[Epoch Times August 02, 2021](The Epoch Times reporter An Qi New Zealand compiled a report) The government paid an unknown amount to the motel to make up for the losses caused by emergency housing customers. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) does not record the amount spent, nor can it give a total.
The National Party’s Nicola Willis asked MSD to provide some information about discussions between them and their suppliers in January and February of this year about “damage costs or concerns about bad behavior on their premises”.
But the request was rejected because MSD could not answer either.
It turns out that doing so requires staff to manually review more than 5,000 personal emails and file records, which is not in the greater public interest. Because when the relevant payments were made, the relevant payments were only classified as “other emergency subsidies”, and there was no special note whether it was related to the emergency housing damage.
It is difficult for MSD to give a figure on how much it actually lost, but said that the ministry will “ensure that customers promise to pay for damages to motels that have evidence of damage and other related costs.”
MSD Minister Carmel Sepuloni (Carmel Sepuloni) admitted that this is “not ideal” and she hopes that there will be a system to better monitor these matters.
Some stories of tenants and motel owners were reported on RNZ. They told about crimes and gang harassment that happened constantly. For example, they were threatened with a knife. In one case, the room was burned down.
Emergency and transitional housing costs the government 1 million yuan a day, so some people call on the government to better supervise places that are considered dangerous or crime-ridden. There is no contract between MSD and the homeowner who provides these rooms, and no specific obligation to pay millions of dollars.
Some motels also stepped up and said that they were being demonized while trying to be kind to their guests. They were frequently associated with crime, intimidation and violence, which caused some people to lose their business altogether.
In the last three months of last year, the government provided about 82.5 million yuan in emergency housing subsidies to 8,500 customers.
Editor in charge: Lan Ke
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