Nearly 7000 Housing NZ tenants known to have paying boarders are not required to pay extra rent. HNZ figures show that at October 31, 6931 tenants declared they had paying boarders. A month ago HNZ told the Sunday Star-Times that 1109 tenants declared paying boarders, including 1081 tenants who didn't have to pay extra rent.
HNZ communications director Tom Bridgman said it had discovered that the earlier information was incorrect.
The correct figures show 5401 tenants had one paying boarder, 1279 had two, 211 had three, 98 had four, one had five and one had six boarders.
Most are in some of New Zealand's poorest suburbs, where there are long waiting lists of people seeking State housing.
The area with most tenants with boarders was Mangere (518), followed by Otara (389%, Porirua (833), Hamilton (320), Manurewa (800), Mt Roskill (280) and Panmure (262) About 10% of HNZ's 66,000 tenants had declared paying boarders, and moot were family members, Bridgman said.
Where tenants have one or two paying boarders, the board payments are not taken into account when tenants' income-related rents are calculated.
If they have three or more boarders, 8296 of the board payments received from the third and subsequent boarders is included in the rent calculation.
The policy on boarders was now being reviewed as part of the overall review of the accommodation supplement which was just beginning, Bridgman said.
Auckland church and community groups have told the Sunday Star-Times that some people were using State houses to profit, cheating other people out of much-needed homes in poor neighbourhoods.
Some tenants are believed to be charging $120 a week for a room.
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