Hundreds of state house residents are renting out rooms in their homes, prompting claims that they are profiteering off the taxpayer-funded system.
Housing NZ says 1109 state house tenants have declared they have paying boarders, but almost none of them pay extra rent to the government despite pocketing cash from the boarding arrangement.
Tenants are allowed up to two paying boarders before Housing NZ charges extra rent.
But community workers say the number of state house boarders may be much higher, as most tenants do not obey the requirement to declare their boarders to Housing NZ.
There are no penalties for tenants caught with undeclared boarders.
Five tenants have four paying boarders each, in areas where 221 families are on 'A' and 'B' priority waiting lists for matching properties. There are 467 lower priority candidates waiting for identical properties in the same areas.
Some tenants are renting rooms to foreign language students.
Pastor Alfred Ngaro, of the Tamaki Community Church in Auckland, said he knew of two cases in his neighbourhood where Housing NZ tenants had accommodated foreign students as 'homestays'.
In one case, a family put three children in one room to create space for the student. In the other, the student was charged $120 a week for a room, which would cover much of the $150 to $300 a week rent a family might pay for a three-bedroom state house.
Ngaro said some people were using their state houses to profit, cheating others out of much-needed homes in the process.
'The system wasn't set up so that others could profit through entrepreneurial means,' he said. 'If they've got a room spare, they should be in a house that better suits their needs.'
Many Pacific families had relatives or other people from their home countries boarding with them. He believed few declared their boarders to Housing NZ.
A Housing NZ spokeswoman said the corporation did not record how many tenants were caught with undeclared 'But it's believed to be very few,' she said.
Many boarders were non-dependent family members of tenants, although the corporation did not know how many were relatives and how many were strangers. The boarders in the properties with four boarders were all related to the tenants.
There was no limit to how much board tenants could charge, she said. 'There may be times when the board contribution is more than the rent.'
For the third and subsequent boarders, 62% of the board paid was counted as income for the purposes of calculating the tenant's rent.
She said 1.7% of Housing NZ's 66,000 tenants had official boarders - 905 had one, 176 had two, 23 had three, and five had four.
National Party housing spokesman Phil Heatley said it was 'entirely inappropriate' for any state housing tenant to have multiple boarders.
'Housing NZ clients should not be profiteering out of a taxpayer-funded privilege,' he said. 'The size of the house should match the size of the family.'
He said Housing NZ should impose penalties on tenants who did not declare their boarders.
Auckland sickness beneficiary John Essie Lafaikitama, 59, boarded with a state house tenant, paying $100 for a room in her two-bedroom Glen Innes apartment. He did not know how much she paid in rent, or whether she had told Housing NZ about him.
The spokeswoman said there was no rule of thumb on how boarders were treated, and Housing NZ looked at each situation on a case-by-case basis.
It would generally encourage tenants with non-related boarders to transfer to smaller accommodation, but not in cases where the boarder was a relative. It would rarely accept new tenants with a non-related boarder, except under exceptional circumstances such as health reasons.
The spokeswoman said Housing NZ did not give Inland Revenue details of board paid for tax purposes.
The areas with the highest proportion of state tenants with boarders were Bay of Plenty with 3% and East Cape/Hawke's Bay with 2.7%.Need help or
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