Knightmare in Aranui Social Housing Complex: "Wake Up", says Pensioner to Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust about Elder Welfare
Pensioner Maureen* wants out of her social housing complex. She lives in Aranui in an Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust complex, where she keeps her curtains closed night and day and has turned into a recluse. She’s had enough. “…I’m just trying to get out,” says Maureen. “I just want out of there. I don’t want to go into a bloody rough area though…[out of the frying pan] “…into the fire”. But Maureen’s terrified that by speaking up, she’ll be identified.
This article is the second about a OCHT complex and focuses on Maureen’s plight and her wish to leave her nightmarish tenancy in Knightsbridge Lane. It also includes the OCHT’s response.
(* Maureen and daughter Ngaire have asked not to be identified and have had their names changed.)
First Impressions
After returning to Christchurch, Maureen needed social housing and sought help from the OCHT. The first home she saw was “not very nice at all the first one I went to. There was rubbish all over the place. No, outside. If I looked out my lounge window, it was just all, right down the fences, just rubbish, rubbish.”
Maureen told the trust she didn’t want it and thought she’d “go down the bottom of the list”. “I think they might have done that [put her down the bottom of the list.” This made her cry. “But then they rung me in morning and offered me this flat where I’m now in and I said I would take it.” “They rung me up at half past 8 the next morning, because I rung them that night, that I had a look at it and said I didn’t want it.”
The trust told her the property was a “lovely complex…[with] elderly people to talk to.”
Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
Maureen accepted the tenancy in Knightsbridge Lane, a complex tucked off, out of sight, in a cul-de-sac branching off Pages Road on the main thoroughfare to New Brighton and the coastline.
Initially Knightsbridge Lane met Maureen’s expectations. Her neighbour was “lovely”. But after she died of cancer, a new tenant, who had left Hilmorton Hospital, moved in next door. Maureen found the woman’s behaviour was unpredictable and she would yell at people. But her troubles had only begun.
Begging at Her Front Door
A man began to come to her door to ask for food and cigarettes. “He come probably only 4 times may be, like 4 to 6 times”. “He come looking to see if I had any food or smokes, mainly”. “I thought it was smokes that he wanted”. “I didn’t open my door or nothing.”
Daughter Ngaire says the man has “formed a relationship with this lady” in the complex. “When he comes to, he’s intoxicated and just knocks on the door even though you’ve told him you don’t smoke or haven’t got money for food, he comes back. It’s as though he doesn’t remember.”
Drug Dealing in the Lane
Maureen is convinced the lane has been used for drug dealing for several years.
“I’d be sitting there, and I could hear the motorbikes coming up or cars. And I’d have a look out the window and they were there. And then somebody got out of the car and run into the flat, and then come straight back out and away down the drive again. I don’t know there’s so much now, because I don’t, I keep my lace curtains pulled…”
“Cars come up and down the driveway”, says Ngaire. “And then people run up the driveway, do the bizzo,…yeah do the dealing.”
“But not as many cars. It’s still happening on scooters. And the odd car comes up but not the same cars.”
The Burned Down House
One of the houses in the complex aroused Maureen and Ngaire’s suspicion. “People were coming in and out going into her flat, out of the cars coming up the drive,” says Ngaire. Then in November 2022, the flat went up in flames.
“…Everything’s gone,” says Maureen. All. “They kicked her out. She was in there but she’d gone to sleep or out with...Then, [a passer-by] was walking down the road. …[He] got that lady out of the flat. He got her out.”
Ngaire was alerted to the blaze. On arrival, she saw the fire service had blocked off the lane. Ngaire couldn’t reach her mother and didn’t know which house had been engulfed. Both mother and daughter were distressed. Then, a third party intervened, allowing Ngaire through. She found Maureen safe and well.
People Knocking on Her Windows
“It’s about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning. I might be asleep. …Nightmare. Nightmare. …No, I can hear it, but I don’t know if it’s knocking or somebody - oh, I don’t know. I can’t explain it. It stopped. It’s only been once since the old man died from the Tangi. I’ve only heard it once. About 5 or 6 times.”
Ngaire says “that’s still happening…she mentioned that someone was knocking on her window the night before, early hours of the morning. So, it’s pretty distressing not knowing. Or the knocking on the windows…Bedroom windows.”
Gang Presence
After a serious event involving a tenant had occurred, a gang “just took over the whole complex,” says Ngaire. “There was, like, a hund…I’d say over a hundred of them. They put up tarps, all down the back of their cars, their motorbikes. Just took, filled up the whole carpark. They set up gazebos and that, where they ate their food and all that, just by another set of flats.”
During this time, “I just kept myself inside. I didn’t bother about them,” says Maureen.
The driveway was blocked off and other tenants had to park on the roadside. Ngaire couldn’t drive her mother up to her home.” “You couldn’t get mum up and down the driveway with mum in the car. She had to walk from the down the end of the driveway…” “You feel intimidated with people standing around with gang patches and tattoos all over their faces.” “…Elderly people shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
The gang presence lasted a week to about 10 days. Ngaire complained to the trust, but a visiting tenancy manager allegedly said “ ‘they were being well behaved’ and just left them to it”. But Ngaire alleges the gang members drank through the night one night “into the next day”. During that time, one of the men went through a window of a recently vacated flat.
Ngaire says the daughter of a fellow female tenant had “turned up to see” her mother and then removed her. “I’m glad that she did actually”, says Ngaire, “because she would have been in flat when they went through the bedroom, lounge window. So, being 80, I wouldn’t like my mother to go through that.”
The Trust
After the house fire and the event involving the gang presence, according to Maureen, nobody from the trust contacted her. She feels the trust doesn’t care.
Regarding the way the trust is addressing the problems in the complex, Ngaire responded “I don’t think they’re addressing them to the standard that they need to be addressed. Like, people shouldn’t have to live in fear what’s going around them to feel safe in where they live.”
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