Damage to your home - paying for repairs

On the 20^th December 2010 we received a letter from Housing New Zealand claiming we had damaged the property and informing us that we had to pay $1430.29 by the 24^th December. Clearly this is an early Christmas present from the government department to cap off the other vexatious actions they are taking.

When we moved in to the house some 10 years ago the house was not exactly in tiptop condition and, given our circumstances, was our only option so we accepted it. We had a reasonable relationship with our tenancy manager and over time some problems were resolved. As would be the case with any tenancy or landlord we liaised with him and sought his permission before doing anything to or in the house.

Housing New Zealand however has continued with their relentless persecution of our family in what appears to be a common practice to extort money from those in need. There seems to be a great lack of checks and balances to ensure fairness and equality and little interest in sticking to their charter and customer promise let alone the enactments of government put in place to protect tenants.

At this stage I am hesitant to comment on a completely itemised list of what they are claiming and as to the evidence we have that rebuts their claim due to the fact we have not decided as to what action we need to take to deal with this albeit via the tenancy tribunal, district court or government ombudsman and if criminal charges will be laid against them.

I am also mindful that Housing New Zealand as we have seen are a large government sanctioned organisation and that they have an endless budget and resources to throw at people as they have been doing to us to make people’s lives a living hell.

To give you an idea as to the pettiness of the matter in, Bucklands Beach we use recycle bins and these are collected every 2^nd Thursday. We moved out a week prior to the collection, and all that was required was on the Thursday after the next, the bin needed to be put on the side of the road for collection.  HNZ charged us for the removal of this as well as the removal of bricks and other things that were at the property when we moved in.

These actions pretty clearly support my claims that Housing New Zealand have been using their position to victimise our family and relentlessly cause us as much grief as they can and regardless of the fact that we were forced to move out due to Housing New Zealand not adhering to the work order set by the tenancy tribunal and purposely misleading the courts and the tribunal.

And what does the government have to say about this? Well at present the only thing we have been told is that this is an operational matter with Housing New Zealand.

Due Process

Over the weekend we were going over some of the information HNZ have provided and the information provided is definitely not full disclosure, but then this really comes as no surprise.

But while going over these details I re-read our legal aid application and it struck me that the system is clearly broken.

HNZ have a full time investigations team working to rake up any and all information and prepare a case that is then handed over to the crown. This investigative process, as we have been told, is extremely thorough and leaves no stone unturned, and has the backing of legislation so as to ensure all information is available to it.
The costs involved in running such a team must be huge and having a dedicated investigator work on a specific case for several months would not be cheap.

Then the report is prepared and HNZ have a meeting with the crown prosecutors office who seem to have an unlimited budget and can afford to call whatever experts they choose in to give opinion as well as continue the investigative process to prove your guilt.

Now someone who is on a low income such as us really only have Legal Aid to assist us and unlike the crown these guys draw a line in the sand only allocating a specific amount of hours to the lawyer to work on the case and only providing a certain amount of money to lodge a defense.

So you have a machine with an endless budget and unlimited funds going up against someone who has very limited resources, and people expect that person to be able to prove their innocence as this definitely seems to be the case these days because, without proving their case, HNZ have invoiced us for what they believe is the shortfall in rent, revoked our rental assessment and evicted us.

In addition to this the Prosecution seems to be able to pick and choose what it supplies as evidence and not have to hand up the details, warts and all. In a way I would say this is customizing the evidence to meet the allegation's.

Acceptable by Housing New Zealand Standards

Yesterday I drove past the old place and spotted from the street that the wall paper has now been stripped from the walls. This is the same wallpaper that HNZ stated that was acceptable by HNZ standards.

Speaking with our next door neighbor he said that some woman from HNZ had been over and asked them to keep an eye on the place over Christmas as it was likely they would not be able to get anyone in there until the new year.
She further stated that if any vehicle was seen on the property he was to immediately call the police.

HNZ Staff not being treated with respect?

Well how can HNZ staff expect to be treated with respect when they don't treat their tenants with respect. I am in two minds after reading this article outlining that HNZ has used "Bully Boy Tactics" on its staff but given that their staff have treated us in a less than reasonable manner over the years it comes as no surprise.

If the organisation is so inept then why are they not being held accountable to the public and why are they being given so many powers when it is very clear that these powers are often being misused,

http://msn.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10691378&ref=rss

This organisation seems to have forgotten what it was set up for and is being run by what I can only describe as power hungry little Hitlers. Yes HNZ I do know you are regularly checking these blogs and you did hear me right. It may also interest you to know there is a lot of international interest in the blog as well as many New Zealanders.