Findcate

About three years ago, I took a parenting class that came highly recommended by several friends. It was free to the public, informative, and quite a lot of fun.

I worked hard to put into practice much of what I learned there. One suggestion made by the teacher - the implementation of a weekly family meeting - sat on the shelf in my brain until earlier this year. I don’t really know why I waited so long.

Those of you clearing your throats as if to say, “Ahem … it’s because you were a control freak who didn’t want to switch to a democratic parenting style” can just be quiet right now.

Whatever the reason for the delay, I got over it. In March of this year, the kids and I had our first formal meeting and haven’t missed a week since. Now, I find I’ve become one of those overzealous crazy people on a quest, and that quest is to get the word out on how cool family meetings are.

Once they start having family meetings of their own, I won’t seem nearly as annoying, because they’ll be out annoying all of their friends too. An outline of a typical family meeting follows:

Spotlights: This is the feel good portion of the meeting. Everyone gets a chance to spotlight someone else for doing something right. At our first ever family meeting last spring, Miriam spotlighted Ray for helping her get things down from high shelves. Three year old Michael often spotlights the first person he looks at for “being nice.” At a family meeting in the weeks following our wedding, my husband spotlighted himself for “being so lucky.” (Yes, I know that was a completely gratuitous bit of cuteness. At this week’s meeting, I’ll be spotlighting myself for using the word gratuitous.)

Calendar: This section of the meeting is pretty self explanatory. We pull the calendar off the fridge and fill in appointments, activities, and other events we need to remember. I want the world to know I was fastidious about adding Underwear Day during our family meeting two weeks ago. We observed it with a *cough* brief moment of silence. No, I will not apologize for the corniness of that pun.

Planning: We’re currently working on our plan to make a family flag. The first planning session brought with it the task of choosing our family colors. If you’re ever planning on making a family flag, I suggest you come to the meeting with three or four colors, and let them choose two. I made the mistake of asking everyone to submit a color for vote. Our flag will now be red, gold, green, blue, yellow, clear and hot red. I don’t know what hot red is, but Michael is passionate about it.

Issues: The issues portion of family meeting is a chance to work out the nuts and bolts of family life. We make rules, decide on consequences and settle arguments. Everyone has the right to raise an issue, whether it’s Ray’s recent motion that we make Sunday nights “Taco Night” - it was unanimously approved - or Miriam’s passionate plea to reinstate family prayer time. The thing I’ve learned about issues time is that I’d better be ready for complete honesty from my kids. How well I remember the meeting in which Cate pronounced, “Mommy, you yell too much.” Fortunately for me, I was rewarded two weeks later with her spotlight of, “Mommy, thanks for not yelling so much anymore.”

This week, I’ll be unveiling the new “Extra Chores for Cash” incentive system, and I’m pretty sure one of the kids wants us to vote on a fair Playstation 2 schedule. We’ll be looking over the sample family crests I printed from the internet, and we may start breaking down the costs of going to Disneyland next summer. All in all, I think it will be a fun and productive meeting. I’m especially excited for spotlight time.

Tags: appointment, cate, mom, zeal

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Though the star-struck citizens of Toronto didn’t mind, there was heard a lot of grumbling last week at the Toronto Film Festival about how this venerable showcase for world cinema has been turned into a mere stepping stone for the Hollywood studios’ Oscar campaigns. With the likes of Jodie Foster, Brad Pitt, Keira Knightley, George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones parading down Bloor Street, one could be forgiven for mistaking North America’s most influential film festival for an out-of-town Hollywood press junket.

It’s true that for a member of the press it was harder than ever to pursue hidden foreign gems such as the charming Israeli comedy “The Band’s Visit” or Mexican visionary Carlos Reygadas’s mesmerizing, demanding “Silent Light,” about adultery and transcendence in a Mennonite community. The pressure was to keep up with the fall’s major prestige items, such as “Atonement” or Ang Lee’s Chinese-language potboiler “Lust, Caution” or the Coen brothers‘ riveting film noir “No Country for Old Men,” their best film in ages.  

The spirit of Terry Malick (”Badlands,” “Days of Heaven”) hovers over “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” a poetic, melancholy, leisurely reverie on the last years of the legendary outlaw’s life. Brad Pitt is terrific as the manic Jesse, alternately charming and paranoid, and Casey Affleck superbly creepy as the callow Judas who grabs fame with a bullet. New Zealand-born writer-director Andrew Dominik’s uncompromising, ’70s-style Western, like Penn’s sprawling odyssey, turns its back on the fast-cutting, action-dominated style in current fashion.

Though it courts tedium at times, it’s clearly the work of an immensely talented filmmaker. Much more audience-friendly but equally indebted to the ’70s (think of such paranoid thrillers as “The Parallax View”) is Tony Gilroy’s dense, gripping anticorporate thriller “Michael Clayton,” with George Clooney as a law firm “fixer” attempting to staunch a corporate scandal, and risking his life in the process. Coproducer Clooney, who has often proclaimed his love for ’70s American films, seems determined to revive the socially conscious genre movies of that era.

Tags: brad pitt, brother, ford, hollywood, zeal

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At Assitej, the 16th World Congress and Performing Arts Festival for Young People taking place in Adelaide, visiting companies include the Makhampon Theatre Group from Thailand, which is happy to hear itself described as a form of family, community, university and even food centre. They are performing a Buddhist tale about perseverance. Australian group Zeal Theatre, is collaborating with the South African performers Ellis and Bheki to create a comic show about nationalism and sport.

From Israel, “this crazy country”, as director Norman Issa calls it, comes the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, which, as its name suggests, is determined to defy that country’s political divide.

“We’re not the Christian-Jewish theatre company, or the Muslim-Jewish,” Issa says. “We deal in languages, not religions. We’re a very new idea and the only theatre working like this in Israel, and while we don’t have many sponsors, and are very small, people love this place. We have many friends.”

Issa’s Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa has brought a two-hander called Ach Ach Boom Traach to Adelaide for the Assitej festival. He co-wrote the hour-long piece with Yoav Barlev and both men perform in it. The fact that he is Jewish and Barlev a Muslim, Issa says, is not the issue (although that’s one of the first things he says about the play). The issue is how any two people, whose languages distance them from each other, can find common ground.

The production is pitched at children as young as three, but it’s also suitable for people in their late teens, the top-end of the age spectrum covered in Assitej’s broad program. Issa reckons it’s for everyone. “This play is very simple, and very difficult,” he says. “Everyone finds their own level within this play.”

Its premise is that the two actors represent brothers who play together, quarrel, then make up, and quarrel again. “The balance of power swings back and forth.”

As their history unfolds in scenes spoken in what sounds to the audience like jibberish (Issa says it’s the “language of Jesus”, Aramaic), one thing remains constant: a prettily coloured box that dangles enticingly above their heads. This appears to be the prize they constantly fight over, as their bitter feuding becomes ever more violent and hurtful. Finally, when they have “settled down to an uneasy truce, the box opens up by itself”. Ach Ach Boom Traach poses the question to the audience: “What are the brothers fighting for?”

Issa is unapologetic when he calls his theatre political, even though he has his critics because of that. “Most people here (in Israel) don’t like political stories, they look, maybe make a noise about the political situation, and then nothing happens. Most people here, they look, and do nothing.”

That’s why he believes children are the hope for the future and theatre for children is his way of turning this hope into action.

“I love children,” he says. “If we can change children, maybe we can reach out for peace. These children in the Jewish community, many years on they will become soldiers and maybe they will be different people because of what they’ve seen. I believe in that. This is my fighting, here in this crazy country.”

The company is in its 12th year, and Ach Ach Boom Traach has been in development for several years, already touring to a long list of countries, including Uzbekistan, Armenia, South Korea and Japan. “It’s very interesting,” Issa says, “that children all over the world react at the same moments during the play. It’s amazing. The inner child is a child wherever you go.”

The key to touching that inner child is to make the experience live, and Issa is animated in his denunciation of the kind of education children are receiving by way of television.

“It has to be live,” he says. “The theatre is life itself, and you can smell it, the actors, the props. It’s not in a box, in your salon (lounge room). In the theatre, the magic is that you see the story happening now, right before you, not edited so you only see the best takes.”

He describes what happens to people who lose touch with the theatre, those who sit in front of the TV screen with a beer and a sandwich as a process of “becoming heavy”, physically and mentally. Issa’s Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa uses a minimalist set, lots of brightly coloured props, and the energies of its two actors to capture the attention and imagination of its audiences.

According to a growing number of specialists in theatre for children, there is no reason to draw the line there: performances can be directed effectively to babes in arms.

In the Assitej festival, the highly respected Adelaide company, Windmill, has two shows, Cat and Green Sheep, both directed by Cate Fowler, which are pitched to audience members as young as one, but according to Suzanne Oster, theatre can be effective for even younger babies.

Oster is the artistic director of Unga Klara, a division within the Stockholm City Theatre created in 1975 to cater for children and young people. She is attending the Assitej congress, with the support of PlayWriting Australia, to talk about just how young an audience theatre can, and should, target.

The ideal audience, she says, is, in fact, a baby: “Present. Here and now. Not concerned with what it’s having for dinner, doing tomorrow or said yesterday. Free from conventions. Hasn’t read the reviews. Receptive without bias or prejudice.”

Oster’s showcase production, which is not part of the festival but which she will be discussing with delegates at the congress, is Babydrama, designed to present to children as young as six months.

It tells the story of the journey from conception to birth, through to the moment of “meeting their parents and their own will”.

“As far as we know,” Oster says, “text-based performances of this calibre have not been done for such young audiences,” although a Norwegian project has been evaluating the success of dance, mime and puppet theatre for babies from birth to three years old.

That evaluation was so positive, Oster says, there is now a project called Glitterbird, involving the collaboration of several European countries, developing theatre for the newly born. “The more elaborate the productions were, the more alert, concentrated and carefree the child seemed to be.”

Unga Klara works with test audiences, and documents the reactions on film, in order to build knowledge about what works best.

“The fact that one cannot speak,” Oster says, “does not mean that one cannot understand what is said. Experience has shown that the capacity for understanding and assessing situations is present at a very early age. Creating full-scale theatre to the youngest children with all our know-how and passion is a cultural policy statement.

Tags: adelaide, age spectrum, assitej, audience members, australian group, balance of power, brother, buddhist, cate, common ground, europe, Food, food centre, hander, hebrew, issa, jaffa, jewish theatre, nationalism, perseverance, power swings, premise, rbi, religions, target, theatre group, world congress, zeal

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National leader John Key has just got a late Christmas present most New Zealand families being squeezed by soaring interest rates and high prices would envy - a tropical holiday home in Hawaii.
Key confirmed to the Sunday Star-Times he had bought an apartment on the swanky island of Maui at Christmas, with settlement a week ago. He was reluctant to reveal details of its location or what he paid for it.
%26quot;You can see the beach,%26quot; he said.
The holiday home is in addition to one John and Bronagh Key already own at Omaha, an exclusive beach settlement north of Auckland.
But Key, a multi-millionaire, said his luxurious lifestyle would not prevent him from relating to one of the incendiary political issues of the day - the pain ordinary New Zealanders feel as they grapple with soaring petrol prices, high interest rates and sharply rising food prices.
%26quot;It%26#39;s well known that I have a reasonably well off personal background. It%26#39;s also well known that I grew up in a state house. So I think I%26#39;ve got my feet pretty firmly on the ground,%26quot; he said.
Key said he had not declared the property in the Register of Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament because it was owned by his family trust, the JP and BI Key Family Trust. While MPs have to declare family trusts, they do not have to declare what the trusts own.
Asked what other properties were owned by the Key family trust, Key said he would need a moment to think. After 20 seconds of silence, Key said the trust owned five properties. Then Key rang back a few minutes later to say he had forgotten a further property owned by the family trust.
Apart from the Hawaiian property, there was an apartment in London used by his niece and four properties in New Zealand. They included a property in Wellington, the family home in Auckland and the Omaha property.
Key said he had sought advice on declaring property in the MPs register several years ago and was told by those administering the register that they did not want %26quot;pecuniary interest creep%26quot;.
%26quot;In other words, people declaring all sorts of things when they were in trust, because it%26#39;s going to lead to everybody listing every asset they own,%26quot; he said.
Key said he owned a similar number of properties to Prime Minister Helen Clark. She declared five properties - her home in Auckland, a town house in Wellington, an apartment in Christchurch, an investment property in Rodney and a house in the United Kingdom inherited from her father-in-law.

MAUI FOR MILLIONAIRES
* The cost of living in Maui is one of the highest in the US and the surfing mecca boasts many multimillion-dollar properties.
* The average property price in Kapalua, one of Maui%26#39;s premiere resort areas, is $US5 million ($6.35m), Wailea- Makena, another pricey beachfront location, is US$3.3m, while properties in Kaanapali go for $US2.2m.
* The median price for a condo in Maui in March 2008 was $US575,000.
* Maui is the second most developed and the second largest Hawaiian Island at 1885km2. It has a population of 139,884.

Tags: Food, food price, food prices, zeal

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ANZ National Bank chief economist Cameron Bagrie said these sectors had grown off the property-market boom and accounted for 60% of new jobs over the past five years.
%26quot;The economic slowdown is broadening quite quickly from the housing market into retail. As retailers are selling less, they need less stock, and that%26#39;s now following into the manufacturing sector.%26quot;
The downturn has already begun - last week about 1000 New Zealand jobs were lost when Fisher %26amp; Paykel, ANZ National Bank and Tamahine Knitwear said they were moving jobs offshore.
Bagrie predicted unemployment would climb from 3.4% to 5% - increasing the jobless from 77,000 to 115,000.
As areas such as retail, real estate and manufacturing slowed, there could also be less demand for business support services such as accountancy, IT and legal.
A 40% drop in house sales in the past year already meant less income for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, conveyancers and valuers.
Trade union bosses told the Sunday Star-Times employers were likely to look at skill levels, who was %26quot;first-in, first-off%26quot;, employment contract provisions and whether staff on flexible hours could work less, when deciding who to let go.
The last slowdown was in 1997-1998 when 10,000-20,000 jobs were lost through job cuts and attrition, and unemployment rose from 6% to 7.5%.
This time, the country had a better starting point at 3.4% - the lowest rate since the Statistics Department labour force survey began in 1986.
Despite the tight labour market, the economic slowdown was expected to last longer and hit households harder because of falling house prices, high mortgage interest rates, and rising food and fuel prices, Bagrie said.
%26quot;What we are going through is a standard business cycle, where as growth slows, the unemployment rate moves back up. If we can get away with the unemployment rate peaking at 5% . . . I think that will be a success.%26quot;
Most job losses would probably result from employers not replacing people when they left, because had they struggled to get staff in first place.
Industry bosses were optimistic other areas would pick up the slack in the jobs market.
New Zealand Contractors Federation chief executive Richard Michael said some tradespeople who couldn%26#39;t get housebuilding work would move into road, rail and transmission line construction.
Kensington Swan%26#39;s chief executive Chris Heilbronn said several property law specialists had been redeployed into litigation and insolvency.
Canterbury Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend said there were people %26quot;screaming out%26quot; in Christchurch for IT experts and software developers, and nationally there were labour shortages in agriculture, dairy, wine, tourism and hospitality industries.

HOW SAFE ARE YOU?
NOT-SO-SAFE: Retail
Real estate
Manufacturing
Housing construction
Business services such as accountancy and legal services
SAFER: Health professionals
Agriculture and dairy
Wine
Tourism and hospitality
Infrastructure construction

Tags: boss, Food, job, zeal

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It%26#39;s a Wednesday night in Otahuhu, South Auckland, and a trickle of Samoan families are arriving at the Home Ownership Company%26#39;s offices armed with big dreams, but no money.
The company%26#39;s general manager, Scott Ball, presents a slick slideshow explaining how they can buy their first home or an investment property with 100% finance, even if they have no savings or bad credit histories.
%26quot;Don%26#39;t the banks have to see a savings history?%26quot; asks a Samoan woman in the front row. %26quot;No,%26quot; says Ball, %26quot;we%26#39;ve never had to show that.%26quot;
Ball explains that the Home Ownership Company does not charge fees, taking its cut from the banks, but lends people the difference to cover other fees and a deposit. %26quot;You end up with two loans you are paying off.%26quot;
The company then goes looking for homes that best suit the family involved, he says. %26quot;All you have to do is focus on going to work, earning money, and we%26#39;ll do it all for you,%26quot; says Ball. %26quot;Are there any questions?%26quot;
Just one, from the woman who spoke earlier: %26quot;Where do we sign up?%26quot;
If only it were that simple.
A Sunday Star-Times investigation has found that not only has the Home Ownership Company and its affiliated offshoots made millions of dollars by adding up to $40,000 to the price of each property, concerns have been expressed about the financial information the company has provided to lending institutions. Even more troubling, there have been cases where families who thought their existing debts had been consolidated as part of a complicated two-tier mortgage structure have found that their other debts have not been cleared at all, and that other finance companies have caveats over their homes.
Some families are spending most of their incomes on their mortgages, including penalty interest payments of 25%, often while working in low-paid jobs. Some are skimping on food and other essentials in a desperate effort to keep afloat.
The BNZ severed ties with the company in 2005. %26quot;The Bank of New Zealand terminated the relationship with the Home Ownership Company following a review of the business which raised multiple concerns about both the quality of the information we were receiving and whether clients were being fully and independently informed about the commitment they were undertaking,%26quot; says Blair Vernon, the bank%26#39;s general manager of strategy and marketing.
Rob Thumath, a South Auckland mortgage manager, says he financed about 60 of Home Ownership%26#39;s clients before breaking ties with the company because it had failed to disclose in many cases that families were paying off a second mortgage with the company%26#39;s lending arm, Ready Finance.
He is concerned it is targeting naive and vulnerable people. He says about a third of those clients have defaulted on repayments and he would not have approved the loans if he had known the full picture. %26quot;We have people in here crying every week,%26quot; he says. %26quot;It%26#39;s sale at all costs and to hell with the consequences. They sure as hell aren%26#39;t doing this on the North Shore it%26#39;s a niche market Samoans in south and west Auckland.%26quot;

THE HOME Ownership Company finds it clients by advertising on Samoan-language radio, going into churches, and running stalls at the Otara markets. It claims to have helped 750 families buy their first home or investment property.
The company was founded by Russell Findlay, who first appeared in these pages in 2003 when we reported how he had gone from being one of Auckland%26#39;s largest residential property developers to bankruptcy. He lost more than $3 million of other people%26#39;s money and was banned from directing or being involved in the management of any company for four years.
The Home Ownership Company was taken over by Grant Collecutt, formerly a partner in law firm Simpson Dowsett. He is also a director and co-owner of Ready Finance. When Thumath emailed Collecutt last year to say one of Home Ownership%26#39;s clients had been on the phone crying because consumer loans which were supposed to have been paid off by the company were not, Collecutt denied that was the case.
He wrote back: %26quot;Hopefully this is a case of the client making an innocent mistake (as opposed to wasting their time using the crying tactic to try and get us to advance them more money crying doesn%26#39;t work with me).%26quot;
In a statement to the Star-Times defending his companies%26#39; practices, Collecutt said: %26quot;Without the assistance of Home Ownership the goal of escaping the rent trap and owning their own home is virtually an impossible dream for these clients. Most lenders simply aren%26#39;t prepared to provide a 100% mortgage plus debt consolidation finance package to people with no material assets.%26quot;
He says a %26quot;vast majority%26quot; of clients have built up equity in their properties. %26quot;Of course in spite of our best endeavours, some clients simply can%26#39;t be helped,%26quot; he added. %26quot;If a client does not pay their mortgage(s) and does not take reasonable steps to sort out their financial problems, then they will ultimately end up losing their homes.%26quot;
Collecutt says the company takes steps to ensure people understand the transactions they are entering into, including having native language-speaking staff, getting independent valuations and ensuring they are represented by independent legal advisers.
But several families the Star-Times spoke to say when they raised the idea of bringing in their own lawyer, Home Ownership strongly advised them to use Bryan Yolland of Auckland Property Legal Service, who signed most of the loan documents we saw. The Star-Times spoke to some of the %26quot;testimonial%26quot; families featured in the Home Ownership Company%26#39;s brochures and while they had not experienced any problems, they were surprised to learn how much profit the company had made on their property when shown land records.

At their three-bedroom house in Otara, which they bought for $272,000 at the end of 2006, Maua and Tala Ah Siu talk about how their experience with the company has left them on the verge of losing their home.
Economists say that if households spend more than 40% of their take-home pay on home loan repayments they are in %26quot;mortgage stress%26quot; this couple pays 80% in a desperate attempt to ward off foreclosure threats, which are coming thick and fast.
Buying their own home was a dream for carpenter Maua, 31, and Tala, 26, who came to New Zealand from Samoa about 10 years ago. They heard about the Home Ownership Company on Samoan radio and were reassured that the company%26#39;s spokeswoman was Samoan. But when they went into the company%26#39;s offices they dealt with %26quot;palagis%26quot;, and things became confusing.
Their first application was declined because of Maua%26#39;s bad credit rating.
Tala claims the Home Ownership consultant told them to get a relative to go in with her on the loan application, so they brought in her brother-in-law. His name is on the mortgage and property title but he has not lived with them and has not contributed to any loan repayments. %26quot;They knew he wasn%26#39;t with us when we got the house,%26quot; Tala says.
Collecutt claims his staff did not know about the situation, and that the family gave the impression the brother-in-law was living there.
Land records show Home Ownership%26#39;s property-buying arm, South West Homes, paid the previous owners $250,000, settling the two deals on the same day, meaning it didn%26#39;t have to outlay any money. This is known as a %26quot;contemporaneous settlement%26quot; and gets around real estate laws for non-registered property sellers but creates doubt around the true value of the home.
Collecutt: %26quot;At the end of the day, we will not buy a property unless we are buying it below market value. Our buyers work hard to hunt out and negotiate bargains for our business.%26quot;
The Ah Sius say a Home Ownership consultant advised Maua to sign a letter %26quot;gifting%26quot; $38,617 to Tala and her brother-in-law %26quot;to assist them in the purchase of their home%26quot;. This is Home Ownership%26#39;s standard practice and was the common factor causing confusion for the families we spoke to. This %26quot;gift%26quot; effectively becomes a second mortgage with Ready Finance. The second mortgage, in Maua%26#39;s name and at an interest rate of 18% and penalty rate of 25%, included Ready Finance%26#39;s fee of $2100, legal fees and refinancing of a $10,000 car loan the couple had with Provincial Finance.
The couple got into arrears paying the two mortgages when Tala stopped working to have her third child. Collecutt accuses her of withholding the fact she was pregnant when she signed Tala says she was never asked. After six months a new, higher second mortgage contract was signed, this time for $49,859 and in Tala and her brother-in-law%26#39;s name.
%26quot;Unfortunately for us, we believed their representations and advanced the funds required to settle the first mortgage arrears, throwing good money after bad,%26quot; Collecutt says. He claims Home Ownership offered to buy the property back at the same price they paid for it Tala says she knows of no offer and lines of communication with the company were virtually non-existent.
She says a car loan that Ready Finance took over as part of the second mortgage was not paid, and the car was repossessed. Collecutt says the family withheld the fact that they were in arrears on the payments.
He confirms his company no longer pays off exisiting debts immediately as part of the debt consolidation agreement but takes over weekly payments to other finance companies to minimise its own risk. This arrangement was described as %26quot;weird%26quot; and %26quot;unusual%26quot; by financial advisers the Star-Times spoke to.
Mortgage manager Thumath, who arranged the first mortgage for the couple and has had to place foreclosure warning notices on their fence, believes they have been badly treated by Home Ownership.
Meanwhile, the Ah Sius are struggling on, desperate to keep their house. Most weeks they pay $780 on the two mortgages out of a total weekly income of $977. When Maua%26#39;s work runs out, they miss payments. They sometimes miss meals.
Senior managers from Ready Finance have come to the home. %26quot;They said if we don%26#39;t pay the mortgage we have to leave the house, they were going to give us seven days. It makes our family argue all the time. I wish we didn%26#39;t buy the house in the first place,%26quot; Tala says.
Collecutt fired a parting shot at the family. %26quot;We have bent over backwards to help the Ah Siu family. Given what we have done for them to date, we are quite frankly astounded that they appear to have turned around and defamed us to the media.
%26quot;If they had any material assets [I] would seriously consider issuing defamation proceedings against them. Given that [I] am a litigator with 15 years%26#39; high court experience it costs [me] a lot less than the average man in the street to take such action.%26quot;
South Auckland mortgage broker and financial adviser Rapi Ieremia has dealt with distressed clients of the Home Ownership Company and says in every case he has seen the family%26#39;s mortgage is greater than the value of their house. %26quot;Some I explain that it%26#39;s too late to help… and that I can%26#39;t refinance them now because there is no equity. It%26#39;s just a nightmare.%26quot;
Confusion is the biggest problem, Ieremia says. %26quot;There is a lack of understanding of the enormity and implications of getting into a… 100% mortgage plus an incorporation of debt, and they end up with three mortgages. They don%26#39;t understand. The emotion of owning a home becomes so great when you are not financially educated… it can lead to a lot of problems.%26quot;
Lawyer Momoe Saseve has dealt with Home Ownership clients wanting advice about investment properties they were looking at buying. She was concerned about a lease agreement Home Ownership%26#39;s property management arm, Auckland Property Leasing, was asking clients to sign.
Copies of rental agreements obtained by the Star-Times restrict the amount of rental income owners can receive and demand a $5000 %26quot;exit fee%26quot; if they sell. %26quot;Essentially, it restricted the client immensely in so far as their asset and what they could do with it, and that was why I was telling everyone that it wasn%26#39;t in their best interests to do this,%26quot; Saseve says.
The Commerce Commission received complaints last year about the Home Ownership Company, but its investigation was whether it was charging an unreasonable full prepayment fee and it found no contravention of the relevant acts.
But the drums are beating for the Home Ownership Company, with warnings about it going out on Samoan radio and the Public Watchdogs website.
Saseve says she once saw an advertisement on a local television station for a Christmas party run by the company. %26quot;I just had to shake my head and think, `Boy, those poor people%26#39;.%26quot;

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The report, by international agency Ocean Conservancy, shows beaches in Australia and Thailand have less litter than New Zealand, which recorded an average of 21 kilograms of rubbish per 1.6 kilometres during an international beach cleanup day last September.
This compares with an average of 1.8kg of coastal rubbish in Australia and 7kg in Thailand. Two of the biggest offenders were the United States with 177kg and Britain, with 245kg per 1.6km. The amount of coastline covered varied widely between countries.
The report said the main item dumped on New Zealand beaches was cigarette butts, followed by bottle caps and lids, food wrappers, containers and beverage bottles.
Forest and Bird conservation advocate Kirstie Knowles said she was not surprised. Kiwis were becoming more lazy and the report should act as a wake-up call.
%26quot;We tend to assume that we are clean and green, but we are finding increasing amounts of litter.%26quot;
Volunteers worldwide scoured about 53,000km of shoreline in 76 countries, collecting 2.7 million kilograms of debris and rubbish during the annual cleanup.
Ocean Conservancy president Vikki Spruill said the cleanup was a reminder that the world%26#39;s oceans were %26quot;sick%26quot;.
Overall, 57 per cent of the rubbish was from shoreline recreational activities, 33 per cent from smoking-related activities, 6 per cent from fishing, 2 per cent from dumping trash and less than 1 per cent from medical and personal hygiene activities, the report said.
Ms Knowles said the results tallied with a cleanup organised by Forest and Bird last month on Wellington%26#39;s Oriental Bay beach, which netted more than 30kg of rubbish in two hours.
Cigarette butts and food wrappers were the leading polluters, but hazardous items found included a used syringe, sanitary pads, condoms and broken glass.
Participants were shocked as council staff cleaned the beach daily.
%26quot;It%26#39;s basically laziness,%26quot; she said of those doing the littering. %26quot;There%26#39;s lots of bins around city centres and in our homes.%26quot;
LOAD OF RUBBISH
Average amount of litter collected from a mile (1.6 kilometres) of beachfront and water during Ocean Conservancy%26#39;s International Coastal Cleanup Day last September:
Australia: 1.8 kilograms
Thailand: 7 kilograms
New Zealand: 21 kilograms
China: 31 kilograms
Canada: 34 kilograms
Mexico: 71 kilograms
United States: 177 kilograms
United Kingdom: 245 kilograms

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Seven years later he doesn%26#39;t.
But it%26#39;s a struggle.
The solo mum says over the past 18 months it has become harder and harder to provide her seven-year-old son Tyler and herself with the basics.
Her comments come after figures released this week from Statistics New Zealand have confirmed large increases in food, fuel and electricity prices, and shown the cost of living has been climbing over the past year.
Miss Jones said she has $350 a week to survive on, with her domestic purposes benefit and part-time work.
Tyler%26#39;s father left six weeks after she fell pregnant and has never paid child support.
Rent is $110 a week for her house in Elizabeth St.
But after bills, loans and fines are paid off she has just $67 a week for food and petrol.
She walks to work and often uses a bike for longer distances
%26quot;I can%26#39;t even buy a takeaway or clothes and shoes for my son.
%26quot; I%26#39;ve got to rely on other people, like my parents, to take him shopping. I don%26#39;t want to do that.%26quot;
The 28-year-old is paying $30 a week to service several hundred dollars worth of fines for driving her car without a registration or warrant more than two years ago.
Meanwhile, a $565 dental bill was slowly being paid off.
Miss Jones said she also gave up smoking in October.
The former Marlborough Girls%26#39; College pupil said the variety of her and Tyler%26#39;s diet was restricted by rising food costs, but Tyler never went without.
He can eat whenever he wants, I%26#39;m the one who scrounges for myself.%26#39;%26#39;Meat in the house consisted of cheap mince, and she bought soup bones to make stews.“They%26#39;ve still got some of the goodness.%26#39;%26#39;Silver beet grows in the garden, but she was reluctant to expand her vegetable garden further, fearing the food would be stolen. The pair eat at John%26#39;s Kitchen every Wednesday.“That%26#39;s a real help because I know that if I%26#39;ve run out of food on Tuesday we can go there.%26#39;%26#39;The 28-year-old said she wanted to increase her working hours, but needed to fit it around her son. She works five hours a week for Presbyterian Support and is trying to increase her client numbers. More clients mean more hours and if she can get up to 15 hours a week she will qualify for Working for Families tax breaks. But, until that happened she was concentrating on Tyler. “I make sure he goes on every school trip because I missed out on stuff like that. If I have to go without, so be it.“When I got pregnant I told him he wasn%26#39;t going to have the lifestyle I had when I was growing up in the 80s. He wasn%26#39;t going to miss out on anything.%26#39;%26#39;

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But the Cassandras should hold back on the wailing. If New Zealand holds its nerve, there will be a pause, not a collapse. It weathered the Asian Crisis that erupted in mid-1997 without foundering, and there is no reason to suppose it cannot do the same when it comes to the American credit crunch of 2008.
It has to be acknowledged that business is not brimming with confidence. The latest New Zealand Institute of Economic Research survey of business opinion showed a sharp deterioration, with a net 56 per cent of New Zealand businesses expecting the general business situation to worsen in the next six months.
That is understandable. The United States%26#39; economy is tipping into recession. The debate now is over how deep that recession will be. Some economists are predicting it will be one of the most severe in decades, pointing out that house price falls have wiped out US$2.2 trillion of wealth with little end in sight. The American consumer has been described as shopped-out, savings-less and debt-burdened. And that is flowing on, with European economies slowing. China will be hit, as the appetite for its exports wanes in the US, and emerging economies will also suffer as the US recession and global slowdown bite into the commodity markets. However, New Zealand is not going to fall into an economic abyss.
The spiralling world food prices that are putting pressure on at the supermarket are also putting money in Kiwi pockets. Fonterra has just lifted its payout to $7.30 a kilogram as prices have held up better than expected, largely due to drought. Chairman Henry van der Heyden believes there is still an upside in the prices. But Fonterra is taking a cautious approach because of the volatility of the international markets, and considering holding on to some of the season%26#39;s earnings.
That is sensible, and an example worth following. Many New Zealanders, especially those who own houses, have been enjoying the best of times. There is no reason to expect them now to enter the worst of times. Property values have soared, and despite the market cooling, there is no suggestion that it will follow the American market into collapse. Homeowners will need to be cautious when it comes to spending, but they are still much better off than they were before the boom.
There is also wiggle room, with tax cuts and the potential for the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates to soften the impact. Governor Alan Bollard has advised banks and businesses not to overreact to the downturn, because the Kiwi economy %26quot;remains fundamentally sound and creditworthy%26quot;.
That is helpful as far as it goes, but Dr Bollard should remember actions speak louder than words. When external events push inflation above its 1-3 per cent target band, the policy targets agreement gives him some latitude to look to the medium term rather than the immediate figures.
If he needs to help New Zealand ride out the storm that started overseas with a rates cut earlier rather than later, he should use that latitude.

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National MP Anne Tolley yesterday raised the plight of the children, aged one to 16, in Parliament, saying CYF was sitting on its hands.
She said the family had created a rough campsite at Tiniroto with no drinking water, no toilets and no cooking facilities except an open fire.
She said she had visited the site and found the children to be %26quot;bright kids%26quot; but their hygiene conditions to be %26quot;filthy%26quot;.
The children had not been to school since August last year, had inadequate clothing and were at risk of serious health problems with the onset of winter, Ms Tolley said.
She had filed a notification of neglect with CYF, but it said the case failed to meet the thresholds for Family Court intervention.
M rs Tolley said it was %26quot;astonishing%26quot; it was trying to set up a family group conference when it was a clear case of neglect.
But Ms Dyson today said the Social Development Ministry, Housing New Zealand and the Education Ministry had all been actively involved with the family and were still trying to assist them.
%26quot;CYF has been in contact with the family and believes that this is not a situation, at this stage, of abuse or neglect and the children are adequately cared for.%26quot;
Government agencies and community groups had offered assistance to the family and would continue to do so.
The most pressing need was to find suitable accommodation for the family so the children could get an education, Ms Dyson said.
A Tiniroto resident yesterday said the family had since moved to a new campsite in Te Reinga, about 10km away.
Tiniroto residents had tried to help the family, including offers of food, but this had been turned down.
%26quot;They sort of kept to themselves %26ndash; it was more the schooling of the children that was a concern,%26quot; the resident told the Dominion Post newspaper.
- NZPA

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