Watch: Auckland car yard struck by vandals again as owner fears for future
An Auckland car dealer has been left frustrated and fears for the financial future of his business amid ongoing vandalism by individuals living in a neighbouring apartment building.
Last week, NZ4X4S car yard owner Ali Faqeeri was devastated to find the windshield of another one of his utes smashed.
He found a large marble next to the vehicle and believes it was thrown off the balcony by an individual living in the Westlight apartment building in Glen Eden that overlooks his yard.
“It’s a pretty heavy marble and we’re lucky that it didn’t hit any of the staff members,” he said.
Focus visited Faqeeri’s business in December after he had lodged at least 10 police reports over similar incidents since opening the car yard in August.
He alleged food items like apples, potatoes and frozen chicken were being thrown on to his vehicles and at staff.
He has multiple videos saved to his phone which show items being thrown from the balconies next to his dealership.
“We’ve provided solid evidence,” he said. “Everybody knows that it’s happening from the apartments. Everybody is well aware of that fact.
“It’s not something that they [the apartment management] are arguing.”
The latest incident has raised Faqueeri’s fears for the financial future of his business amid other cost pressures.
“The costs for the damages that these people are doing, that we have to pay for, that’s another thing we have to consider,” he said.
“It leaves us very little profit and it’s quite hard for us having to pay thousands in damages.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. All we’re trying to do is just run a small business.”
The neighbouring apartment building is considered “mixed-tenure housing”, with 77 of the apartments owned privately and 90 public housing units managed by community housing provider Home In Place.
Home In Place NZ chief executive Chris Trypas told Focus it had received contact from Faqueeri regarding the latest incident and has provided CCTV footage to police for the requested period from two of their common area cameras.
“From our own review, there is no footage of anything being thrown,” Trypas said. “Police have yet to advise if they find anything different to our own review.
“As always, if the police find evidence to lay charges for any unlawful activity by a tenant under our management, we will take the relevant tenancy action under the Residential Tenancies Act.”
Faqeeri told Focus he had received limited communication from the on-site manager over the issue and wants more to be done.
“The apartment managers don’t really care and don’t want to be involved,” he said.
“Instead of them turning us away and telling us to just go report it to the police and ignoring us and ignoring our calls, we would appreciate it a lot more if they could at least just have a look into it.”
Faqeeri has investigated putting up netting to prevent objects from hitting his vehicles but for now, has opted to park them facing away from the building to try to protect the windshields.
“It’s really sad because for sales, it’s more beneficial to have them facing the other way,” he said.
“All we can do now is to minimise the damage as much as we can because we are anticipating that this damage is going to continue to happen.”
Police confirmed in a statement they were investigating a report of wilful damage at the address and were waiting to view CCTV footage.