Continuing in our series of Migrant Tales – first hand accounts of the migrant experience of New Zealand.

Today’s tale was sent in by a European migrant who bought his first home in the South Taranaki Bight area.

After living in New Zealand for 14 years the author thought he knew the place well, but still got taken for a ride. The town he chose was a Black Power stronghold and the enjoyment of his property is blighted as a result.

He wants to share his experience with other migrants, so that they may learn from it.

Migrant First Home Buyers beware of the areas you are intending to buy your first home and thoroughly investigate the news, blogs, speak to neighbours before buying your property and spending your hard earned money.

I have lived in New Zealand for 14 years and bought my first home last June in South Taranaki Bight Area, in a relatively established and moving town, with a population of 45.000. However gangs are prominent in the area and quite often control entire streets. I was not aware I was moving into a Black Power controlled pad. Though I have worked elsewhere in the country for that period and visited my first home regularly to do renovation, mow lawns, and get it nice and comfortable to live in and work in this town, there’s been a persistent unrest, disturbance, property damage, burglary caused by my imminent neighbours, exactly their teenants.

I had their alcohol bottles and private correspondence thrown on my lawn, gang parties with loud music hosted regularly, my windows smashed by alcohol bottles, my house burglarised. Youth congregates at the neighbouring property just meters from my main entry door – this is the spot they choose to consume alcohol and obviously commit crimes against my property. They are constantly invasive and I can hear them talking quite often about my house. Jealousy and my elementary possessions are the trigger. They say they’ve got nothing. They say I should call the cops then. They call me “shit brother”. They watched me from their windows and tried to pick on me, whenever I was here, with no luck obviously as I was warned they are gang associates. Patches are quite often worn at this property.

All this happens in a so called main street, well lit, with a lot of traffic, and in a so called “criminal corridor”, police is often in the area for arrests and is aware most of the problems I have with my house are coming from the tenants just next door.

This is not counting moral damages. I spent my first Christmas Eve “at home”, the gangs were congregating right outside my fence, what a great celebration!

The property value is therefore 10 times cheaper than in urban Auckland areas for the same build and land area. There is no peace, no privacy, most of all there’s no sense of safety. There is no enjoyment whatsoever of your first home.

When the house was being purchased, the real estate agent described neighbours as being “good”. The house was on the market for nearly a year, but once an offer was made, the real estate agent informed me there was a “stand off” about the house being sold to me and “another offer” put through – a clever sell trick to make sure I sit there and pray that this house is sold to me.

Because I am not New Zealand born, I was completely unaware local gangs may be a problem. Now I have to deal with it.

This is another great milestone in my personal “work AND SETTLE in New Zealand” immigration story, the deal we had with New Zealand government when my residence visa was issued nearly 15 years ago.

I’m terrorised and speachless. I have never walked in this town safely, never visited a pub, a park,a cinema. I just don’t know now when and how am I going to resolve this criminal smelling mess. I’m an educated electrical engineer, this culture is alien and threatening to me.

Related

Outspoken Ex-Mayor Says “Many Small Towns in New Zealand are Failed Communities”

Outspoken New Zealand politician, broadcaster and writer/columnist Michael Laws, has made a scathing criticism of small town New Zealand in an column headed “Failed NZ towns attract losers“…

Laws dryly observes that Kawhia’s local cop, Perry Griffin, is the third officer to be run out of town “by local thugs” (see video above) in the last ten years…

In his report Laws highlights the lack of resources in New Zealand towns that have been effectively abandoned by the state. The poverty stricken areas, where generations of families survive on a combination of welfare and crime, simply do not have the funds to fight crime effectively. Yet this is in a country with a GDP of $142 billion, where does the money go? Mostly on welfare payments we guess.

You may not be headed for Kawhia, so how do you know where to avoid? Laws gives us a clue

“The Bay of Plenty and the East Coast will provide plenty of examples, and the west coast of both the North and South islands will add to the score.”

“But hang on“, I hear you ask, “doesn’t New Zealand have a falling rate of reported crime. Surely most places are ok?

Think again why those reported rates are falling, could it be that communities either have no-one to report the crime to, or there are whole communities that have no faith in a justice system that has abandoned them to gang and mob rule?…read on

“Small Dark Lives – Small Town Hopelessness Breeds Evil”

“…OPINION:Featherston makes you shake your head and wonder. How can a small town, population 2325, get to have such rotten things happen in it? …But the south Wairarapa town, with the population (declining) of a big-city high school, has a dark side, as so many rural towns do. There are too many people living idle lives there, without purpose or dignity – if we can use such a big word.

Four people were found guilty last week of murdering disabled local man Glen Jones, a supermarket worker, in a vigilante attack. A woman had accused him of rape, but how much truth there was to that claim is unclear. His killers, one of whom put on her “stomping boots” for the event, await sentencing…read on

Paradise Lost, Crisis In Small Town New Zealand. “Sex for drugs. Organised fights. Suicide. Issues that no town wants to deal with, especially when kids as young as 14 are involved. Kawerau was once a busy milling town, a piece of paradise in the Bay of Plenty…”

Vandals Wrecking Kaikoura – Township Already Bypassed in Favour Of Other Towns “Pity the long suffering tourists in the little township of Kaikoura that are having their holidays ruined by constant vandalism. In an article headed “Vandals wrecking Kaikoura image” 15 Jan 2014, the Kaikoura Star drew attention to multiple instances of mindless vandalism and theft directed against tourists and their vehicles.The situation has become so bad one accommodation provider has demanded CCTV cameras be installed – much like tourist towns in other developed countries do…”

New Zealand Culture is Brutal, Something is Seriously Wrong. “I am a New Zealander but I do not “fit in” to the NZ way of life/psyche and am planning to leave asap with my family. It has taken quite a while to get to the place of realizing that there is something seriously wrong with this country, that is is not just all “in my head” or my own personal failing that I do not like life here…”

Pukekohe Kids Hijack Car At Gunpoint, “Get out of the car bitch” Elderly woman hijacked by three kids, the youngest was 8.

Kids in New Zealand, the village lets them down  Parents in Whangarei organising fights between their kids so that they can sort out their differences.

Terrified Chilean Tourist Punched, Robbed In Nelson “Three teenagers punched and robbed a terrified Chilean tourist in broad daylight at the Church Steps on Saturday evening in another of the alcohol-fuelled attacks that are blighting Nelson.”

Rotorua Stabbing “Indicative” Of Youth Issues In City Community leaders called for the Government to tackle youth and alcohol problems in the city.

NZ A Great Place to Raise Kids? Porirua’s Midnight Express Blog written about an alarming increase in children committing violent crime and robberies around New Zealand.

Kaitaia’s Kids’ Drunken Night Of Rampage. Mob Rule Residents of the small Northland town of Kaitaia suffered $10,000 in damages after a ‘group’ of  10 tanked up kids rampaged through the town for three and a half hours one Monday night.

Booze linked to teen crime in Christchurch 15 and 16-year-olds appearing in the Youth Court on rape and sexual-assault charges.