Tenants of an Auckland state home, unhappy with building work in their backyard, “threatened to shoot” the social housing agency’s contractors. Tensions rose after builders removed the tenants’ chicken coop, a trampoline and a clothesline to make way for a Housing New Zealand home on the back section. The confrontation, detailed in a tenancy tribunal finding published online in December, came about after builders offered to replace the clothesline and the tenant responded by threatening to shoot. Work was immediately suspended for a fortnight, until the tenant calmed down.
