She said after 10 years of experience in tenancy management and owning her own company, two individuals defrauded her family trust, which held her entire life savings, a rental property and more.<\/p>\n
Amanda claims the agency is acting illegally and is seeking justice. Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray<\/p>\n
Her and her three young children were at risk of homelessness before being offered social housing by the state.<\/p>\n
The children eventually moved out and Amanda\u2019s elderly mother moved in with her in 2020 after needing care and being unable to live on her own.<\/p>\n
Despite their difficulties, life was beginning to look up for Amanda last year, when she was given a $10,000 grant from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) to start a new business.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was grateful … it was a gruelling process,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to go through a really really strict vetting process because a $10,000 grant is coming from the likes of your taxpayer dollar, so they have to make sure everybody is worthy of the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so excited last year, and all of a sudden April comes around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amanda received a letter from K\u0101inga Ora which asked to schedule a meeting with her.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like giving someone an electric shock,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Her tenancy manager informed her the home was on a list of 900 being sold by K\u0101inga Ora under the Government\u2019s new direction for the agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is bad enough being forced to just about be homeless once, but to [potentially] suffer it a second time? There are no words, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amanda accused K\u0101inga Ora of acting illegally. \u201cIt is coercion. It is threat.\u201d Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray<\/p>\n
She claimed that in the meeting, K\u0101inga Ora staff were cold and condescending. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was really upset, they wouldn\u2019t answer our questions directly,\u201d Amanda\u2019s mother claimed to NZME.<\/p>\n
Amanda provided doctors\u2019 letters, seen by NZME, before the meeting, which explained the risks a transfer would have for them.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmanda is devastated,\u201d one letter said. \u201cHer mental health is at risk of a significant decline, the consequences of which I cannot determine definitively.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cEqually, her mother is very at risk of a health decline. With her low vision and hearing issues, it is difficult for older people to navigate new spaces and hence she is at risk of harm, mainly due to falls, if she was moved to a new home.\u201d <\/p>\n
It also stated the importance of Amanda\u2019s mother being close to her GP clinic and potential issues if the pair were to move.<\/p>\n
In correspondence with K\u0101inga Ora, Amanda described how the sudden change was profoundly impacting her ability to start her business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis grant gave me hope for the future when I thought there was none … this has caused my panic attacks to return with force and my depression as well. All when I am trying to get my new business off the ground after MSD extended such belief in me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She asked for them to delay the sale for just a year to give her a chance to make good use of the grant.<\/p>\n
The staff in the meeting said they had received the letters but proceeded to give the pair an electronic document to sign, Amanda says.<\/p>\n
K\u0101inga Ora tenant Amanda says it’s been a great shock. Photo \/ Sylvie Whinray<\/p>\n
In their state of distress and heightened emotion, the pair say they refused to sign it.<\/p>\n
It was not until the next day Amanda discovered it was a \u201cBusiness Initiated Transfer Document\u201d that suggested they were voluntarily relinquishing their tenancy. If she didn\u2019t sign it, she wouldn\u2019t be offered a transfer to another property, she claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat tenant gives up their own property and relies on their landlord to find them another property, without them even seeing it?\u201d Amanda says. \u201cWould you give up your own tenancy, not knowing where you\u2019re going first? That is exactly what they\u2019re asking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because Amanda refused to sign it, Amanda says K\u0101inga Ora issued a 90-day notice, the clock started ticking and she says she was overcome with anxiety.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo then you\u2019re put in a situation where you either sign the transfer application in its current form or you\u2019re homeless. They evict you and you\u2019re gone. What kind of choice is that?\u201d Amanda says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bad enough for us,\u201d Amanda\u2019s mother says. \u201cWhat about a solo mum with two or three kids that is terrified she\u2019ll have the kids homeless? She signs it under duress because she knows that if she doesn\u2019t, she won\u2019t get another property. What sort of carry-on is this?\u201d<\/p>\n
In her submission to the Tenancy Tribunal, Amanda accused K\u0101inga Ora of acting illegally.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is coercion. It is threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amanda believed the home didn\u2019t meet K\u0101inga Ora\u2019s criteria to be sold and had received extensive work recently, including a bathroom renovation, new heating and an updated kitchen and hot water cylinder.<\/p>\n
She said the housing agency should be giving tenants options for new places to live before making them sign a document or issuing 90-day notices.<\/p>\n
K\u0101inga Ora responds<\/p>\n
The housing agency said Amanda wasn\u2019t the only tenant it had refused to transfer until they chose to voluntarily leave their state home.<\/p>\n
Acting regional manager for Counties Manukau, Sonja Clearkin, said 227 tenants had gone through the same process in the past year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn all these cases, our placement teams have worked hard to ensure tenants are supported through the move and settle well into their new home.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it was doing everything it could to support Amanda and her mum into another K\u0101inga Ora home that met their specific needs.<\/p>\n
It said the proceeds from its sale of aged social housing would go towards new builds which were warmer, drier, the right size and in the right locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of the house Amanda is living in, it\u2019s more than 70 years old and it needs a lot of money spent on it to bring it up to our standards,\u201d she said. \u201cWe think the best course of action is to sell it and invest elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
K\u0101inga Ora did not respond to questions on why it depended on tenants to relinquish their rental agreement voluntarily or why it was withholding transfer options until this was signed.<\/p>\n
Jordan Dunn is a multimedia reporter based in Auckland with a focus on crime, social issues, policing and local issues. He joined Newstalk ZB in 2024 from Radio New Zealand, where he started as an intern out of the New Zealand Broadcasting School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said after 10 years of experience in tenancy management and owning her own company, two individuals defrauded…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23545,95,51,23541,17048,1872,23546,1345,9437,23543,12514,6178,2721,9097,111,43,139,69,691,23544,7192,13672,10050,165,23542,1354],"class_list":["post-22719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-accusing","tag-and","tag-auckland","tag-blind","tag-eviction","tag-face","tag-forcing","tag-home","tag-homelessness","tag-kinga","tag-leave","tag-mother","tag-mum","tag-must","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-or","tag-ora","tag-risk","tag-state","tag-tenant","tag-their","tag-voluntarily","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}