breaching bail conditions.
Te Miringa Mihaka, a trustee of Whakaoranga Whānau Charitable Trust, said the boarding house and recovery hub catered to people with mental health and addiction issues, who were homeless, or fresh out of prison and would otherwise be on the streets.
“We don’t save them all but we make quite an impact on a lot of them ... Now 11 people have been moved out of a place where they actually felt safe, with no notice and no time to prepare.”
The current arrangement meant trustees were now accommodating residents at their own properties.
It also meant transport had to be arranged to bring the clients to the hub each morning and home again in the evening. It was another expense the trust could do without, she said.
“They [the council] don’t come with solutions, they just come with more costs.”
It was also a further blow to Zielinski, whose women’s gym in Kaikohe was badly damaged in a fire allegedly lit by a disgruntled former resident one day before the eviction.
“It’s a case of kicking someone when they’re down.”
Mihaka said Freedom Whare was nothing like Loafers Lodge.
It was not emergency housing, the building had CCTV and a level 4 fire system that was checked annually, cooking was not allowed in rooms, and smoking was banned upstairs.
A contractor had been hired to upgrade the fire systems on June 26 at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, she said.
Staff and clients of Whakaoranga Whānau Recovery Hub perform a haka for Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare during a visit in March this year. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Client Lesley Allan said living at Freedom Whare for the past year had changed her life.
She had notched up more than 150 convictions in the past but she was now “a success story”, employed for the first time, training as a bail and peer support worker, and about to head overseas to deliver a talk about trauma.
That would not have been possible without a stable home, she said.
“We have tāne here who are working on themselves and they’re clean. These boys need stable housing to travel the road of recovery. Now they’re on the verge of going back to prison. That just rips my heart out,” she said.
Council delivery and operations group manager Kevin Johnson said all buildings used for commercial accommodation, including boarding houses, had to meet safety codes and have a building consent for that use.
There was no record of council approval for the building to be used as a hostel nor a building consent for its use as accommodation.
“The recent fire in a Wellington hostel that claimed multiple lives underlines how important it is that minimum fire and safety standards are adhered to. FENZ described use of the upper floor of the Kaikohe building for hostel accommodation as deeply concerning due to inadequate fire and smoke alarms.”
FENZ had inspected the building after a tenant complained about the lack of a smoke alarm in their room, he said.
Zielinski, however, said she had always been upfront with the council about her plans for the building, had sought advice on what she needed to do, and taken councillors and former mayor John Carter through the building to get support for her plans.
She could have had alarms fitted in each room and hired a security guard to be awake all night upstairs but wasn’t given that opportunity, she said.
The building’s owner has been fined $250 for not displaying a current building warrant of fitness and $1500 for allowing the public to use an unsafe building.
Back in March Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare paid a visit to the recovery hub to announce a new funding model tailored to small social service providers such as Zielinski’s.
Henare said he had chosen the Kaikohe rehab centre because its clients’ stories were so powerful they had made him cry on a previous visit.
