Kainga Ora Scandal: My Parents Situation

View from my Parents Kitchen Window a few days ago

I have been highlighting my Parents' Nightmare situation on Blogs (esp The Standard) & Twitter since April 2019 & speculated right from the start that this is probably happening throughout New Zealand, including to other elderly people ... really relieved that this absolute scandal is finally, finally seeing the light of day.

My Parents (aged 90 & 91) have been forced to endure 4 years of constant, prolonged violent intimidation and extreme anti-social behaviour (the latter including being very regularly kept awake until dawn, sometimes over 2 or 3 consecutive days) from the Kainga Ora tenant on the other side of their dividing-wall in a two-house Unit (My Parents have lived in their house for almost 60 years & have owned it since the 1970s).

This Nightmare situation has resulted in enforced chronic sleep deprivation over a very prolonged period (with all the associated symptoms of extreme exhaustion), severe stress & genuine fears for personal safety on a continuous basis (resulting in all the profoundly negative health consequences that inevitably follow ... my Mother, usually healthy, has had to be hospitalised twice in the last 14 months, each time for a week or so, coming very close to dying on the first of these occasions & bordering on suffering a stroke on the second ... & my Father, who has always been in exceptionally good health, has very recently suffered a heart attack).

They have been placed in a completely powerless position ... "thrown to the wolves", as I've described it a number of times on social media. I've kept very detailed Diary-style entries of everything they've been forced to endure (I've personally witnessed a good deal of it) & so have a rich body of evidence ... precise dates, times, exact details of what happened.

The Police have had to be called multiple, multiple times over the last 4 years, by my Parents, by me & also by concerned long-term neighbours [the latter have also suffered enormously, but obviously not to the same extent as my Parents].

A brief comment like this can't even remotely do justice to the enormity of the situation ... they've felt absolutely overwhelmed, like being under constant seige / in a state of paralysis ... & it's an on-going situation ... albeit currently somewhat mitigated with the tenant largely away for the past 9 or so weeks.

From my significant number of detailed diary-entries over the last 4 years, I'll give readers a brief quantitative overview of the major violent intimidation & some associated details.

Based on my diary entires, my Parents have suffered precisely 116 - let me repeat that ... 116 !!! - really large-scale explosions of violent intimidation since their neighbouring tenant arrived in late 2017. Together with several hundred mid-level, more minor & sporadic acts of violence & intimidation. The latter occur on an almost daily basis, except when he is away. This tenant has always been very violent & aggressive in his everyday behaviour, clearly a deeply-ingrained facet of his personality. Both he & his former Partner are well known to the Police & he appears to be on parole ... he is loosely associated with the Mongrel Mob ... but doesn't appear to be an actual member.

I'll just outline here the large-scale intimidation ... but there's a lot more to say ... it's a multifaceted Nightmare situation that goes beyond the little prick's relentless violence.

In our efforts to try & get something done, I've tried to be as precise as possible by categorising the Really Big eruptions of violent intimidation into two groups:

(1) Major Explosions (these are the very worst ones, including - on top of the 7 characteristic features I outline further below - bitter, visceral threats of violence aimed at my Parents, vandalism of my Parents' property & a direct imminent threat to their physical safety ... there have been 18 of these Major Explosions over the last 4 years)

and

(2) Substantial Eruptions (these share almost all the characteristics of the Major Explosions but (in contrast to the latter) take place almost entirely indoors, on the other side of the dividing-wall ... these substantial eruptions are really horrendous, deeply psychologically stressful, multi-hour acts of relentless intimidation but - because they're confined to indoors - my Parents don't experience quite the feeling of immediate physical danger that they do when he rushes outside towards their house in full psycho mode ... & they are bereft of the vandalism associated with some of the Major Explosions (which take place both in & outdoors) ... by my count there have been precisely 98 Substantial Eruptions over the past 4 years).

His two initial eruptions of violence involved him in major violent confrontations with other people (in both cases, other Maori Men who were probably also Kianga Ora tenants from the broader neighbourhood), followed by all kinds of aggression & mayhem out on the road through the early hours & subsequently smashing up the inside of his house, leaving my Mother shaking with fear at 6am - but from mid-2018 onwards his violent intimidation has been squarely aimed at my Parents.

In the very worst of the Major Explosions (and there have been 7 of these = out of 18), in the midst of his multi-hour intimidation, he has gone right along their fenceline, down to their letterbox & driveway, aggressively strutting back & forth straight outside their house, violently swearing & making loud threats - just the most blatant violent intimidation - interspersed with loud declarations of dominance / fighting prowess (essentially Maori Warrior-style 'Proclaiming') ... and on 3 separate occasions he has actually rushed onto their front lawn in the middle of his explosion & vandalised their property (in one of the worst cases, for instance, smashing their concrete fence with a sledgehammer at 2am (in the midst of a very long explosion of intimidation throughout the early hours of the morning, that included violently assaulting his then girlfriend), followed by ripping my Parents' letterbox off the fence & then throwing it onto their front lawn ... all documented by Police).

On two separate occasions, my Parents feared for their safety to the extent that they were forced to flee to their neighbours across the road (we're talking about a 90 & 91 yo here !) & they then rang the Police from there.

Typically, his 116 large-scale explosions (both Major Explosions and Substantial Eruptions) have lasted anywhere from 2 to 6 hours ... they have often erupted in the evening around the 6-11pm mark ... but a clear majority have started later into the night (usually beginning around 11pm to 1am) & continue (usually relentlessly) right through the early hours of the morning, in a number of cases until dawn.

The vast majority have involved the neighbour acting by himself, but a handful have also involved a mate / associate / relative (always the same one) ... and, according to feedback from Police, they often happen after he (sometimes with his mate) have been drinking spirits heavily for hours, usually elsewhere before arriving home. On the other hand, the more sporadic day-to-day violent intimidation clearly doesn't involve alcohol ... so he is obviously highly predisposed to violence, with spirits fuelling his really big multi-hour explosions.

Obviously, there's no way I can go through the details of each & every large-scale explosion here (although they are available for anyone who wants them), but there are a clear set of defining characteristics that are absolutely typical of both his Major Explosions and Substantial Eruptions (most have involved every single one of these features) ... And, again, these are all going on - in different combinations & usually relentlessly - over multiple hours:

(1) Uber-Violent slamming into the dividing-wall with full force (punching, thumping, pounding and full body-slamming)

(2) Throwing very heavy objects or weights at the dividing-wall with full force (we don't know exactly what the objects are but the noise is always so shocking that it sounds like some kind of heavy steel builder's tool or similar ... like something really heavy & substantial being thrown or slammed into the wall with full force ... like he's trying to smash a hole right through the dividing-wall ... just makes my Parents jump 10 feet in the air with total shock)

(3) Driving large or heavy objects (presumably the same things as above) into the bedroom floorboards with all his strength

(4) Doing very aggressive haka-like stomping in the bedroom right next to the dividing-wall with full force ... clearly aiming to scare & intimidate.

(5) Aggressively punching internal walls in a rapid-fire way

(6) Really violently slamming the front door & internal doors with full force multiple times in quick succession

(7) All accompanied by a constant stream of loud & aggressive swearing & shouting, always extreme verbal abuse, both through the dividing-wall [which has no soundproofing] and (in the Major Explosions) outside both his & my Parents' houses, very bitter & venomous ... (during most of the 18 Major Explosions, he has worked himself up into a frenzy, rushing in & out his front door, really aggressively shouting the F-word multiple times to himself in quick succession & shouting threats of violence at them ... really psychotic territory. This is all entirely out of the blue & unprovoked ... my Parents are about the most sympathetic / understanding people you will meet ... lifelong Social Democrats / Socialists who go out of their way for others).

And, as I've mentioned, in the very worst of the 18 Major Explosions, this little prick struts back & forth outside my Parents' house, usually through the early hours of the morning, swearing, threatening & (in a handful of cases) rushing onto & vandalising their property.

Additionally, in the small minority of occasions when his mate (possibly a relative ?) has joined him in the violent intimidation, they usually spend (in addition to all the violence inside) several hours slamming things (often sounds like metal rods or wooden pylons) with full force into their front steps, into the concrete of their front lawn carpark & onto the road, while violently swearing & making threats with visceral aggression.

Like I say, there's One Hell of a lot more I want to say on this ... including the ultimately dismissive Kainga Ora (& later Maori social housing provider) response to attempts by a range of concerned people to get this neighbour moved or evicted ... 3 very good Policewomen (one of whom was a neighbour through 2018 & witnessed much of his violence), a social worker attached to my parents' local medical centre specialising in the prevention of elder abuse, a nurse, various long-standing neighbours (who all gave evidence) & a few others.

My Parents are not only lifelong Labour voters but also long-term Party members with a long family history in the Labour Movement ... they've been viciously betrayed by this Govt ... having voted Left all my life, I swung into Non-Voting at the last Election.

Having casually / suddenly dumped these Walking-Talking Horror Stories on unsuspecting streets & neighbourhoods ...the exclusive focus on the rights of violent anti-social tenants with "complex needs" from responsible Minister Poto Williams & various Senior HNZ Managers is beyond sickening.