Latest / Best of Business / Matt Crockett: Kāinga Ora chief executive on the company's new approach to tackling rent debt

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Matt Crockett: Kāinga Ora chief executive on the company's new approach to tackling rent debt · Best of Business

• 0:09
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Carying Order cracking down on tenants who aren't paying their rent,
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  Speaker 2: but also at the same time going to wipe about
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  Speaker 2: half of the debt they currently owed and rent arears.
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  Speaker 2: The state Housing Agency will start evicting tenants have more
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  Speaker 2: than twelve weeks rent outstanding and aren't making an effort
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  Speaker 2: to repay their debt or keeping in contact with the agency.
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  Speaker 2: Matt Crockett is calling a Order's chief executive. He's with
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  Speaker 2: me this evening, good.
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  Speaker 3: Evening, good evening, Ryan, how are you good?
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  Speaker 2: Thank you. We'll start with the wiping of the renter
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  Speaker 2: rears first. Why are you wiping basically eight million dollars
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  Speaker 2: in rent hode.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. What we want to do here is incentivize our
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  Speaker 3: customers to get onto a repayment plan. And for many
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  Speaker 3: of the customers that have like long we have about
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  Speaker 3: two thousand customers who have more than twelve weeks, it
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  Speaker 3: just becomes too daunting to even deal with it, and
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  Speaker 3: it's a disincentive to engage. So this is about incentivizing
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  Speaker 3: them and lowering the debt to a level they can
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  Speaker 3: actually repay you realistically.
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  Speaker 2: But aren't you incentivizing them by wiping the debt for
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  Speaker 2: anything that's more than twelve weeks? Incentivizing them to get
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  Speaker 2: to more than twelve weeks so it gets wiped again.
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  Speaker 3: No, because with the go forward policy, we're not going
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  Speaker 3: to allow anyone to go beyond twelve weeks, and we're
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  Speaker 3: going to intervene and manage it more closely earlier so
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  Speaker 3: that we never have customers who get more than twelve weeks.
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  Speaker 3: So this is about cleaning up the situation we've got
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  Speaker 3: at the moment and resetting to move forward with a
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  Speaker 3: more pragmatic approach.
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  Speaker 2: So anyone who gets to twelve weeks and they haven't
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  Speaker 2: paid their rent for twelve weeks, you'll start their eviction process.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and will it be engaging with them earlier than that.
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  Speaker 3: So obviously, when someone misses their rent payment, will be
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  Speaker 3: discussing why, and as long as they're engaging and moving
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  Speaker 3: towards a repayment plan, that's fine. But if they're not
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  Speaker 3: engaging or they're not forming a repayment plan, then we
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  Speaker 3: will actually issue a Section fifty six notice and eventually
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  Speaker 3: take it to the resident tribunal to actually have the
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  Speaker 3: tendency terminated. We want to avoid that and will wherever
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  Speaker 3: we can, But our tenants have to come to the
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  Speaker 3: party and pay their rent right.
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  Speaker 2: So that process only starts after twelve weeks. Or are
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  Speaker 2: you saying that process could start, you know, after a
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  Speaker 2: couple of weeks of missed rent.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it will start earlier, so that by the time
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  Speaker 3: a tenancy is terminated, there won't be more than twelve weeks.
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  Speaker 3: We'll do everything we can to avoid getting to that point,
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  Speaker 3: but we will not allow the tendency to go beyond
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  Speaker 3: that point.
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  Speaker 2: Was the sustaining tenancies policy of the previous government as
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  Speaker 2: ridiculous as it seems in the press release that you've
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  Speaker 2: put out today. You know, you went from about three
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  Speaker 2: million dollars in rent areas to twenty million dollars by
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  Speaker 2: the beginning of last year. This is from twenty nineteen
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  Speaker 2: to the beginning of last year. Part of the problem,
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  Speaker 2: you said is sustaining tenancies. In other words, you weren't
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  Speaker 2: kicking enough people out, You weren't being hard enough on this.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I think we have to remember that during
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  Speaker 3: that period we had the COVID pandemic, we had the
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  Speaker 3: cost of living that came after that, and as part
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  Speaker 3: of that there was the policy of the day was
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  Speaker 3: the sustaining tendencies and you know, in hindsight, those boundaries
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  Speaker 3: not being clear have led to that growing and this
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  Speaker 3: has been a consequence of that, and we're now dealing
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  Speaker 3: to that and just coming up with a clearer, go
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  Speaker 3: forward set of policies that everyone can manage to, including
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  Speaker 3: our tenants.
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  Speaker 2: Matt, thank you for that, Matt Crockett, Chief executive at Caying.
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