Bradford Sue: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
Bradford Sue: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3807] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is really concerned about the way in which the National-led Government seems to be transforming the housing portfolio into another outreach of the hard-line law and order policies on which it campaigned in the last election. Just as some children and young people aged 12 to 17 are headed into military-style youth training camps in another wing of this blitzkrieg on crime the Housing New Zealand Corporation is being increasingly used as a way of winning the Sensible Sentencing Trust vote. 
The question of so-called problematic tenants was raised many times by National MPs under the previous administration. Now that they are in charge they are not backward in coming forward to find ways to make sure the Housing New Zealand Corporation takes action to deal with those deemed undesirable. First of all in March this year came the news that the Housing New Zealand Corporation would no longer take cases of what it deemed to be severe antisocial behaviour to the tenancy tribunal. Instead the Housing New Zealand Corporation itself would make the decision and issue a termination notice requiring the tenant to quit in 90 days or even less. 
Just this morning we discovered that the Housing New Zealand Corporation—quietly and under the radar—had inserted a new clause in its standard tenancy agreement. This clause requires tenants to have express permission from the Housing New Zealand Corporation to live on a property if they are on bail on parole or on home detention unless they are already registered on the tenancy agreement. At first blush this does not sound too onerous. However on closer inspection there are ramifications that cause substantial disquiet to those of us who care about the welfare of our most vulnerable citizens. 
I have several questions I would like the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley to answer. For example what will happen if a family member who lives away from home and is not on the tenancy agreement gets into trouble? The Housing New Zealand Corporation will not want the person on the property but he or she will have nowhere else to go except back to his or her mother father sister or brother. Is the Minister happy for that person to end up on the streets in the local mental health acute unit or back in prison? Will he put more money into homeless shelters mental health services or emergency housing as a result? I somehow doubt it. 
I wonder what approach the Housing New Zealand Corporation will take to people who are on the waiting list for housing and who are on bail parole or home detention. Although the corporation says that its policy is not to take criminal matters into account when handing out tenancies I will be very interested to hear how this is implemented in practice in the months ahead. I will also be interested to hear about the luck people in this situation have or do not have in achieving a State tenancy in the current environment when numbers on the waiting lists are growing without a parallel acceleration in the acquisition or building of new State houses. 
State houses are supposed to be the housing of last resort for those who need it most for the most vulnerable in our society. People who are in trouble with the justice system are certainly in this category. The Green Party believes that people should not be presumed guilty before conviction and that even if they are guilty they should not face the double jeopardy of being penalised twice for offences—once by the court and once by the Housing New Zealand Corporation. I do not know whether Mr Heatley and the corporation have even thought about the economic and social implications of their latest move. Plenty of research shows that people are far more likely to reoffend if they are homeless or are disconnected from friends and family. If the State is not willing to help those most in need very few other options are available. Telling people to take their chances in the private market is not a viable answer for most of the Housing New Zealand Corporation’s problematic tenants now or in the future. I do not know why the State thinks that private landlords are more likely to take its rejects—unless the latter are really hard-out criminals with enough money and enough front to play high-rent fake-ID tenancy games. I doubt that that is something the State really wants to encourage either. 
These new Housing New Zealand Corporation policies are a recipe for increased rates of crime poverty ill health and homelessness. I hope the Minister will think again about the potential impacts of the path on which he and the corporation have embarked and consider whether there might be more constructive and proactive ways of working with tenants to make sure that people are safe without pushing some of those most in need out on to the streets or into institutions.