Friday, 3 October 2025

Only After Garage Fire is Kāinga Ora Able to Remove 'Neighbors from Hell'

Radio New Zealand

December 22, 2022

NZ / Nate McKinnon

PHOTO: NZ / Nate McKinnon

Kāinga Ora has admitted it made mistakes and could have acted faster to solve problems with tenants described as “neighbours from hell”.

Up to a dozen people lived permanently at the Babich Hills address in West Auckland - a number that swelled to 20 at times - and they subjected local residents to a year of misery.

They occupied a six-bedroom property in Ranui, where the average asking price for a large house is $1.5 million, between July 2019 and October 2021.

They moved out after a garage fire made the home uninhabitable.

Kāinga Ora admits during this time it received “a significant number of complaints” about their behaviour.

“There was constant fights at their house and around about 20 people living at the property from time to time,” an immediate neighbour - who RNZ has agreed not to identify - said.

“There were many cars turning up and it was starting to become a kind of a junk area, you know, with broken cars being parked on the kerb, rubbish lying on the street, parties breaking out onto the streets.

“Personally, I must have called noise control about 30 times.”

There were allegedly also violent threats.

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