Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Housing NZ keeps digging the meth hole

Sacha

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 15:28:18 +1200

Tenants do not buy advertising ..

andin

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 14:40:40 +1200

, the Auckland Council had enforced one of its bylaws requiring landlords found to have ‘excessive’ meth readings to undertake decontamination or face prosecution,

So they pay for the meth test but get compensation for the unnecessary work carried at ACC behest.
But those at fault cant be allowed to…

Martin Nicholls

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:19:22 +1200

It does sound that way, doesn't it. But we must also feel very sorry for those landlords required to carry out needless cleanups. Under the PM's assertion that they are not entitled to compensation because their cleanups were voluntary and not mandatory must also be challenged. For instance, the Auckland…

Martin Nicholls

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 13:13:08 +1200

My simple answer to that (a common misconception re. the 'illegal activities of tenants') is that, given the flawed and forensically unsupportable nature of the testing and HNZ's use of the methodology, it cannot be proven that the people evicted were responsible for the presence of meth residues. Therefore, the…

andin

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 11:30:11 +1200

The gentleman I refer to above is a property manager so that colours his perception completely, and he's never done anything illegal or immoral in his life judging by his rhetoric> Yeah right!

When are media outlets going to grow some backbone, stop getting dicks like Faulkner to just give…

andin

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 17:55:41 +1200

self-reflection

This gentleman managed to do that for most of the piece then goes kinda lynch mob when addressing the idea that tenants might get compensation.
...they were engaged in an illegal activity Ferchrissakes! suck it losers!
or words to that effect...

Martin Nicholls

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 13:14:57 +1200

I believe that, under NZ law, there is a case to undertake a class action against HNZ, specific HNZ managers, the chairperson, the Tenancy Tribunal (especially Melissa Poole), Standards NZ, Paula Bennett. Would there be any law firms willing to take this on on behalf of HNZ tenants who are…

linger

Thu, 15 Sept 2016 20:10:59 +1200

The word "tossers" seems to sum them up pretty well.

nzlemming

Wed, 14 Sept 2016 17:24:00 +1200

That's so they can have an easy way to toss people out of homes they want to sell off.

Alfie

Wed, 14 Sept 2016 16:36:18 +1200

HNZ seem to be proud of the fact that they're actively targetting meth users rather than cooks. In someone's tiny corporate mind, a positive test, no matter how irrelevant, is viewed as some kind of win. Check out this HNZ response to an OIA request... (my bold).

Our staff are…

Shulgin

Sun, 11 Sept 2016 21:03:42 +1200

I was just thinking,

with an aging population and all,

if we are burning more corpses, would their residue end up on a state house wall?

kreemaychun...micrograms, all over the place, find land to bury them, its much safer!

enjoy yur evening~

Sacha

Thu, 08 Sept 2016 20:06:31 +1200

Black mould

Quite. Where's the moral panic over exposing NZ children to that, when we know it has killed some?

Sacha

Thu, 08 Sept 2016 20:05:28 +1200

the assets are better maintained now.

My dad did some of that task in the 90s. Some horror stories. Unsurprised if management of that function has improved since. Brewery piss-ups, on the other hand ..

Martin Brown

Thu, 08 Sept 2016 19:18:50 +1200

It's all quite absurd really. Black mould in a state house bedroom would be several magnitudes more dangerous to the inhabitants than than microscopic traces of methamphetamine that constitutes "contamination!" and a massive payday for the decontaminators. It's not like anyone's going to be licking it off the ceiling -…

nzlemming

Wed, 07 Sept 2016 18:26:55 +1200

From a letter to the NZ Drug Foundation demanding payment for an OIA response.

Say what? Screenshots??? They have a database that they can't get reports out of? Bollocks. Straight to the Ombudsman with that one!

linger

Wed, 07 Sept 2016 03:20:53 +1200

It also has to be asked how much of that "better maintenance" is actually directed at making state houses more habitable (having already been deferred to a point where houses were unfit for purpose), rather than at preparing "assets" for sale.

Russell Brown

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 21:45:51 +1200

Although ... my impression is that the philosophy does pretty well at the functional business of property management.

A HNZ employee put it to me that although the government has run down public housing stock, a move away from pouring all the money into expanding that stock had meant the…

Shulgin

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 21:09:52 +1200

A zero tolerance policy, administered by the State, that sort of covers it all really.

A zero tolerance policy, for micrograms amounts of an organic compound. If that was put to me, using the Health Departments Clan Lab Guidelines, I would stay in bed, never shake hands with any fucker…

Rob Stowell

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 20:21:59 +1200

Edited for brvity :)

Sacha

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 19:54:30 +1200

There is a myth (spread by management) that a good manager can manage anything.

Core feature of neoliberal bollockry since 1984.
#bakedbeans

Russell Brown

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 19:41:56 +1200

Of course.

From a letter to the NZ Drug Foundation demanding payment for an OIA response.

nzlemming

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 19:05:27 +1200

but there has clearly not always been a zero-tolerance policy, even for drug manufacture.

But Russell, we have always been at war with Eurasia...

Russell Brown

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 18:09:31 +1200

That’s true of every agency now. There is a myth (spread by management) that a good manager can manage anything. Our own CEOs come from Fonterra management who (guessing here) want to come home to NZ. They are nice guys but have no passion for science nor real deep-seated understanding…

william blake

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 17:45:10 +1200

"and are quietly pleased at the prospect of a moral panic demonising HNZ tenants."

This dovetails with the P.M. expressing his reckon that the high immigration level is down to the casualised workforce being too stoned to work. There is a very ugly picture being drawn here of an outwardly…

Bart Janssen

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 15:09:13 +1200

Mitchell is a business process guy.

Paul Commons, the COO who’s been fronting a lot of the meth stuff for HNZ, comes from project management, originally in the cement business.

>Rant incoming

That's true of every agency now. There is a myth (spread by management) that a good manager can…

BenWilson

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 15:01:38 +1200

I should note my comment above is specifically in response to Alfie, not to what HNZ is doing, which strikes me as insanity.

Rob Stowell

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 14:28:48 +1200

It seems like HNZ was wrong and now finds itself unable to admit that and so is just digging it's heels in to justify the obviously flawed policy.

I suspect it's also because their political masters have made it clear they don't want egg anywhere near their own faces -…

Russell Brown

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 14:13:24 +1200

It seems like HNZ was wrong and now finds itself unable to admit that and so is just digging it's heels in to justify the obviously flawed policy.

Yeah, that's my read: they're backed into a corner.

And the management has a vision of HNZ as something other than a…

Bart Janssen

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 13:47:18 +1200

It seems like HNZ was wrong and now finds itself unable to admit that and so is just digging it's heels in to justify the obviously flawed policy.

To be fair given the way the media react I can see why HNZ would hate to admit any mistake in its…

BenWilson

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 12:11:43 +1200

It seems like a reasonable request to me. I think there’s an awful lot of bullshitting going on about how expensive the testing needs to be, and you can’t even get an unmonitored alarm at all. There’s definitely a scramble to own this burgeoning market going on. As a landlord-to-be…

Alfie

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 11:45:39 +1200

HNZ needs to shoulder most of the responsibility for the hysteria its pseudo-testing has created, and the lucrative cowboy testing industry which has arisen.

Today's Herald has a story about Auckland landlords seeking the right to conduct meth testing themselves and having the results recognised by the Tenancy Tribunal. I can't…

Moz

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 11:31:47 +1200

these "culprits" should be denied social support for the rest of their lives

Yeah, because that will help a lot. Take a petty criminal who desperately needs social support, and give them the choice between dying and becoming a career criminal. Gee, I wonder what will happen?

I would love…

Public Address

Tue, 06 Sept 2016 11:31:47 +1200

Discussion from blog post.