The next four stories should be read as one. Jono Voss had a friend whose home was damaged in the earthquake. Voss agreed to help rebuild it, but had no accomodation. So he proposed to first make a tiny home on wheels on the property. When the work on the damaged building was completed, Voss intended to tow the unit away. While Voss was doing so, Hutt Council threw the book at him, charging him with violations based on the assertion that the unit was a building. They took him to court and lost. The judge did not get to the merits of the case because he said Hutt Council “mucked it up”. See the 14 Feb 2020 story above ( Hutt City Council ‘mucked up’…  ). The outrage in this case is more than how Voss was treated. It is the much deeper problem of government inconsistency and loss of common sense. The Hutt region has a severe affordable housing and emergency housing crisis. Voss is part of the solution, not the problem. Yet at the same time, another branch of MBIE – Civil Defence – sees the need for units that are the same as what Voss made. Mobile trailer homes that will be parked on the private sections of earthquake-damaged homes for the time it takes to make the building safe. MBIE ordered ten units from the mobile home industry and then issued themselves exemptions so they would not become entangled with the Building Act. If Voss was a wealthy, entitled person, he would have a QC make mincemeat of the government. If he employed public relations media representatives, the government would be in full retreat mode – although in reality, at the first hint of such pushback, they would kick it up to a higher level and quietly retract their notices to fix and abatement orders. The problem is that Voss is not wealthy, entitled or powerful. He has enough friends that they kicked in for a lawyer, and for now (March 2020) the council is evaluating its next step. But overall, this is a condemnation of the dysfunction that has become the norm in this industry. It needs to stop. Especially now, with Covid-19 destroying the economy, and Finance Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson saying the post-lockdown economy is going to be tough, unemployment will soar and the entire domestic economic structure of New Zealand could need rethinking.