A mother sits huddled in a car, rocking a baby to sleep. A preschooler and a child in a school uniform are in the back seat playing tug-of-war with a superhero figurine.
The car is messy - strewn with blankets, damptowels hanging over the windows, piles of clothes and shoes lumped up in any remaining space.
It’s cold, but the car windows are dripping with condensation. An adult and three children living in a car with all their belongings create an incredible amount of moisture.
The children’s father shows up some days, but the rest of the time he’s with his mates doing the Lord only knows what. It’s easier without him though, to be honest.
After all, he’s the reason the family were kicked out of their rental home.
Their neighbours had hated him – and for good reason. Drunk more often than not, he had played his loud music from the time he woke up until the time he fell asleep. Sometimes he was alone, other times he’d invite his equally inebriated friends to join in the fun and the noise would quadruple.
If he got angry (not a rare occurrence), he would yell and scream for hours on end, smashing possessions and kicking holes in the walls and fences.
The police were regular visitors to the home, called by the neighbours who were frustrated and intimidated by constantly interrupted sleep, abuse hurled their way whenever they were outside, and concern for their own properties.
Eventually, it got so bad that they were evicted.
So here they are, the mother and her children, huddled in a car while their partner and father drinks with his mates, coming “home” to the car only when his welcome is worn out.
Now, that’s an entirely fictional scenario, but it is one I constructed based on real-life stories I have heard from people at the coal-face over the years including homeless people, neighbours of unruly tenants, and workers at social agencies.
Imagine for me that these fictional people were tenants of a state home and were evicted by Kāinga Ora.
Unlikely, that, because Kāinga Ora, as described by Housing Minister Megan Woods, is the “landlord of last resort” and relocating tenants is far more effective than booting them out.
No one wants to live next to neighbours like my fictional family here. To feel constantly unsafe, constantly on edge, constantly disrupted, is an awful way to live.
But what options does Kāinga Ora truly have to deal with tenants like these?
In February last year, Kāinga Ora’s general manager national services Nick Maling said: “We also do not want to make a customer homeless; we will move them to another Kāinga Ora home and continue to provide them with the intensive support they need to address the causes behind their behaviour. Making people and whānau homeless creates a revolving door for housing which only sees problems compound and perpetuate.”
As reported by the NZ Herald this week, only three people have been evicted for unruly behaviour since then, despite Kāinga Ora receiving more than 10,000 complaints about its tenants in the same period.
Woods says 90 per cent of tenancies face no complaints.
Housing Minister Megan Woods. Photo / Mark Mitchell
People are understandably riled up about the small number of evictions. Act leader David Seymour says it gives the tenants no “incentive to behave”.
Kāinga Ora is between a rock and a hard place, really. On one side, it is its literal job to house people who, for whatever reason, can’t get a home on the private market. But on the other side – the worst-behaved people are going to have a negative impact on the people around them.
I’m a parent. I know all about actions and consequences. But I also know there are times when consequences have no effect on children’s behaviour – they may soothe the parent’s anger and frustration at their child’s actions but they don’t correct the behaviour.
Will eviction change the behaviour of a person like my fictional man above? Very likely not.
In fact, it’s probably going to make his behaviour more volatile.
Sure, it might make us feel good to kick out an unruly tenant – “serves them right!” – but now someone else is going to be dealing with that person’s worsening behaviour.
Even worse, if children are in the mix, then they’re growing up with this behaviour as their normal.
I think it’s fair to say that each and every one of us would be miserable living next to a neighbour like my fictional bad guy.
How much more would we hate living next to him after he’s spiralled further into his addiction and become even more antisocial? How will we feel if he accosts us on the street?
What about if he starts robbing our homes or trying to sleep in our gardens?
If anyone reading this is living next to a problem tenant, I offer you my sincere sympathy.
It must truly be awful and I can understand your desire to move them on. I’d want the same thing.
Kāinga Ora must look at its own actions and consequences though, not just the immediate impact on one tenant’s unfortunate neighbours.
If they evict a problem tenant, that tenant is still going to end up living somewhere, whether in a house or on the street. And that is going to have its own implications for society.
What, then, should Kāinga Ora do? I don’t know. I truly don’t know.
But eviction is not a solution.
Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.
