Adina Thorn: Litigation Lawyer on the increase in Kāinga Ora tenancies being terminated

The number of Kāinga Ora tenancy terminations is being described as a far cry from what's needed.  

Newstalk ZB can reveal the agency terminated 299 tenancies in the year to March – more than double the 134 in the year before. 

Much of the increase is from Kāinga Ora taking a stronger line on disruptive tenants and rent arrears. 

Litigation lawyer Adina Thorn told Mike Hosking Kāinga Ora needs to evict 1,000 to 1,500 tenants by her own calculations.  

She says nobody wants to live in public housing when they're next people described as the worst of the worst. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What a difference government makes. I under labor and we
discussed this at length at the time. Basically, literally nobody
got tossed out of a cayeing or a house, no
matter how bad the behavior got. Under the current government,
were up to two hundred and ninety nine tendencies tenancies terminated.
It's more than double the one hundred and thirty four
last year. So they are moving litigation Lawyer Adena Thorn's
with us on this Adena, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Do you have a sense of two hundred ninety nine
Does that solve the problem or barely touches the sites.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's an improvement, It's a significant improvement. I mean we've
gone from one to two hundred and ninety nine. Look,
I had a lot of people contacting me affected by
this for a couple of years, neighbors, next door, across
the road, everything, And I did some rough calculations. I
thought the figure that needed to be evicted was about
one thousand to fifteen hundred and that's based on the

(00:49):
number A scale, and it's across New Zealand. I mean,
let's be clear. The media like to call this anti social.
It's a good political word, anti social behavior. I'm not
really talking about antisocial. I'm talking about people doing really
egregious violent stuff in housing that is threatening to their neighbors.
We're talking machetes in the backyard, people screaming all night.

(01:11):
I mean, I've seen the videos. It's all b beep
sort of stuff. You know, my kids don't want to
be there. You don't want to be there. And I
spoke to a lovely old lady who said to me,
I can't have my grandchildren vis the thing. They we're
talking to, you know, the worst of the worst.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, exactly as a landlord, a kying or simply have
they simply been instructed to be better than they are.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
Well, I think Minister Bishop came out and studio is
going to improve the space, and they're game to him
because he's doing just that. So I think you're going
in the right direction. But there's a lot more to
be done. I mean, the conversations that I've had recently
is not as many people are contacting me, which is
great news. People have said to me that they're actually

(01:53):
getting moved rather than their Beachmark's antisocial neighbor. There's a
lot of that going on. So it's been a moving
the so called antisocial person. They move the people around them,
but it's sort of still going in the right direction
in terms of the areas. They seem to be still
kind of up there. I mean, I've been doing some

(02:14):
sort of reading around that and trying to work out
an enclayer or is great on rhetoric. They're great at
putting out all this spin and it's very hard to
drill into what's actually going on. But I'd like to know,
you know, are they really genuinely calling up these areas
and at what rate per week? And are they cutch
having interest or is this just the government department says,

(02:35):
oh yeah, we'll chase this actually a dollar a week
and you'll be here in twenty six years.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Very good point. Actually, we'll follow this up that there's
a research and emergency. We'll get that underway with sending
our research assistant this morning and we'll produce some numbers
for you tomorrow. What the areas are are they getting
worsened by how much? Adina Thorn, who's a litigation lawyer.
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