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Housing NZ admits mistakes in its former meth testing policies and will compensate affected tenants

Property
Housing NZ admits mistakes in its former meth testing policies and will compensate affected tenants

Housing NZ is to compensate hundreds of former tenants who were evicted from their homes under the organisation's former methamphetamine contamination testing policies.

This follows the release of a report by the organisation into its previous meth testing policies and the effect they had on its tenants.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford said Housing NZ had accepted its approach to dealing with meth contamination was wrong and had far reaching consequences for hundreds of tenants.

"Housing NZ acknowledges that around 800 tenants suffered either by losing their tenancies, losing their possessions, being suspended from the public housing waiting list, negative effects on their credit ratings, or in the worst cases, being made homeless," Twyford said.

"Housing NZ is committed to redressing the hardship these tenants faced," he said.

"This will be done on a case by case basis and the organisation will look to reimburse costs tenants incurred, and discretionary grants to cover expenses such as moving costs and furniture replacement."

They will also receive a formal apology from Housing NZ.

Twyford said Housing NZ's approach was an example of government accountability.

"Housing NZ are fronting up, acknowledging they were wrong and putting it right," he said.

"The approach to methamphetamine by the [National] government of the day was a moral and fiscal failure.

"Even as evidence grew that the meth standard was too low, and ministers acknowledged it wasn't fit for purpose, the former government continued to demonise its tenants.

"At any time they could have called for independent advice.

"Our government is choosing to do the right thing."

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28 Comments

Brilliant!
Mr Twyford thinks it is ok to mistreat the subsidised housing that the country has provided for these people.
They should not be doing P in these houses irrespective of what has come out now.
They were breaking rules that were in place and now to reward them is just blatant contempt for the co7 try.
Seriously, is there anyone out there that actually thinks that this COL is strong enough to run NZ?

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You should check out the cases, many were not doing meth in the homes but there were extremely poor testing methods (false positives that caught landlords in the net as well), and multiple stages of prior tenants not tested for. There was often little to no evidence any of the residing tenants were responsible but they often got told all of their furniture would have to be trashed or else they or their children would get sick just from residue 'left on the walls'.

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You need to do your homework. The test for P was proven to be invalid. National knew this but carried on with evictions and destroying people's possessions anyhow.
Your comments also imply that the tenants of where P was found were the uses/cookers for P. How can you possibly know that? Could have been the previous tenant, or the one before that.

Let's say I develop a test for "stupid". I test your house and get a positive reading. But, you only moved in yesterday. No matter. The house tested positive for "stupid", so you gotta move out. And, I get to destroy all your possessions because they to might have some "stupid" attached to them. And finally, a bunch of ignorant commenters, without any evidence, get to declare that because the house tested positive for "stupid", you, the current resident, are the source. Sound good?

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Sounds stupid.

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It's got nothing to do with "strength" and everything to do with intelligent application of scientific evidence.

Thank goodness the madness has ended.

The harms National did to this country are immeasurable, but one-by-one the coalition government are dealing with them admirably.

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This is wrong. Smoking meth is illegal.

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Just as well many of the tenants were not smoking meth... oh wait they still got evicted from the property without any evidence they were the source and often their furniture had to be dumped & charges laid on their accounts without even the basic legal process. Many tests were so bad as to not to be able to detect meth accurately at all and no test could prove a tenant was the one one smoking or a prior tenant, or any tenant at all, (as many tests were not made prior to their moving in and no additional information was sought after the test was done). They just got kicked out if a kids science project quality test had a meth level below any significance, in essence often false positives as well. Even those with prior addictions but not continuing would be treated as if they were actively smoking meth after breaking the addiction, which is yet another distinctive legal case abet one with at least some link of the drug to the tenant.

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Which is poor law in its own right. It is the manufacture and distribution that should be illegal - its use is a sad and significant health issue, just like any substance addiction.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11976075

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Nice accompanying picture. I can see a mushroom cloud above a very small but overpriced house inside that bong.

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Unbelievable - now the taxpayer pays out to crim
drug users and HNZ apologises to them, ONLY IN NZ under Comrade Taxinda...

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You should check out the cases, many were not doing meth in the homes but there were extremely poor testing methods (false positives that caught landlords in the net as well), and multiple stages of prior tenants not tested for. There was often little to no evidence any of the residing tenants were responsible but they often got told all of their furniture would have to be trashed or else they or their children would get sick just from residue 'left on the walls'.

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How can Housing NZ do this when the official Meth contamination has not been changed yet by the Standards
Authority, the rules have to be fair for everyone, the State and private landlords.

Its illegal to smoke P, so why should the Tenants of Housing corp be compensated, What about private Landlords, the rules must be fair.

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I would imagine Housing NZ is going to compensate those it directly impacted, who underwent great financial hardship due to Housing NZ's actions made on the basis of the Standards Authority

...whose standards were driven by non-existent science combined with the advice of a number of parties who stood to gain financially from mandating that houses where any meth had been smoked (rather than been labs, as is the standard overseas) should be deemed uninhabitable until cleaned.

These were the standards: https://www.standards.govt.nz/assets/Publication-files/NZS8510-2017.pdf

Note the committee members described on page 3:

Analytica Laboratories

Andy Andersons Industrial Services

Auckland Council

Cleaning Systems Ltd

Contaminated Site Solutions Ltd

Environmental Science and Research

Forensic and Industrial Science Ltd

Hill Laboratories

Housing New Zealand Corporation

Hutt City Council

Independent Property Managers’ Association

Insurance Council of New Zealand

International Accreditation NZ (IANZ)

Local Government New Zealand

MethSolutions Ltd

Ministry for the Environment

Ministry of Health

New Zealand Property Investors’ Federation

NZ Decontamination Services T/A Fresh Living

NZ Remediation Services

Real Estate Institute of New Zealand

So while there is zero scientific basis for the standard that any house in which meth has been smoked needs remedial cleaning to be habitable, a whole cottage industry benefited from the standards.

Landlords should be looking to Standards NZ for compensation, and the government of the day for not requiring standards to be made informed by scientific evidence. Paula Bennett endorsed a highly punitive approach to Housing NZ tenants as part of this, and it's this that Housing NZ is now having to address.

Paula Bennett now says Housing NZ should apologise and she maybe didn't believe the evidence back then but went along with it because she was told it was needed.

Further reading: The Great NZ Meth Hysteria: how the hell did we get sucked in?

Question is: If councils and ministries were forcing landlords to perform remedial cleaning on the basis of a clear set of standards driven in part by a number of companies that would benefit from the growth of this industry...who should compensate the landlords?

The industry pushing the snake oil for which there was no scientific evidence?

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I wonder how many people who have purchased a home in the last few years had a Meth Test listed as a condition of finance?

Our Real Estate agent had a clause inserted into our Sale and Purchase agreement purely for the benefit of us as the purchaser but it wasn't a requirement that it be done for us to get the purchase over the line so we didn't request one.

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Good save avoiding that little add on bollocks.

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Interestingly, Prof. Gluckman said that these P houses were not as bad as living in a house with mould contamination, therefore the Govt. had over reacted in making people move out.

The real question that needs to be asked, is since it is known that many mouldy homes are causing health effects just as bad as real p contaminated houses, and in some causes mouldy homes have been linked to the cause of deaths -

Why are we willing to let people live in these known unhealthy homes?

Why are we not conducting tests for spore counts and other known containments?

I think there was a certain political expedience (even by the Govt. Health Adviser) to issue a health directive that allows housing to be reoccupied, rather than issue a health directive that would cause housing to be condemned, even with irrefutable evidence in support of it.

I suppose on a scale of relativity, it is best to ignore that people are living in unhealthy mould contaminated housing, rather than be forcibly moved out to live in a car or under a bridge, such is how we now judge our standard of living, and the aspirations the Govt, has for the standard of housing we live in.

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State houses would be a damn sight mouldier and damp than privately owned rentals.
This government are absolutely out if touch with any sort of realism.
You don’t compensate bad tenants with taxpayers money when they are on the pigs back already.
The COL are pathetic and are getting worse.

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You should check out the cases, many were not doing meth in the homes but there were extremely poor testing methods (false positives that caught landlords in the net as well), and multiple stages of prior tenants not tested for. There was often little to no evidence any of the residing tenants were responsible but they often got told all of their furniture would have to be trashed & they would lose their home or else they or their children would get sick just from residue 'left on the walls'.

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Fantastic! They have financial hardship.... Really? I try to keep up with money to fill in petrol ($80+ for full tank for my 1.3l engine car per week) and to fill in food into fridge. And these (with financial hardship) unemployed lazy drug smokers will get another benefit from my tax..
Wait.. I couldn't sleep last night because of their party not far away from my house... Due to that I late 3 hours to work. I earned less... government got less tax...
Where NZ is going? What is the goal?

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What the hell are you rambling on about?

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He is complaining that he must have it harder than those tenants although he never had to dump all his furniture for an imagined contamination, leave his home, and exist on something even far reduced to the pension when many have disabilities, severe illness or are solo parents of children too young to enter school or leave at home alone and many did not use meth. Oh and he assumes his neighbours must be beneficiaries because of 'parties'. Not the brightest lightbulb but at least it is in energy saving mode until it fizzes and sputters out again.

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1) The properties were not all tested before the tenants moved in, therefore blame cannot be fairly apportioned to those living there now.
2) Even if they had been tested, are tenants responsible for their kids/friends/family doing drugs in the building? For all those smirking that their young Johnny would never do anything like that, as they are such good parents and he is at a good school, think again.
3) Even if the tenants did do drugs in the building, is that a good reason to kick them out? Cooking meth is terrible for the immediate environment sure, but consuming it doesn't do any harm to the building or future tenants. - Hi there, someone poor who has developed a drug habit to help cope with their crappy life, welcome to homelessness, lets see how that helps society...

Some of the stories of what happened to the tenants were ghastly. ALL of their possessions in the house were taken to the dump. They were not even allowed to get photo albums etc because of the "contamination". Think about what that would be like for your family. Especially those who were in fact completely innocent.

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Blame those dodgy p testing companies in the first place....they should pay, not tax payer.

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Its all down to poor methodology, we know about the public housing now how do we find out about whats happened in the private sector...there could be class actions pending. Better Call Saul!

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Those meth testing companies were really raking it in on baseless fear mongering, even more so if they also offered the more premium repair service. The testing practices themselves were pretty shameful. Yet the customers will have little chance of seeing any restitution due the ease of liquidating & hiding company assets to rise again as another company a day later. Still not completely clear from the leaky building issues and we have another fail of service & scam hitting property related investors and those living in the homes.

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Interesting stuff - in Australia, based on their Professors reading of the results, their limit is STILL
0.5 - so who's right - and Paramedics Australia are saying they are definitely seeing, at THEIR levels, ie 0.5 - Children and Adults suffering from chronic breathing disorders and behavioral abnormality....

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are the health disorders because they are smoking meth or non smokers exposed to residue? I've worked with ex addicts and the systemic collapse they suffer from smoking meth is incredible teeth fall out, skin disorders, liver, kidney and heart disorders, chronic fatigue, you name it they get it! Of course they aren't exactly eating 5 plus a day when they are battling addiction so that lifestyle only compounds matters further.

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Good on you, Pasifica, Rick Strauss and others for talking sense and compassion in the face of some ignorant and heartless comments. You are quite right. It's the gangstas producing and selling P who should be hounded, caught and punished. Use should be treated as a health issue, and as for pulling the threadbare rug from under already difficult lives on some trumped up witch hunt, we (and specifically Paula Bennett and colleagues) should be ashamed of ourselves.

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