Clarification re today’s DomPost story (front page) headed ‘Council writes off tenants’ bad debt’.

A note of clarification for those who have made inquiries about the above story.

The intro claims “Wellington City Council is writing off tens of thousands of ratepayer dollars each year”.

This is not correct – no “ratepayer dollars” are involved, given that the Council’s City Housing operations are self-funded – ie rental revenue pays for the entire operation – so no rates revenue is used.

And to also put things into perspective, the annual revenue collected by City Housing is about $20 million so the bad-debt situation - given this year we’ve written off about $67,000, well below our 2% KPI for debt – we actually see as a pretty impressive achievement.

Our view is that anyone in business would probably be pretty happy with these levels.

ends

© Scoop Media