Housing Minister, Chris Bishop says latest data shows Kāinga Ora is taking action against disruptive tenants, leading to improved behaviour.
In March last year, Ministers instructed Kāinga Ora to end its Sustaining Tenancies Framework which had allowed tenants to stay living in a KO home no matter how threatening or disruptive their behaviour, or how much damage they caused to the property, said Minister Bishop.
“Neighbours of Kāinga Ora residents, frequently KO tenants themselves, were tired of having to put up with people who abused the privilege of a taxpayer-funded home – so Ministers declared enough was enough, and instructed the agency to take a stronger approach to managing disruptive tenants,” he said.
In November, Kāinga Ora received 538 complaints about disruptive behaviour.
“Their frontline teams are responding to these quickly, taking action where needed, with a decision being made on each case within 15 business days in 98% of cases,” the Minister said.
“This is in stark contrast to January 2024, when the Sustaining Tenancies Framework was still in place. At that time, Kāinga Ora had over 500 open complaint cases that had been sitting unresolved for an average of almost 60 days.”
By December, there were just over 200 open cases in progress, with an average of 13 days for a decision to be made and action taken.
“And action most certainly is being taken where needed,” said Mr Bishop.
Since July 2024, Kāinga Ora has issued 553 Section 55A notices – which give formal warning to a tenant that their behaviour is putting their tenancy at risk.
“Which is a whopping 13 times more than the 41 issued during the same period last year,” said Mr Bishop.
“I’m particularly pleased to see that this early intervention is helping spark behaviour change among those tenants who have previously been disruptive.”
He said the data shows that first Section 55A notices made up around 83% of all notices issued since July. Second notices made up approximately 16% of all Section 55A notices issued during this period, while third notices – which can trigger the end of a tenancy – made up less than 2%.
“This data shows that the vast majority of disruptive tenants are taking the Section 55A notices seriously and changing their behaviour to prevent receiving a second or third notice. And where they don’t change their behaviour, we’ll no longer put up with it.”
In the five months from July to November last year, 23 tenancies were ended due to abusive, threatening or disruptive behaviour, compared to only four tenancies having been ended for this reason in all of 2023.
“Kāinga Ora is also continuing to use relocations to a different KO property to prompt behaviour change where there is conflict between neighbouring tenants. Relocations have taken place 101 times in the period between July and November, and in two-thirds of these cases, Kāinga Ora has not received further complaints about behaviour from these tenants in their new homes,” Mr Bishop says.
“I want to emphasise that the strengthened approach does not have any impact on the significant majority of Kāinga Ora tenants who already do the right thing. In fact, I hope that it has made their lives easier knowing that they don’t need to put up with disruptive behaviour from their neighbours.
“I also want to thank Kāinga Ora staff for their hard work to ensure disruptive behaviour is managed quickly and effectively.”
Removing the Sustaining Tenancies Framework gave effect to a commitment made in the National-ACT coalition agreement, said the Minister.
