Chris Bishop: Housing Minister hopeful unruly Kainga Ora tenants numbers fall

More than 550 notices threatening tenants with losing their home have been issued by Kainga Ora, since Ministers directed the state housing agency to toughen up on disruptive tenants. 

The year before, only 41 warnings were given out. 

Housing Minister Chris Bishop says second notices are also declining, showing tenants are aware of the crackdown. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
And what a difference a year can make. The time
frame in which complaints about disruptive kying our tenants are
handled has fallen from sixty days to thirteen. The number
of warning notices sent to these antisocial tenants has also
increased by twelve twelve hundred percent. This time last year
only forty one been sent. Now that's stretched beyond five hundred.

(00:39):
Joining me now is Housing Minister Chris Bishop.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Good morning, Good morning, Josh.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
You're not messing around Noll.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
We campaigned on ending the Socinian Tendancy's Framework, which was
the approach of the last government with Kyle Aura, and
replacing it and asking Kyle Or to enforce the law
and all laws including ko have access to the essentially
the three strikes regime and the Residential Tenancies Act, and
they've been using it. They followed our instruction and I

(01:08):
want to pay tribute to this stuff out there doing
a great job on the they level around the country
and it is making an impact and I'm getting really
good feedback from around the community about it.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Was it hard to turn it around in terms of
the way kind of or it's going about its business.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Look, to be honest, we just said to them, you've
actually got these legal rights now. So the Sustaining Tendencies
framework was Labour's approach, which basically said, no matter how
badly you behave, no matter how many people your neighbors
your abuse, or how many Black night parties you hold,
or how any you know things you do in your neighborhood,
and people listening will be aware. Some of the stories

(01:45):
over the years have been some of them are absolutely horrific.
The approach was basically, you can never get kicked out
of your house, and that's not the approach that ordinary
landhords take to people. You know, if you do that
for most properties, the landlords take action. And so there's
a thing of the residential tendency that it was. Essentially,
it's a three strikes regime. So if you do something

(02:05):
you know you behave antisocially within one period of time,
you get issue notice, and then if you do it
again within another sixty days, you get another one. Then
if you get to do it a third time, you
get another one, and then you can go off to
the tribunal and of its people or seek an order
from the tribunal to and obviously we don't want to
do that, but the threat of having that there has

(02:26):
meant that people are changing their behavior and that's a
good thing.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Has sort of word of mouth amongst the tendency, the
tenant community at Congloroi, so that sort of worked as
well that if you get a notice, it's like, listen,
these guys are serious.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, I believe so, because before what they were doing
was they were just weren't even issuing notices. And they
turn up and say, oh, look, can you not do
that please? And should you please moderate this and change
the ad and people would go yeah, okay and sort
of say the right thing. But then people wouldn't change
their behavior. And so now what's happened is they're assuring
the notices. They've been a huge increase in the first
straight notices, the first ones, as you say, joenormous increase

(03:02):
five hundred and fifty compared to forty one in the
same period last year, and that's getting around the place.
And then there's number of second notices is a massive
doubt decrease on the first strikes. So I think people say, okay, right,
well they're serious about this, I better, you know, change
my behavior otherwise I might get kicked out.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
What does the notice actually look like? What does that
first notice say? Broadly speaking? Is is it quite quite
quite scary.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
A formal notice. Yeah, so it's you get a letter
through the mail saying you know, you're being issued with
a Section fifty five notice under the Residential Tendencies Act,
and so it's a quite a formal notice. So yeah,
I mean, look, there's always going to be a range
of people who won't play by the rules, and that's
why we have the laws there to enforce them. But
I think it as having a deterrent effect and people

(03:50):
are changing their behavior. And also KARE has been a
lot more proactive and trying to resolve things more proactively
as well, so they're relocating people more as well, which
is a good thing. So there might the people, look,
it's clearly not working where you're at with your neighbors,
do you want to move somewhere? And that might, you know,
for the dynamics of the neighborhood environment. And so people

(04:11):
have relocating a lot more and that's positive too.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
When I mention you're coming on I've got some texts
on this, and one question just say is please ask
Chris Bishop about any children being involved in the evictions.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yes, I'm advised that two families who've had their tendencies
into Two of those families have children living in the household,
and I'm also advised that they've been working with iron
A tamariki and in one case, the police around those
kids as well. Often with these sort of environments, you've
got multiple different government agencies involved, from I run a tamariki,

(04:44):
the police in one of the cases, I'm advised, and
there'll be potentially other agencies involved as well.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Are you happy with the right people ending up in
the right houses now?

Speaker 3 (04:54):
I mean broadly, we've got a big challenge when it
comes to social housing. We've got twenty thousand people on
the wait list for social housing and those numbers are
down five thousand, by the way in the last year
or so, so we're making good progress there. But we've
got a big housing lee in this country. And it's
not just about ko because everything, everything on housing is
connected and we just need we need to build more houses.

(05:15):
And the single best thing we can do for housing
in this country is to build more of it, and
so that's why we government's got a very aggressive program
of land supply changes, infrastructure funding and financing changes, supporting
the construction market to barecast to the high interest rates
of previous years as well. So we're a long way ago,
but you know, I think we're making We're making decent

(05:35):
progress and there are some green shoots coming through in
the construction sector as well, which is good to see.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
Are you expecting to see a decline just quickly in
the number of notices You're going to have to evict
because you've got into your work and now the words
got round, so maybe people are going to pull their
heads in a bit.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Well, let's wait and see. I think it's been a year.
This year will be a year of bidding in the changes.
We're still seeing quite a large number of notices. Is
suit every month just in the last couple of months
from being in the last couple of months of last year,
we did see a bit of a decline you months
and months, So let's wait and see. I'm monitoring it
every month and let's wait to the how that you go.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Excellent? Hey, Chris, thanks so much for your time. That's Chris,
Bishop of the Housing Minister.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
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