The Herald reports:

A group of Auckland families are facing a bleak Christmas in cramped motel rooms that are costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each week. The Herald visited a motel in South Auckland today where several tenants have been housed under the Ministry of Social Development’s emergency accommodation scheme. Hazel Waipouri and her two granddaughters have been living in a single-bedroom unit at the motel, which the Herald has agreed not to identify, for four months.

Why is she in emergency accommodation? Why did the Herald not spend 30 seconds searching the Tenancy Tribunal and find this eviction from a state house for unpaid rent.

Now remember as a state house they get a massive subsidy so the rent is only 25% of their income. If they are on a benefit, it can be paid direct from the benefit. The rent was only $52 a week but even that was unpaid for at least 15 weeks. And now she wails to the media that the motel is costing taxpayers $1,000 a week.

Joyleen Taihia, her partner and four children have been living in a two-bedroom motel unit for 11 weeks, at a cost of more than $2000 a week.

And she has been to the Tenancy Tribunal three times. Unpaid rent of $3,050 in April 2016.

This is frankly terrible journalism without a shred of research. Why not ask the first person quoted why they didn’t pay a miniscule $52 a week in rent?

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