Raymond Stewart

I am retired single man who is caring for his adult son who has a disability. My sole income is my superannuation.

I am 67 years old with type 2 diabetes, and I also struggle with the pain of arthritis. My adult son is receiving a supportive living allowance and is unable to work.

I had been receiving allowances from the Government to help look after my son on my own as a single parent since 2013.

My allowance payments ended a few months before my son reached 18 years of age.

As I share accommodation with my son, I receive a lower payment on my superannuation, on the pretext that I would be sharing the cost of accommodation.

I have rented the property that I am in from Housing New Zealand, and my rent was 25 percent of my income. When my son turned 18, he received the Supported Living Allowance from Work and Income.

I felt, therefore, as he was receiving an income, he would be able to contribute to the cost of his accommodation, food, power, phone and electricity.

So, looking at how much those costs were, I halved all the expenses and charged him board to make up for the loss of income from benefits I had been receiving when he was a child. This was an informal arrangement.

In my income declaration, I mentioned how much I was receiving in board.

This year, the Government changed the rules. In the past you could have up to four boarders, and this would not be tallied as income.

This year, the Government said any board or shared household expenses would be regarded as income.

The outcome of that decision, and the decision to increase the rent for Housing New Zealand from 25 percent to 30 percent of your income, resulted in MSD increasing my rent by 250 percent.

This was crippling for me, so I rang MSD to see if some mistake was made, but no, that would be precisely what would happen.

I was mystified as to how they worked this out and sought to get clarification as to exactly how this increase was justified, but they would not explain to me how they arrived at the figure they did, only said it was because of the board I charged.

As I pushed against this and became more desperate in my tone, they hung on me saying I was escalating. Which is to say they did not like my tone. I did not swear or accuse anyone personally of anything.

I thought about it over the weekend and rang them back on Monday telling them that I would no longer charge board.

This would be extremely hard for me to do. I then said to them that my son would buy his own food and would pay into the Mercury account his share of that bill, which includes electricity, phone and internet.

This was unacceptable to MSD. Food was not an issue, but the Mercury bill was. They said that as the bill was a household expense, my son contributing to the bill would be regarded as an addition to my income, from which they would increase my rent.

I tried to tie them down to a definition of board, but they would not answer me on that issue, nor would they tell me by what legislation they were defining board.

Apparently, it is anything they say it is. There is no difference between shared expense and me charging board.

That begs the question as to why I am receiving a lower rate of superannuation because I am sharing accommodation.

It does not take into account that I am caring for my son as well.

Cooking, cleaning, taking him to appointments etc. as well as the extra expense of paying all utility expenses and paying the rent.

MSD told me that because I had decided to stop asking my son for board, they would reassess my rent and that it would take 10 days to do so.

I know my rent will increase by 30 percent for sure but it may well be more than that because I do not know how they will assess my income for this financial year.

I accept that the Government needs to reel in its expenditure, but there are other ways of doing it than pushing increased payments on the most vulnerable in society.

This is only going to add fuel to the belief that National rewards the rich by taking from the poor.

This will certainly alienate 39,000-40,000 votes from people who depend on Housing New Zealand for affordable housing and push this country towards left-wing parties who will throw this county into bankruptcy.

New Zealand is a very expensive country to live in, and we have a huge brain drain going on with many recent migrants to this country leaving as well, more than are coming in.

If they believe that people like me who have worked hard most of their lives are just bottom feeders or useless eaters, that doesn’t deserve a fair go, then they need to think again because we who are vulnerable in New Zealand can vote.

I could not afford to buy a house, so have to rent.

Current rent exceeds my income, so Housing NZ is my only option.

You have to have a permanent address to receive superannuation.

Now the squeeze is on and since receiving the bad news on Friday I have not slept well and are dazed, confused and cannot think straight a lot of the time.

I do not expect pity nor do I want it. I will survive, pitifully, but I will survive.

My son could move out but Housing NZ will not help him with accommodation because he is already housed, so I am stuck paying for his keep apart from food which he can afford to pay and which I will have to cut back on for myself in order to pay rent and another household expenses.