ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Mike Hosking: Why is Housing New Zealand compensating crooks?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Fri, 21 Sep 2018, 10:26AM
Housing New Zealand is now acting like a social service to anyone with issues - has the Government gone mad? (Photo / NZ Herald)

Mike Hosking: Why is Housing New Zealand compensating crooks?

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Fri, 21 Sep 2018, 10:26AM

Here’s my concern and what I was trying to articulate before with Housing New Zealand and this meth thing, and this is how highly political this is.

This is where I got confused last night. If you watched Newshub, and I apologise in advance if I miss the critical detail but I don’t think that I did and therefore I charge it with being a very sloppy piece of reportage, and it therefore confused me.

There was a story of an elderly woman who claimed she had been in her state house for 68 years. You could ask the question why a person is in a state house for 68 years of course, but that is a completely separate matter.

Somehow she was evicted, and what the story did not tell me and should have, and I was desperate to know given it was the whole point of the exercise, is how could they go into a house where the couple had been for 68 years and found something to do with meth and evicted them, unless of course two were involved in meth.

Obviously, they claimed they weren’t, didn’t know anything about it, never smoked, as clean as the day is long.

So how has that happened? How many people who have been evicted were involved in meth, they were just tested in a regime that’s now seen as slightly different thanks to Peter Gluckman’s work

In other words, they are still crooks, they are still acting illegally, they are still committing crime within the state house, but have been evicted under a different set of circumstances, and because of that they are now being compensated.

How many crooks and meth people are we compensating and how as a taxpayer, as you’re paying the bill, do you feel about that?

Further, HNZ is considering establishing a fund that affected tenants and their families can dip into to pay for addiction and rehab and other support.

So Housing New Zealand has now become more than a landlord, it is a social service as well for medical conditions. Where does that begin and where does it end and how many services are they offering?

Are they now a psychiatrist? Are they the new state psychiatry or psychology service for people with problems? Are they supplying more than house now,  they can supply any level of service they want if you are state housing tenant?

If you’ve got an issue, you ring the 0800 Housing New Zealand line, and whatever the service is they will provide it for you.

Where does this begin and end, are we all paying for it, and has the Government gone mad?

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you