A stagnant economy. Soaring unemployment. Lockouts to reduce working conditions. And now, families reduced to living in garages because Housing New Zealand has abandoned them:
Lori Hiroti, 27, and her three children, Temorehu, 9, Arreis-Jayde, 4, and Hoani-Puru, 3, have been living in their aunt's state home garage for the past month after accommodation with family north of Huntly became unavailable.No-one should be forced to live like this in New Zealand. Stopping this sort of poverty is why we have a welfare system and a housing system. But instead of helping them, Housing New Zealand served notice on the relative who had taken them in, ordering them out on the street. Its totally heartless. But its just how our public services operate now under National.Miss Hiroti has outstanding Housing NZ debt which she was paying off regularly, but she said with three children living in a garage, she felt Hamilton's Housing NZ staff should have taken her situation more seriously, and helped her rather than "being patronising".
HNZ yesterday apologised to the family and arranged an urgent needs assessment to be done today – a day after the Waikato Times got involved.
