The problems of antisocial housing
Social housing is a political football and high-density housing even more so. Almost everyone agrees it is necessary but almost no homeowner wants it built near them. People reach easily for words like ‘‘slum’’ and ‘‘ghetto’’, as they picture antisocial or criminal behaviour, violence and substance abuse.
It is sad when the reality matches the bad reputation as happened in Christchurch this week. Neighbours grow resentful and scared. Elderly people who have lived happily in one home for decades feel forced to sell and move out, meaning communities that are already fractured and transient become even more fragmented and the wider social cost escalates.
Sometimes a breakthrough can be hard-won. After months and months of living next door to behaviour that Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb agreed ranges from unacceptable to criminal, highly frustrated residents finally met with Housing NZ (HNZ), police and the MP on Friday.
The dispute is over a relatively new, high density HNZ property in the low-income suburb of Phillipstown. Neighbours talked of drug dealing and drug taking, domestic violence, burglaries and assault. The image of human excrement smeared on a car got everyone’s attention.
HNZ confirmed that there had been 14 complaints since the complex opened less than two years ago, including ‘‘claims of shouting, swearing, slamming doors and noise, a dog in the complex, drunkenness and alleged drug use in one of the flats [and] an assault on a tenant at the street front’’.
Neighbours who were afraid to give their names to media because they feared reprisals also related their ongoing difficulties with HNZ. They spoke of an agency that was hard to communicate with and said that months would pass without HNZ responding. The HNZ Christchurch area manager explained that the agency had been very busy in the lead-up to Christmas.
Since The Press reported on the Phillipstown property on Wednesday, more people have come forward with nearly identical stories from other suburbs. They fear that HNZ is creating high-density ghettos or slums that go unmonitored. There is a suggestion that HNZ has been too hands-off and that tenants are simply dumped without many resources in neighbourhoods that might be unfamiliar or where they might have criminal associates.
The problem, as Webb explained this week, is that HNZ is just a landlord much like any other. It has no special powers to evict tenants on the basis of complaints. Neither is there any requirement by HNZ to inform neighbours when a social housing complex is opening in a community.
Arrests followed this week’s media reports, but this should not be the end of the story in Phillipstown or elsewhere.
It seems clear that HNZ and other state agencies must take more responsibility for their tenants, some of whom obviously struggle with alcohol and drug issues, unemployment and low incomes, as well as listening to and acting on the concerns of those living near them.
There may need to be a policy change but it is equally clear that the months of silence that some residents say they experienced from HNZ is not good enough.