Posts by Treacy Thompson

  • Hard News: Crowded houses,

    There is one thing that has been going on since Labour bought in Working for Families over 10 years ago and that is that families, students, super annuitants and benficiaries are having to pay to access the extra money they need to pay these high rents. Just one example is a single parent with 2 children under the age of 9 pays $320 a week rent and only gets $265 to cover it so has to apply for Temporary Additional Support to get the extra only when she applies she finds that she has to pay the first $55 of her hardship out of her standard costs which are set at 70% of her unabated benefit. So in short she is paying the 25% that the government states she has to pay and then on top of that she has to pay another 5% of her benefit plus an accommodation loading of $25.49. Now if you look at a pensioner they are paying similar amounts to access TAS and the lowest amount a person has to pay is around $35. How insane and cruel is this?? So these landlords are making extra money at the expense of children going without food, warmth, school trips etc especially if they come from a large family as the cost to access goes up and can be as high as $80 a week!

    Tauranga • Since May 2016 • 1 posts Report