Tenants of nine Kāinga Ora homes in Tauranga have moved out as the agency investigates "weathertightness issues" at its properties on Jacaranda Close in Brookfield. Photo / Ayla Yeoman
Tenants of nine Kāinga Ora homes in Tauranga have moved out as the agency investigates "weathertightness issues" at its properties on Jacaranda Close in Brookfield. Photo / Ayla Yeoman
Tenants of nine Kāinga Ora homes in Tauranga have moved out as the agency investigates “weathertightness issues”.
The government housing provider owns nine properties on Jacaranda Close in Brookfield.
Kāinga Ora central region deputy chief executive Daniel Soughtton told the Bay of Plenty Times another Jacaranda Close property owner alertedKāinga Ora to “weathertightness issues” in a home similar to those the agency owned in July.
“While none of our tenants were reporting issues with significant leaks or mould, we launched an investigation and spoke with tenants in August, offering them the option to move,” he said.
“All accepted, and we’re now considering next steps for the homes, which could include remediation, redevelopment or potential divestment of the site.”
A former tenant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she lived at one of the homes from 2009 to 2020.
The woman claimed she had ongoing health issues, which she attributed to living in a mouldy home, and was seeking financial compensation from the agency.
She claimed she could not work because her body “flares up”.
“It’s horrible. If I go out for a day just to do my shopping, I’m in pain when I get home, and I’m really tired for no reason.
“If I go for a walk on the beach, I can quite easily just lose my breath and not be able to breathe.”
She said when she first moved in, there was a “sagging roof” in the dining room.
When someone came to fix the ceiling, “the whole top of that Gib board was black”.
The woman also said her hot water cupboard was “full of black mould”, her spare bedroom had “flooded” and a wall next to her front door was “absolutely rotten”.
She said she raised the issues with Kāinga Ora during her tenancy.
The woman, who was now living in a different Kāinga Ora home, had written to the agency requesting compensation.
Kāinga Ora has launched an investigation into its nine homes on Jacaranda Close in Brookfield after another property owner on the street alerted it to weathertightness issues. Photo / Ayla Yeoman
In an email response on November 7, sighted by the Bay of Plenty Times, Soughtton declined her request.
Soughtton said testing of the homes in August “identified the presence of mould” and included recommendations to address weathertightness risks.
An engineering and professional services firm, WSP, provided advice on whether a lack of weathertightness contributed to the presence of mould found recently and during her tenancy, Soughtton said.
The report found the cause of the mould found in August could not be determined but was “possibly the result of several contributing factors aligning”, including tenants’ behaviour and intermittent or localised moisture events, such as blocked gutters or heavy rain.
There was also insufficient evidence to confirm that the issues during her tenancy were linked to mould being found this year.
Soughtton said while there were “instances of water ingress from different causes” during the woman’s tenancy, “these were remedied at the time”.
Mould sampling done after interventions in late 2017 showed “low, but declining spore counts and, eventually, no water-indicator moulds”.
Soughtton said a 2018 Tenancy Tribunal decision between the woman and Housing New Zealand Corporation considered the evidence, “and concluded it more likely than not that the mould problem had been fully remediated”.
Further mould testing in 2019 indicated “very occasional” mould presence, with additional remediation work done to address this. An inspection in October 2020 identified no mould issues.
Given the “appropriate” interventions at the time, he declined her request for compensation and said she could seek an Ombudsman review.
The woman said she had not approached the Ombudsman “only because they take years”, and she did not think it would help.
Kāinga Ora owns nine properties on Jacaranda Close in Brookfield. Photo / Ayla Yeoman
In response to the woman’s comments, Soughtton said the agency understood how worrying mould could be for tenants and took every report seriously.
“When [the woman] raised concerns with us several years ago about mould in her Jacaranda Close home, we acted quickly to fix the problems and confirmed through independent testing that repairs worked.”
Soughtton said the Tenancy Tribunal later upheld this, and further inspections after her tenancy ended in 2020 showed no ongoing mould issues that would lead to negative health outcomes.
He said the recent weather-tightness concerns were not linked to the mould issue the woman reported more than seven years ago.
