{"id":820644,"date":"2025-01-17T10:12:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-17T16:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/17\/whangarei-business-owner-faces-living-in-car-if-she-cant-find-place-to-rent-in-a-week\/"},"modified":"2025-01-17T10:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T16:12:06","slug":"whangarei-business-owner-faces-living-in-car-if-she-cant-find-place-to-rent-in-a-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/17\/whangarei-business-owner-faces-living-in-car-if-she-cant-find-place-to-rent-in-a-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Whang\u0101rei business owner faces living in car if she can’t find place to rent in a week"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/p>\n

\nThe former premises of Rhonny-Lee Designs, let by Whang\u0101rei business owner Rhonda Saxton. <\/span>
\nPhoto: Supplied<\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A Whang\u0101rei business owner is facing the prospect of living and working out of her car if she cannot find premises to rent in the next week.<\/p>\n

Rhonda Saxton owns Rhonny-Lee Designs, in central Whang\u0101rei, which sells children’s wear, arts and crafts and plants.<\/p>\n

She also receives a benefit but wanted to build the business.<\/p>\n

A dispute with her landlord prompted Saxton to give notice and her tenancy will end on 1 January.<\/p>\n

So far, she has not been able to find anything else to shift to.<\/p>\n

Saxton said she had applied to the Ministry of Social Development for help with a bond – with the intention that her business would pay part of the rent and she would pay the other – but had been turned down because her business’s profit-and-loss statement was not sufficiently healthy.<\/p>\n

“For any new business, the profit-and-loss report is going to look [bad],” she said.<\/p>\n

“It doesn’t show all the money you’ve put into the business, it doesn’t reflect what your sales are. I’ve put $40,000 into the business, all the money from when my son bought me out of my half-share of our house. But the profit-and-loss shows a loss of $14,000. That wouldn’t take into account what the sales are now.<\/p>\n

“The business and I are paying half the rent here but they decided no way they are going to help me with the bond or anything because the business is not doing well enough.<\/p>\n

“All I wanted was help with the bond and the move-in expenses, the first couple of weeks\u2026 people have offered me places I can store my stuff, but I have nowhere for me to go. I’ve got to be out by January 1, but I’ve got to have my shop open every day before Christmas, I can’t start packing till after Christmas.”<\/p>\n

She said she wasn’t making “thousands” from her business, but could turn over a couple of hundred dollars a day.<\/p>\n

“I can pay weekly rent, I just needed a bit of help with the bond. There’s no space at my kids’ places, I’m going to every friend I’ve got and no one’s got space, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”<\/p>\n

If she could not find anything, she would end up in her car with her cat, she said.<\/p>\n

She said MSD was worried she could not afford the rent on a new place but she had already proved she could pay $750 a week over the past months.<\/p>\n

A new tenancy might cost $600.<\/p>\n

Saxton said she understood she would not qualify for emergency housing because of her cat.<\/p>\n

MSD regional commissioner for Northland Graham MacPherson said Saxton had not been refused that assistance.<\/p>\n

“However, we understand Rhonda voluntarily broke her lease without arranging future housing she has contributed to her own homelessness, and may be ineligible for Emergency Housing for this reason.<\/p>\n

“Rhonda will need to explore other accommodation options, including staying with family or friends. She can also get in touch with us about an assessment for the Social Housing Register.<\/p>\n

“When providing assistance for rent and bond, we consider a number of factors including whether a client will be able to maintain their rent payments into the future and we are not putting them in a position that is unaffordable.<\/p>\n

“Based on the profit and loss information she has provided us, we can see we would be putting her in an unaffordable situation as her business is not currently profitable.<\/p>\n

“We would also need to determine eligibility as we understand she recently sold part or all of her house, possibly leaving her with a cash asset. We are happy to speak further with Rhonda about this.”<\/p>\n

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Navigation for News Categories The former premises of Rhonny-Lee Designs, let by Whang\u0101rei business owner Rhonda Saxton. Photo: Supplied A Whang\u0101rei business owner is facing the prospect of living and working out of her car if she cannot find premises to rent in the next week. Rhonda Saxton owns Rhonny-Lee Designs, in central Whang\u0101rei, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":820645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[378,140992],"tags":[8652,140991],"class_list":{"0":"post-820644","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"category-whangarei","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-whangarei"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}