Greed, desperation, and squalor - life in illegal boarding houses

Friday, 2 June 2017

Unhealthy, decrepit, and expensive: 43 Church Street is a de facto boarding house in Otahuhu, south Auckland.

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.

Bleak bedrooms: someone pays $230 to a week to sleep here, without window panes.

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.

**SPECIAL INVESTIGATION:

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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.

Rose, 43, is a long time tenant at 43 Church Street.

Police got called out to a raft of incidents at Xu's property on Routley Rd, Glen Eden, ranging from bail breaches to assault. Police were alert to 121 people, most with significant criminal histories, who have stayed there on bail since 2008. A police officer was reportedly punched and bitten on the face at the address in March this year.

Xu maintains he is willing to improve his houses to satisfy the council. But expert reports and building work are expensive, he says: 'People only know the income, they don't know how much it costs.'

Former street sleeper Waiata, 25, says living in squalor at 43 Church Street beats being homeless.

Tenants of condemned boarding houses were in two minds about the shut-downs; they knew their living conditions were substandard, but few had an alternative.

'To be honest with you it could be a lot better,' said Glen Sharman, a boarder of Xu's houses for five years. 'Personally I wouldn't live where I'm living right now. Why am I? Because I've got nowhere else to go.'

'Not so nice': 43 Church Street's kitchen is better suited to rats and flies than people.

Rangi, 51, has lived at 43 Church St since he was released from jail in 2010. He says the house was 'a tiny bit more normal' then.

'Well, at least you could cook on the stove and go to the bloody toilet.'

Sony Tino suffered clinical depression at one south Auckland boarding house - but has found happiness at another.

Surveying the back yard – littered with mouldy bread, mountainous bags of festering rubbish, and broken prams – through an empty window frame, Rangi shakes his head: 'A dog wouldn't be safe living here now.'

Every door in the house has been removed from its hinges except for one, which hides the faeces-strewn bathroom. Some have been laid across holes in the floor and old beer boxes peek out from under them. Most windows lack glass.

Sonny Tino's new boarding house is a far cry from his previous place, or any of the recently condemned boarding houses in Auckland.

Rangi say he has approached the property manager about repairs, but that 'talking to her was like talking to a brick wall'.

'As long as she gets her money, she doesn't give a flying f…'

Tenants pay either $230 for a room in the house or $250 for use of one of three decrepit caravans, weekly. Porch space and cordoned off bits of hallway counted as rooms. With six tenants paying rent all year, Singh could pocket $74,880 per annum. Often, however, as many 10 people live there.

Twenty-five-year-old Waiata moved to the house eight months ago and says it is 'better than the streets', where she had been living.

A property manager arrives each week and takes the residents' cash flow cards – provided by Work and Income – to an ATM to extract money from each. They trust her to withdraw the correct amount.

Fights break out rarely, says Waiata: 'They're mainly between me and my partner – just domestics you know, but that's normal.'

'Everyone drinks a lot but there's no drugs,' she adds. 'There's just some glue-sniffing.'

Rose, 43, has lived at the house on and off for 18 years. Her 14-year-old grandson doesn't officially live with her, she says, but often stays.

When asked why he isn't at school at 2pm on a Thursday, the teen says it is 'too boring' and that he hasn't been for weeks.

Rose says she likes living at Church St, although the kitchen is 'not so nice'. It is caked with sticky grime and a large rat scuttles across the broken stove top. A swarm of flies hovers in the centre of the room, and the kitchen tap can't be turned off.

South Auckland welfare agencies and NGOs are working to find the residents of Church St alternative accommodation.

BRIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD

Not all boarding houses are created equal. Some do enforce strict rules regarding behaviour and hygiene, get inspected regularly, and – in 59-year-old Sonny Tino's case – can improve people's lives.

Tino lived at a 'leaky, horrible' boarding house in Papatoetoe, south Auckland, until last year. He says he was not surprised when a 40-year-old man got murdered there last month.

'It was bound to happen – the place was like an open home, anyone could walk right in off the street,' he explains.

The squalor and violence of the place made Tino consider suicide. 'I was desperate for a roof over my head, but I knew I was too old for this sort of crap,' he says.

'I thought about overdosing on my medication, but ended up meeting someone at church who showed me the place where I live now.'

Tino paid $210 per week at the Papatoetoe boarding house – the same he currently pays at a large lodge in Otahuhu.

His new room is small, but carpeted, freshly-painted and watertight. There is Pasifika art in the hallway, and it smells like a decent hotel.

'I'm really happy now,' Tino says. The security, cleanliness, and relative calm are the key differences.

The manager of Tino's lodge, who did not want to be named, says her 'tough love mum' approach with tenants has earned her respect.

'I've had a hard life myself and have wished people had given me a chance – so I make sure I do that with others.

'You've really got to care about people to be in this game, not just want the money.'

She says if tenants do break her rules, 'they're out and they know they're out'.

While house rules are determined by property managers, the national minimum standards sit at a fire safety plan and drinkable water.

There is no national database of boarding houses. A tenancy services spokesperson says local councils can maintain a register 'if they choose', and have the ability to shut them down.

But even defining them is troublesome; they range from ad-hoc operations in former state houses, to multi-story complexes that look like hotels.

The most basic definition comes from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's website. It describes them as residences with at least six tenants, each renting a room and sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities. Landlords are legally responsible for boarding house' repairs and security.

When asked how many parolees were currently in boarding houses, Chief Probation Officer Darius Fagan said it's not possible to know 'as it is not always easy to determine what is and what isn't a boarding house'.

Auckland council's resource consent manager Steve Pearce estimates there are approximately 160 boarding houses in that city alone. The council responds to complaints from members of the community – as happened with 43 Church St – and conducts 'proactive inspections' every few years. Pearce can't say how many boarding houses the council has shut down due to failing inspections, as the data is not collated.

PETITION TO PARLIAMENT

Ambiguous 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.'