Elderly Tāmaki tenant’s fight against eviction continues
Elderly Tāmaki tenant’s fight against eviction
continues
Niki Rauti, an elderly social housing tenant
will be in court at 2:15pm today to appeal a decision
regarding the legitimacy of her eviction.
If Niki
loses this court case, the TRC will win the right to bring
in bailiffs and police to evict Niki from her home and
change the locks.
A half day has been set in the
District Court for an appeal against the Tenancy
Tribunal’s decision that TRC’s eviction was lawful.
Niki’s application is that the eviction process followed
was not lawful and her eviction notice should be ruled
inapplicable.*
The Tāmaki Regeneration Company (TRC)
want Niki out urgently because the developers, who will
transform the public land where her house sits into million
dollar mansions, are placing pressure on the
TRC.
Creating Communities, who will be developing
Niki’s house, have been selling “affordable” homes
from $950,000 (see attachment) just around the corner
from her Taniwha Street home.
The National
government’s new housing policy is based on the urban
regeneration experiment of Tāmaki.
This experiment
has failed to produce affordable housing and instead has
been a state-led gentrification process which has uprooted
low-income tenants during a housing crisis.
Niki has
been resisting her eviction from her home in Tāmaki where
tenants have been evicted, state housing privatised and the
tenancies sold.
Supporters of Niki will be outside
court to send a clear message to the politicians that nobody
should be evicted during a housing crisis. Other supporters
will be at Niki’s home.
Join Niki and stand up
against the privatisation of state housing and the
displacement of people from their communities and
homes.
*Tāmaki Regeneration Ltd. is the landlord
and owner of Niki’s former-state house home, however
Tāmaki Housing Association Limited Partnership (THALP) gave
Niki notice of eviction. The legal argument is then not that
THALP gave her notice (they are entitled to act as the agent
of TRL), but that Niki was never notified that Tāmaki
Housing Association Limited Partnership was the agent of her
landlord.
ENDS