Couple forced to move by Kāinga Ora nightmare
They thought they’d found their dream home.
But a Christchurch couple have instead left their neighbourhood after two years of verbal abuse, lack of sleep and an assault from residents in newly-built Kāinga Ora units next door.
Mary and James, who wished to be anonymous because they feared retribution, felt forced to leave their home due to inaction from Kāinga Ora.
They loved their neighbourhood in Spreydon – it was the type of street where everybody knew each other and would say hello as they walked by.
But when five Kāinga Ora units went up next door, things changed.
Most nights at midnight, the tenant over the fence would stand on his back porch and yell. The Press has seen videos of a man barking, swearing and yelling threats.
Mary, who has multiple sclerosis, would go downstairs most nights and sleep on the couch, hoping it would be quieter. The longest episode lasted for 16 hours. Mary and James didn’t think it could get worse, but on April 18 last year, they heard another tenant threatening their front neighbour.
When they went to check on her, they were met with “barking, hissing and spitting”. Two men, two children and a dog were in their driveway.
They didn’t have time to get inside. The men beat James. One punched him three times in the face, while the other threw cans, then kicked him in the face as he ducked.
Mary had to put herself between James and the men, pushing them away as they spat on her.
She yelled at the top of her lungs for someone to call the police.
“Once the police had gone, James just collapsed in my arms and cried. I cried,” she said.
James was left with a black eye and a bloodied face. The couple went to an after-hours doctor to make sure his eye socket wasn’t broken.
The men were arrested that night. But when Mary and James woke up the next day, they had been bailed back next door.
In the past financial year, Kāinga Ora received 3042 serious disruptive behaviour concerns nationally. Seven of the complaints ended in evictions and ended tenancies.
The Press has seen emails between the couple and Kāinga Ora between 2021-23 which show several complaints the couple made about their neighbour.
Kāinga Ora always responded swiftly, but Mary and James said it never resulted in change.
“James wrote back and forth and back and forth. We had to fight – there was no updating,” Mary said.
The couple continually updated Kāinga Ora when the man who assaulted James appeared in court. They asked for both him and the yelling tenant to be removed.
James said Kāinga Ora told them it would move both tenants, but it would take up to a year to rehouse them.
Earlier this year, Housing Minister Chris Bishop instructed Kāinga Ora to stop using its sustaining tenancies framework, which had ensured social housing providers would do all they could before evicting a tenant.
Instead, he said Kāinga Ora needed to act more harshly towards tenants behaving antisocially.
Kāinga Ora Canterbury regional director Liz Krause said she couldn’t discuss details of the situation, including whether the tenants were still living there, but said it took the concerns raised by Mary and James seriously.
“There are specific steps landlords must follow when taking action under the Residential Tenancies Act, and those steps do take time,” Krause said.
“We understand that is frustrating for neighbours, who naturally want a quick resolution, but like other landlords, we must follow the proper process. Privacy considerations also mean that we cannot always share details of the action we are taking.”
Mary and James said they could not wait a year for their neighbours to go.
After the assault, neither left the house often, even to hang washing outside, they said. Mary would crouch below the fence line to get to her car.
“We didn’t feel safe in our own house, knowing they were just over the fence. We didn’t want to leave,” James said. The couple decided they had to move. They sold their house in September, and stayed at a bed and breakfast for three months before moving into a new home.
In December, the tenant who assaulted James was sentenced to home detention.
A resident who lives on James and Mary’s old street told The Press the tenant still lived there. She had also seen the yelling tenant “a few times”.
The past year has been traumatic for Mary and James.
Mary now goes to counselling, doesn’t feel at home in the new house, and thinks about her old neighbours every day.
But her main feeling was confusion about why their lives had changed so much, while their neighbours’ lives had changed so little.
They both feel angry that Kāinga Ora didn’t do more to keep them in their home, and said they hadn’t “fronted up”.
“It was our garden, our house,” Mary said.
“Now we have to start again.”