By RNZ

Kāinga Ora is under fire again over how it manages disruptive tenants.

A Christchurch woman said the housing agency broke a promise to only house tenants with unblemished records in her neighbourhood.

Another Auckland housing advocate said Kāinga Ora’s own tenants are afraid to complain about disorderly neighbours.

Clair McConchie bought her Glenroy St property in the Christchurch suburb of Woolston about 11 years ago and almost immediately began having problems with nearby Kāinga Ora tenants.

Issues ranged from prostitution to drug dealing and gang tensions, culminating in a stand-off.

“Well the Black Power and the Mongrel Mob on Glenroy Street near the corner with Hargood Street throwing rocks at each other during the day and our neighbourhood are quite tight. There’s several young mums, there’s a pre-school around the corner in Hargood Street and a lot of elderly people in our community. And those people were trapped in their homes for hours before the police finally came.”

McConchie said when the Kāinga Ora properties were demolished to make way for new builds there was hope things would change.

Kainga Ora's development in Mt Roskill, Auckland. Photo / Supplied

“They promised us they would keep us in the loop and they were only going to put people that had not had complaints about them into our community because they felt like our community had had a rough run, because in our one block we have got three houses and all three houses were run as drug houses.

“And we believed them but that has not been the case.”

Instead, when new tenants moved in August they included a man whose neighbours had asked specifically not to be housed there.

“We weren’t asking much. We just wanted people who had not caused trouble anywhere else and we just wanted people who were good people and needed a hand up.”

Meanwhile, Auckland housing advocate Suzanne Paul said Kāinga Ora’s own tenants were some of the worst affected by the agency’s unruly renters.

“They might be letting their dogs run on their property, they might be being abusive whatever the situation is, the action that Kāinga Ora takes is not strong enough to make the harassing tenant stop because it is not necessarily Kāinga Ora’s policy to move tenants on.”

A Kāinga Ora tenant herself, Paul said the lack of a strong response meant people did not complain.

“A lot of Kāinga Ora tenants will not complain against other Kāinga Ora tenants and won’t actually go to the Tenancy Tribunal or mediation because they are afraid of retaliation and repercussions of making those complaints about another Kāinga Ora tenant.”

She said affected tenants feared they may be the ones moved on.

A spokesperson for the housing agency said they did talk with McConchie about its process for placing customers in Kāinga Ora homes, and how it worked to make a suitable housing match for customers from the Ministry of Social Development housing register.

 “However, as a landlord, it would not be appropriate for us to consult with neighbours about who may move into a Kāinga Ora home, so we did not have discussions about specific customer placements.”

Kāinga Ora said it had not received any further complaints from McConchie or other Glenroy St neighbours since August.

It said it encouraged its own tenants to get in touch if they had problems with their neighbours.

“People can choose to remain anonymous when making a complaint if they prefer, and this commonly happens. In all cases, when following up on complaints we work hard to maintain the privacy of everyone involved.”

Kāinga Ora said if a tenant made a complaint about a neighbour, it had no impact on their tenancy.

- Robin Martin, RNZ