I’ve only just caught up with this depressing piece by Amanda Saxton in the SST:
18-month-old Julia, the innocent face of modern NZ’s brutal, archaic boarding houses
Eighteen-month-old Julia Alatina is smiley, snotty-nosed, and dotted with flea bites.
She’s trusting; exchanging her toy broom, made of sticks, for a stranger’s hand to toddle off down the bloodstained hallway of a south Auckland lodge for the down and out.
There are six prams in that hallway, more in others. Julia’s not the only child sharing a bed with her parents in what is essentially a halfway house.
Those on the frontline reckon kids living in boarding houses have it as bad as kids living in cars – and should be fast-tracked by the government into safer accommodation.
…
Plunket’s national clinical advisor Karen Magrath says overcrowding is now commonplace; it stems from a lack of quality, affordable housing.“Many families just can’t rent a whole house on their own,” she says. “That or they can’t afford to heat their whole house, so live together in one room to keep warm.”
Plunket nurses note families of up to six sharing a single room, around the country, daily. They also note the cases of eczema, asthma, flu, skin infections, and sudden infant death syndrome that partner jam-packed living conditions.
Plunket doesn’t keep tabs on whether the families they visit are in official boarding houses or private residences rented out room by room; overcrowding’s health impact and cause tend to be the same whatever the establishment. …
In a companion piece:
Greed, desperation, and squalor – life in illegal boarding houses
Condemned by the council as a health hazard, a boarding house in South Auckland was ordered to be fixed up or shut down by March 26.
Over two months later not a skerrick of work has been done on the place and at least six people still live there.
The one toilet at 43 Church St, Otahuhu, was smashed to bits in early April; tenants said they now walk down the road to a petrol station or KFC every time they needed to relieve themselves. The house also lacks doors, window panes, and a working stove.
Each tenant pays the property manager up to $250 a week for their room.
The council addressed an Insanitary Building Notice to Gurmej Kaur Singh, of Papatoetoe. Singh could be fined up to $200,000 for flouting duties as a landlord, the letter warned, if the problems weren’t remedied.
During April and May the council also ordered three boarding houses in West Auckland to close. These – all owned by Liangguo ‘Tony’ Xu – were overcrowded and not up to building code standards.
Xu had spliced the houses’ garages, dining rooms, and lounges into tiny bedrooms – for which he charged on average $250 per week. Neighbours complained of filth and chaos that the boarding houses brought to their area: rubbish dumping, burglaries, aggressive dogs, public urination, vandalism, and threatening behaviour.
…
PETITION TO PARLIAMENTAmbiguous legislation letting dodgy boarding houses operate undetected has spurred neighbours of Xu’s boarding houses to submit a petition to Parliament. They are calling for a legislative review and better regulation of boarding houses.
Kelston Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni submitted the petition and accuses landlords like Xu and Singh of exploiting the housing crisis.
Vulnerable people are paying “large sums of money for what is substandard accommodation”, she says.
“There has to be some test of ethics for somebody who provides this sort of accommodation.”
Read on for plenty more in both cases, the photos (Chris Skelton) are as much a kick in the guts as the words.
How can anyone vote for three more years of this?
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