Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Paul Gilberd: Community Housing Aotearoa chief executive on the Government's plan to tighten standards for unruly tenants

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Paul Gilberd: Community Housing Aotearoa chief executive on the Government's plan to tighten standards for unruly tenants · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Fourteen unruly tenants have been evicted from caying or order
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: properties in the last three months. That's fourteen and three months,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: up from just eight for all of twenty twenty three.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The government has created a new Disruptive Behavior policy to
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: make it easier for KO to evict tenants, but there
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: are calls for there to be more support before people
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  Speaker 1: lose their homes. Joining me now is Community Housing ALTET
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: our chief executive Paul Gilbert. Gilbert I should say, Paul,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: good morning to you. Where did these people go once
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  Speaker 1: they've given the boot?
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  Speaker 2: Look, you're asking the right question. We've got about twenty
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: thousand houses within the community housing sector, but I'm afraid
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  Speaker 2: to say that they actually have people living in them.
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  Speaker 2: So from a community housing perspective, we can have struggled
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: to take. I mean, those are low numbers, let's face it,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: on the scale of things. When Ko's got sixty thousand houses,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: that's not a hell of a lot of Farno who
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: are being exited. But we were not sure where they're
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: going to go. We've been asking the same question.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Right because there's obviously no room at you're in, there's
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  Speaker 1: no other room at. Chaos in the private market. I
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  Speaker 1: mean they're not going to take them, are they.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's a question of affordability at that point, because
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  Speaker 2: basically the private market will do what it does and
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  Speaker 2: maximize its financial return. And these are typically households. The
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  Speaker 2: ones we're talking about are low income households usually and
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  Speaker 2: they can't afford to live in the open market. It
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  Speaker 2: just doesn't stack up.
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  Speaker 1: Do these numbers stack up to you? So fourteen this
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: is under the new rules, fourteen tenants evicted in the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: space of three months. How many would you evict from
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  Speaker 1: you that your members' homes? I understand they're about thirty
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: five thousand people living in twenty odd thousand homes. How
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  Speaker 1: many would you evict?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think proportionately, just to be straight up,
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  Speaker 2: community members, community housing providers also do is it tenants?
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  Speaker 2: We have always used that as an absolute sort of
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  Speaker 2: last measure of last resort, right when all other avenues
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: have been pursued KO numbers. Basically they had for the
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: last six years there was an absolute no eviction's policy,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: which is a very difficult circumstance to work in because
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  Speaker 2: there are no consequences. So our view really is it's
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: a matter of last resort. The numbers are increasing because
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: they were not evicting people at all. That's operating from
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  Speaker 2: a very low base. And there's a whole lot of
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  Speaker 2: other considerations here that we need to taken into account,
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  Speaker 2: and so you know, we're not we're not alone facing
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: these issues. But this is not answering the problem. It's
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  Speaker 2: kind of shifting the problem for those who are victed.
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  Speaker 2: Where do they go to? They and have then cost
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  Speaker 2: the taxpayer is a really big deal because what are
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: they going to do if they're homeless.
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  Speaker 1: The other thing, though, is you've got two thousand people
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: in motels, you've got what twenty four thousand on their
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: social housing wait list. It's not fair to them to
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  Speaker 1: have some thug who's threatening their neighbors in a house
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: when this family needs it. So you've got it. You've
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: got to kick them out, don't you.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Well, in our case, with the appropriate housing and appropriate support,
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  Speaker 2: it's possible, we believe for all New Zealanders to have
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: a home. Someone is neither of those. It's making things worse,
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: not better.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: It's around what do you do? How do you do
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: that if they're threatening the neighbors?
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so this is where we've started and have
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: been running for a long time now tendency placement partnerships,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: and what that means is that you've got to look
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: at the characteristics of the households. If you've got an
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: alpha male in the household, it's not a great idea
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: to stick them in a high density situation where they're
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: in highst proximity lots of other families. You need to
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: go for a single site, or you need to select
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: gives them a role in the community, like the Salvation
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Army do. For example. They'll give a bloke like that
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  Speaker 2: a job in the community that they live in. They'll say, hey,
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  Speaker 2: could you keep an eye on who's coming and going
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  Speaker 2: from the facility rather than just leaving them to it.
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  Speaker 1: So it's basically a really intensive approach to dealing with
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a tenant like that. Paul, thank you very much for
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  Speaker 1: your time. Paul Gilbert, this Morning, Community Housing Altered, our
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: chief executive. For more from News Talk st B, listen
• 4:11
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• 4:14
  Speaker 1: you wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.