Tenant loses $17k claim after social media tirade over neighbour groomer ‘vibe’

The man posted a number of videos to social media with serious allegations about neighbours and the landlord.

A man looking for a rental says he was placed into a property next door to the home where he was abused as a child.

He then went on a social media tirade, accusing his neighbour of having the same “vibe” as his childhood groomer.

“What I’ve seen is younger tenants needing protection from older tenants who manipulate, provoke and stalk under the radar.

“She tried to groom me into being adopted by her when I first moved into this property. She has the same vibe, the same tactics and the same energy as the people that groomed me when I was a young child,” he said in a video he posted to social media.

The man, who has name suppression, was issued with three antisocial behaviour notices during his tenancy.

Now he’s taken his landlord to the Tenancy Tribunal, saying the notices were unjustified and he was harassed by neighbours and landlord staff.

The landlord, who also has name suppression, wanted the tenancy terminated because of the antisocial behaviour, which occurred on three instances.

Antisocial behaviour

The first antisocial behaviour notice related to an incident on May 29 last year, when the tenant got into a physical fight with a person who was visiting him at the property.

With blood on their face, the visitor went to the neighbouring property and asked for help, but when the tenant came outside he verbally abused the neighbour, which caused her to sit in her car with another neighbour for support.

A police report was made and a trespass notice was served to the tenant.

Although the visitor admitted he went to the neighbour knowing it would upset the tenant, the tribunal accepted the neighbour’s evidence, found the tenant’s conduct to be verbally abusive, and considered the neighbour’s response proportionate.

The second antisocial behaviour notice was issued on July 4 after the tenant posted multiple public social-media videos naming four staff members of the landlord and accusing them of deliberately placing him next to the site of his childhood abuse.

He also alleged that a named staff member was personally present and involved in that abuse, but the tribunal found the accused staff member was not in New Zealand at the time of the alleged events.

The recently released tribunal decision said the videos and hostile viewer comments made staff anxious and fearful for their own and their families’ safety. The tenant removed the videos after legal advice.

The third antisocial behaviour notice was issued on August 22 after the tenant published a series of public social-media videos making allegations about the same neighbour involved in the first incident.

Groomer vibe

The neighbour gave evidence that multiple videos existed and that at least one was considered too distressing to be shown to her. Although the tenant later removed the videos, the tribunal noted they might still exist online.

In one of the videos, he said she gave off the same “vibe” as his childhood abuser.

The tribunal ruled all three notices were justified.

The landlord had written to the tenant in July expressing concern about the tone and content of the videos and saying they might breach the Harmful Digital Communications Act.

“They are causing harm to the landlord’s staff and amount to harassment.”

The landlord also advised him they had sought advice from New Zealand Police and NetSafe regarding the video.

The landlord told the tribunal that this tenancy was an outlier and it managed thousands of tenancies, often involving tenants with complex needs and behaviours, and that staff were trained to manage difficult behaviour and neighbour disputes.

But the volume, persistence and intensity of this tenant’s behaviour was too much for the team, and required “far greater resourcing and specialist management than is sustainable in the long term”.

The tenant applied for $17,020.44 compensation and exemplary damages for harassment and a retaliatory notice.

He claimed he had experienced ongoing harassment, emotional harm, and co-ordinated retaliation from the landlord’s staff.

He said it had “escalated my agoraphobia, created an unsafe living environment, and caused ongoing psychological distress. I believe they are targeting me because I have spoken out about my experience and trauma, including being placed beside the property where I was abused as a child”.

“Since moving into this property, I have not been allowed to live in peace. The environment has been made hostile – both through direct action by the landlord and co-ordinated actions involving neighbours.”

The tribunal noted it was not the first tenancy between the two parties, with a prior tenancy lasting about six years before the tenant was relocated to the current property after a clash with a neighbour. Videos provided by the tenant to support his claims against the landlord instead showed a “deep mistrust and suspicion”.

The tribunal said the tenant’s bid for compensation was unsuccessful given the success of the landlord in the three notices being upheld as reasonable, and the other actions of the tenant during this tenancy. His tenancy was terminated.

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.