Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.

For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone house in Auckland managed by Kāinga Ora. It had two bedrooms and over the years my children (sometimes all four of them) have lived with me. Most recently, it’s been me, my son, our pug, two cats and six hens. I have chronic pain, serious mental and physical health issues. I care for my son who has special needs. He’s developmentally delayed, can barely see out of one eye and has poor muscle tone which makes him floppy and clumsy. For the whole time, I’ve paid the full rent they’ve charged me every week, which is limited to no more than a quarter of my income. I didn’t damage the house, no holes, no graffiti on the walls or ripped off cupboards. Maybe I wasn’t the tidiest but I never damaged the place.

The house I lived in was unpleasant. There was rot everywhere. I first noticed the dry rot just weeks after moving in with two little ones. The wooden post which held the lovely French doors that opened onto the deck was rotted through and the whole thing would sway out from the house, unattached, when I opened it. They removed it and installed a ranchslider but then the floor next to that started to rot. 

I kind of just expected that they would look after their own property and investments. They did yearly inspections where they walked through and quickly eyeballed the place. I think they looked for holes in walls, missing doors, anything illegal and obvious signs of damage. 

Barely any repairs or maintenance were done while I was there. For years I had a tenancy manager who would talk over me, talk down at me, treat me like a naughty child, and even walked away while I was talking to him on occasion. I don’t think he ever did anything about my requests for repairs. When I showed him cracks in the walls or cupboards that couldn’t close in an inspection, he walked off without noting anything down. I got used to being brushed off and ignored.

Ten years ago I had to beg them to strip the wallpaper out of the dampest room and paint it instead so it would be easier to clean. It was a textured wallpaper so I had to spray on bleach to kill the mould that grew from behind it, then scrub with a brush to remove as much as possible that grew in the little crevices.

Sometimes the grass would grow up through the floor and up the wall. The sealed fireplace was never capped, so water had been pouring into it for years when it rained, the grout turned to sticky paste and the tiles were popping off. The wall it was on cracked and moved. Horrifically, my bedroom was full of mould that was hidden behind my headboard and drawers, despite having windows open all the time, a fan, an air purifier on 24/7 and a dehumidifier running when necessary. The front porch was collapsing because its support beams had so much rot they snapped. 

I’d been complaining repeatedly for months, well, over a year about all the cracks that were spreading all throughout the walls in the kitchen, lounge, end room and laundry. When I walked through the house, loud creaking and cracking noises came from the floor and ceiling from other parts of the rooms or a different room entirely. The whole house appeared to be tilting and rocking as you walked though. 

The Kāinga Ora wellness advocate was quite scared and concerned when I showed him, but their builder said it was all normal. I had discovered numerous beams and struts under the house were full of dry rot, and showed photos to the team leader and manager, who only popped her head just under the house once. Nothing was ever done, despite my constant reminding. 

When I tried to get other agencies, like Te Whatu Ora or the council, to investigate or help, as soon as they heard it was a Kāinga Ora property they refused, telling me to contact Kāinga Ora and that they have people to do that.

When my friend tried to fix a crack in the bathroom wall and it collapsed because the whole inside was black with mould. Kāinga Ora finally sent tradies who were supposed to decontaminate and remove the rotting bathroom (it had been growing mushrooms and was full of black mould for years that seriously impacted my health). Instead they contaminated, damaged, broke and caused four fridges and freezers full of food to go off, because they left the power off for multiple days and literally ripped the power cord right out of the deep freeze.

I think they did over $25,000 worth of damage to my property. Kāinga Ora said we accept no responsibility, and neither did the tradies. The whole thing has done my head in.

They ripped out handfuls of soggy, slimy, black mould-infested wall and dropped it onto the floor, with only gloves on – no PPE, no sealing off the area. They didn’t lay down so much as a tissue to protect my stuff or the house. Then they trampled all that filth into the carpet, and nobody cleaned it. I covered it in plastic to protect me, my family and my little pug.

Obviously my health has been badly affected. I had no idea why I was getting so sick. I’ve had croup several times in this house and I never had it before. I don’t have asthma but the last 18 months I had to use an inhaler more and more. I had stuffy sinuses and kept getting conjunctivitis even though I’ve never had any allergies before. I kept getting ear infections. I started to get psoriasis after two to three years in that house and earlier this year it was crazy bad.

After the bathroom was repaired, half the house was without power for three months. The electrician said the whole house needed to be rewired because the wiring was dangerous and faulty, but nothing happened. He left multiple holes in the walls, some covered by cardboard, which he denied making.

There was no oven for five months, and no heat pump for a year. The repairs in the bathroom were so poorly and dangerously done that they didn’t meet the building code and had to be redone six months later, as the floor was rotten and soggy and full of black mould again. I had complained from day one that the floor was squishy, and I nearly cut my toe off when I discovered a razor-sharp piece of metal sticking out from the corner of the shower.

I’m sure Kāinga Ora would have been quite happy to leave me there paying them rent (after all, I’d been doing that for 18 years even with a falling-down house), but I had health issues that couldn’t be taken care of there. I need an accessible shower or bath. After 18 months of asking, several doctor’s letters and an occupational therapist’s recommendation, I moved into a more suitable home just a couple of weeks ago. I had to ring every few months to see if anything was happening and was offered seven unsuitable houses before this one. Within the first few days here, I was breathing better.

When we moved the furniture to leave, the cracks in the walls immediately became much much worse, and spread extensively and deeply through the kitchen. We realised that two whole external walls MOVED when you pushed on them and so did several internal walls. I’m lucky the house didn’t collapse.

I’m NOT grateful for the years of pain and fear and health problems that I’ve suffered. That house has had such a huge detrimental impact on my health. I had no idea why I was getting so sick. I went from outgoing and bubbly, walking around playing Pokemon Go and shopping for bargains, to having more and more pain and health issues.

As told to Gabi Lardies.