Rent Payment
K Roe (Account suspended) made this Official Information request to University of Auckland
This request has been reported as needing administrator attention (perhaps because it is vexatious, or a request for personal information)
From: K Roe (Account suspended)
Dear University of Auckland,
(1) What percentage of the VC salary is paid in rent?
(2) If the borders closed prior to the VC arriving in NZ the VC would have needed to work by distance. What would the rent amount have been charged to the VC, then?
Yours faithfully,
A person who (by magic) happens to be located in NZ,
Kelly Roe.
From: K Roe (Account suspended)
Dear University of Auckland,
I'm sorry -- I should clarify:
(1) Gross. Gross salary. What percentage of that is paid in rent.
(2) To NZ. If the borders had closed then what percentage of your Gross NZ salary would have been reheld / reclaimed for rent for your NZ residence rental properly.
Yours faithfully,
K Roe
From: Rebecca Ewert
University of Auckland
Dear Ms Roe,
I refer to your request of 2 May 2020 under the Official Information Act, which you clarified later that day. The University's response follows:
"(1) What percentage of the VC salary is paid in rent?"
"(1) Gross. Gross salary. What percentage of that is paid in rent."
Zero. No part of the Vice-Chancellor's salary is paid in rent.
"(2) If the borders closed prior to the VC arriving in NZ the VC would have needed to work by distance. What would the rent amount have been charged to the VC, then?"
"(2) To NZ. If the borders had closed then what percentage of your Gross NZ salary would have been reheld / reclaimed for rent for your NZ residence rental properly."
New Zealand's borders did not "close" prior to the Vice-Chancellor arriving in New Zealand.
Yours sincerely,
Rebecca Ewert
General Counsel
University of Auckland
-----Original Message-----
From: K Roe <[FOI #12765 email]>
Sent: Saturday, 2 May 2020 8:01 PM
To: legal <[email address]>
Subject: Re: Official Information request - Rent Payment
Dear University of Auckland,
I'm sorry -- I should clarify:
(1) Gross. Gross salary. What percentage of that is paid in rent.
(2) To NZ. If the borders had closed then what percentage of your Gross NZ salary would have been reheld / reclaimed for rent for your NZ residence rental properly.
Yours faithfully,
K Roe
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From: K Roe (Account suspended)
Dear Rebecca Ewert,
It is now all over the news that the VC paid $1100 per week to rent a home that was valued to command $2000 on the open market.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/education-...
Why do you lie?
Yours sincerely,
K Roe
K Roe (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
Thankyou for that.
I realised that my question was ambiguous.
(1) Did the VC pay rent to the Univeristy to live in the house?
(What percentage of her salary did she pay in rent). So, while students may pay 70 per cent or more of their salary in rent the VC was paying...
(2) Did the VC get cheap rent from the University to live in the house?
(Was the VC paying below market rates).
The actual data (the amount of rent that was being paid and the valuation of what rent the property would likely fetch on the rental market) was an answer to my question.
I think it is a lie for R Ewert to have implied that the VC was responsible for her own accommodation arrangements when she was not. This was some combination of a perk of her job / an addition to her salary.
K Roe (Account suspended) left an annotation ()
I was also asking whether she would be required to pay rent to the University if she had have been locked out of the country due to Covid travel restrictions at a time when the University of Auckland was invoicing studnets to pay residential hall fees whether they were in their halls or whether they were locked out due to Covid travel restrictions.
It was about whether the University of Auckland is focused on equity in the sense of re-distributing things from the most to least advantaged or if there was an anti-Robyn-Hood sense of equity, here, where re-distributing from the poor, the fiduciary, the vulnerable to the VC was somehow considered the very very very very best strategy of all.
From: K Roe (Account suspended)
Dear Rebecca Ewert,
The VC’s salary is $755,000 (net or gross)?
$755,000 / 52 weeks per year = $14,519.23 per week income.
$1,100 rent per week is $1,100 / $14,519.23 * 100 = 7.58 of the VC’s salary goes towards rent.
The property was valued to `command $2,000 on the open market’ where $2,000 / 14,519.23*100 = $13.77 of the VC’s salary would have gone towards rent if the VC was required to pay market rent for the property she is living in.
The difference between the amount she pays the amount the property is valued to command on the open market is $2,000 - $1,100 = 900 * 52 = $46,800 per year. $46,800 / $755,000 * 100 = 6.20 per cent of her salary is, effectively, given to her, in the form of a housing subsidy.
So 7.58 of her salary is paid in rent with 6.20 of her salary as a ‘perk’ or ‘bonus’ in the form of housing.
If the VC had have been required to work by distance because of Covid restrictions then would she have been required to pay rent to the University for the house she was unable to take up residence in? Or would the University have given her an even larger increase in her salary / perks by further subsidising her rent and / or by offering further subsidy or rent payments to cover her accomodation by distance as well?
The University of Auckland doesn't seem to think that there is anything wrong with this way of doing business.
Yours sincerely,
K Roe
From: K Roe (Account suspended)
Dear Rebecca Ewert,
May I respectully suggest that the University considers putting the profits of the sale of the VC's house into some kind of VC scholarship towards subsidising affordable housing for students.
The University needs to re-think the appropriateness of a public University hosting events in private residences / dungeons.
Yours sincerely,
K Roe
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Mr Rodgers left an annotation ()
Not exactly lying. As the article says, the house was not "formally considered part of her employment terms". The VC paid the rent to her landlord (employer).
Kind of like in the good 'ol days when rural teachers lived in a house owned by the Education Dept and paid rent on it.
Link to this