The government today announced Housing NZ tenants who were evicted because of a flawed methamphetamine testing policy will have their incurred debts wiped.
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni says about 900 people will be contacted over the coming weeks and a dedicated team from the Ministry of Social Development will work to ascertain how much debt they have incurred as a direct result of the testing, undertaken during the previous government.
Sepuloni also says those who have already begun repaying the debts will have those payments refunded. The government is not yet able to provide an estimate of how much the wiping off the debt will cost.
"We know that the nine hundred clients we're talking about...carry about $3.2 million worth of debt between them. But, not all of that debt will be associated with the meth testing and eviction that ensued," she told Te Māori News.
Green Party co-leader Mārama Davidson says the move is "the least we need to be able to provide for those whānau".
Davidson says families accumulated some hefty debts, which some have struggled to pay back.
"Moving costs, school uniforms, replacement furniture, rent and bond in advance, that created incredible hardship for whānau, for far too many of those whānau who through no fault of their own were kicked out."
Davidson has seen the effects the policy has had on Māori whānau in her community.
"I was knocking on doors here in Wordsworth [Rd], in Manurewa," she says, "One of the neighbours came running out to me when he recognised my face and said 'I'm upset because a really young whānau with young tamariki two doors down were evicted in the middle of the night', they actually had police over. He said to me, 'Mārama, those whānau never went near meth. They never went near meth.' But that whānau, they had a takahi on their mana because of that."
The government has reassured those people who will have their debt repayments reimbursed that they won't have their existing MSD payments affected, with Cabinet agreeing to exempt these payments from MSD asset and income testing for 12 months.
MSD will be making contact with those affected from April onwards.