Landlord Donna Miers back before Tenancy Tribunal over unpaid orders
Donna Miers is before the Tenancy Tribunal again, this time under her company name, Okahu Ltd.
Landlord Donna Miers, who was once described as having “nefarious conduct” by a Tenancy Tribunal adjudicator, has found herself back before the tribunal.
Miers and her son, Nick Hoogwerf, are no strangers to the tribunal and are currently under investigation by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for allegedly providing sub-standard rentals and failing to lodge bonds.
That investigation is ongoing but Miers has now found herself back before the Tenancy Tribunal, where she’s been ordered to pay a Timaru tenant nearly $8000.
It comes at the same time a different tenant is meant to be receiving $5000 from Miers in $10 weekly payments but Annie Binstead says she has yet to see any of the money from her former landlord.
Timaru breaches, not once but twice
The most recent case relates to ongoing proceedings in the tribunal between the former tenant of a property in Timaru and Miers’ company, Okahu Limited.
That tenant lived there between August 2024 and October 2025.
Last year, both parties attended a hearing where the tenant claimed Miers had failed to lodge his bond and that the property didn’t meet Healthy Home Standards.
He cited a lack of insulation and extractor fans in the property, gaps in the walls, windows that leaked and didn’t open and black mould growing in the home.
He also said there was a loose toilet, holes in the floor and rotting weatherboards.
Miers wanted the tenancy terminated, saying there was outstanding rent.
An order was also made at the time awarding rent arrears to Miers, while she had to pay the tenant $3448.57 in compensation and exemplary damages.
The tribunal also issued a work order, reducing the rent from $450 per week to $350 per week until Miers carried out repairs and made the home compliant with Healthy Home Standards.
But, according to a new decision, that wasn’t done and the case has ended up back in the tribunal.
In the latest case, the tenant again applied for compensation and exemplary damages for a number of issues, including failure to lodge his bond and the property not being up to Healthy Home Standards.
Miers then applied to receive rent arrears and compensation from the tenant for alleged meth contamination and damage to the property.
In a recently released decision, tribunal adjudicator Ross Armstrong said the bond still hadn’t been lodged in April, which was a “continuing breach”.
“Because the landlord has already been punished once for not lodging the bond I am not minded to make an award at the upper end of the scale again. An award of $500 is appropriate,” Armstrong said.
Again, she was ordered to repay the bond.
There had also been no improvement of the condition of the property.
Miers told the tribunal the tenant was threatening and harassing one of her contractors so she was unable to carry out improvements to the property.
But Armstrong did not accept the claim.
“I did not find the landlord to be a reliable witness. She was vague in her recollection of some events, possibly due to a concussion that she said she had suffered.
“I found some of her evidence in relation to her claims to lack credibility and her claims were not well supported by evidence.
“The landlord’s attitude generally, exemplified by her failure to lodge the bond after being ordered to do so, suggests a disregard for her obligations which is consistent with a failure to make any real effort to comply with the work order.”
Armstrong awarded the tenant $1500 in exemplary damages and Miers was ordered to pay $1000 for breaching the work order.
The tenant was given a termination notice by Miers to end the tenancy on October 9, 2025, which the tenant claims was retaliatory as she served the notice immediately after the first tribunal order was awarded.
“The timing is striking and the inference [is] that it was the order, and the overall success of the tenant’s application, that motivated the notice,” Armstrong said.
“The landlord denied the connection and maintained that it was the tenant’s behaviour that caused her to serve the notice. The evidence for that was weak and it does not displace the inference.”
The tenant was successful in his claim and awarded $1500.
Miers claimed the tenant left the premises in an untidy condition and had broken 26 windows at the property. The tenant disputed these claims and the tribunal found the evidence provided by Miers was unsubstantial.
The landlord’s property manager gave evidence to the tribunal and said she had been back to the premises since the tenancy ended and the premises were left reasonably clean and tidy and that there had been no repair of the premises contrary to what the landlord claimed.
The claim was dismissed.
Was meth used during the tenancy?
Miers also claimed in the recent case that the tenant had used methamphetamine in the premises during the tenancy.
She produced the result of meth testing, seemingly indicating that meth residue above 1.5 µg/100sq cm was found in the premises.
The tenant disputed the test results and said they were fake.
In dimissing the claim, Armstrong said there were “two fatal flaws with the landlord’s” case.
The first was that there was no in-going test and no evidence that the premises were not contaminated by meth when the tenancy began and the second was that the tribunal does not recognise that any remediation is needed where levels are below 15 µg/100cm².
In total, Miers was ordered to pay $7927.14 to the tenant, including the $3448.57 from the unpaid July 2025 order.
Miers told NZME there were a number of issues associated with the tenancy she did not believe were “fully reflected in the proceedings”, including what she says was threatening behaviour from the tenant.
“As a landlord, I made repeated efforts to manage what became an increasingly difficult and volatile situation responsibly and appropriately.”
She also claimed the tenant actually owed her more than $8000 in rent arrears and was in contact with the tribunal to have the order updated.
‘Manifestly unjust’
The latest order comes after former tenant Annie Binstead fought to get her unlodged bond back following a tenancy with Miers and her son in 2024.
Binstead had gone to the tribunal to recoup her $5000 bond after her tenancy with the pair ended.
She was successful in her claim; however, she was also still waiting for payment, with the debt referred to the Ministry of Justice’s Collections Unit.
On March 31, Meirs organised a payment plan with the collections unit which would see her pay Binstead the $5000 bond back at $10 a week.
However, Binstead claims she is yet to receive any payments nearly two months into the agreement and says it is “manifestly unjust” the payment plan would take 9.6 years.
“I’m totally disheartened with the standards in New Zealand,” she said.
Miers told NZME she believed the weekly payment was set up.
“I do not believe the current public narrative reflects the full factual background of the tenancies or the considerable difficulties experienced during the periods involved,” Miers said.
Miers has history of ‘nefarious conduct’ - Armstrong
The adjudicator who handled the most recent tribunal case has dealt with Miers before.
In July 2025, he handled a case with Miers under her former company, Chapel Corner Ltd, which owned a Greymouth property. Her son acted as the landlord.
The commercial property was divided into eight units and there were two residential units next door.
The company was originally taken to the tribunal by a resident at the property who claimed it was uninhabitable.
In his ruling, Armstrong described the situation as “a sad case”, saying the tenant had been persuaded to sign a tenancy agreement for accommodation in Greymouth that was well below acceptable standards.
Armstrong said the property did not resemble how it had been advertised online and the dwelling was later deemed unsanitary and uninhabitable.
Despite the claims, the tribunal dismissed the case after repeated attempts to contact the tenant, as well as Hoogwerf and Miers, received no response.
Armstrong said the tenant possibly chose not to continue, given the low likelihood of recovering compensation, adding that the mother and son “have a history of nefarious conduct”.
Tenancy investigation into Miers ongoing
It is not just the tribunal that has had dealings with Meirs and her son.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has been investigating the pair’s alleged poor landlord practices for about a year, following claims they have provided sub-standard rentals and failed to lodge bonds.
The Tenancy Compliance and Investigations Team (TCIT) started the investigation after receiving four complaints.
It said the TCIT had recently lodged an application with the Tenancy Tribunal regarding one of the cases that was under investigation.
Investigations into two other complaints remain ongoing, while the fourth was not pursued by the TCIT and the tenant lodged their own complaint with the tribunal.
Brianna McIlraith is a Queenstown-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the lower South Island. She has been a journalist since 2018 and has had a strong interest in business and financial journalism.