A Kāinga Ora tenant has been evicted after she threatened her neighbour over noise control complaints. Photo / 123rf
A Kāinga Ora tenant has been evicted after she threatened her neighbour over noise control complaints. Photo / 123rf
A young family had just purchased their first home.
But what was meant to be an exciting time was overshadowed by their noisy neighbour, who allegedly threatened to kill them over a noise control complaint.
According to a recently released Tenancy Tribunal decision, Annie Tiavo Tiavo lived at a KāingaOra property with her three adult children and a teenager and held frequent parties in the garage.
Kāinga Ora told the tribunal on October 11, 2025, there was a party held at Tiavo’s property that continued into the early hours of October 12.
The party was loud and their neighbours, who have name suppression, called noise control.
When they called noise control for the second time, Tiavo and her associates began yelling at them and allegedly threatened to kill them and burn down their house.
Now the case has ended up in the Tenancy Tribunal, which has terminated Tiavo’s tenancy for breaching the peace.
Kāinga Ora showed the tribunal a 15-minute-long video taken by the neighbours that showed Tiavo yelling out at the neighbours over the fence: “I’ll f*** you up”.
A male associate of Tiavo yelled “you moved to the wrong neighbourhood” and “I’m gonna kill you”, with the threat to kill being repeated multiple times.
The neighbour attempted to calmly de-escalate the situation with little success.
Tiavo shouted to the neighbours: “You know what, I’ll burn your f***ing house”.
The neighbours did not give a formal statement as they did not want to escalate the situation and, as a result, the police took no further action.
A written statement from the family told the tribunal they moved next door to Tiavo and her family in December 2024 after buying their first home, but their excitement was overshadowed by the ongoing noise, disruption and intimidating behaviour from their neighbours.
The Tenancy Tribunal heard noise control was called multiple times because of excessive noise. Photo / Stephen Parker
The wife said in the statement that on October 11 she was recovering from surgery and she and her family were trying to rest and had called noise control after the tenant’s party was still going on in the early hours.
The noise was deemed excessive, but the tenant and her guests continued to make noise, and so the neighbours called noise control again.
It was then that Tiavo and her associates began yelling and screaming insults and threats over the fence, with a male associate coming into their driveway and challenging the husband to a fight.
“The neighbours said that they feel anxious and on edge every time loud music starts playing next door, and that their [child] is reluctant to play outside,” tribunal adjudicator Melissa Allan said in her decision.
“I was told that there are still ongoing issues at the tenant’s property, and that there were loud parties on December 17, December 19 [2025] and January 10, 2026.
“The neighbours said that they have been reluctant to call noise control after the incident on October 12, 2025, but eventually did so at 6.30am on January 10, 2026, after suffering an entire night with no sleep.”
Tiavo ‘deeply regrets’ behaviour
Tiavo did not dispute the video evidence or the police report, the tribunal heard.
She said she was badly affected by alcohol on October 12 and deeply regrets her behaviour.
Tiavo did not respond when approached for comment by NZME, while Kāinga Ora declined to comment saying it had “nothing further to add”.
Allan said it was not until the next morning, when her family told her about her behaviour, that Tiavo realised what she had done.
“She said that she was unaware of how many times noise control had been called to her property,” Allan said.
“Tiavo attended the hearing to apologise, and in the hope that it might be possible to continue with the tenancy”.
But Allan ruled that would not be possible as Tiavo had breached her tenancy agreement and the Residential Tenancies Act by threatening her neighbours.
“The breaches of the neighbours’ peace were ongoing. The incident on October 12 was serious and involved threats to assault and to kill. The breaches are of such a nature that it would be inequitable to refuse to make an order terminating the tenancy,” Allan said.
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.
