The annual misery of flat hunting for students in Wellington

Thursday, 24 February 2022

This story is featured on Stuff’s The Long Read podcast. Check it out by hitting the play button below, or find it on podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

It’s a student rite of passage: first year in the halls, second year flatting. Except finding a flat has never been more expensive, or more desperate than now. And nowhere is less accommodating than Wellington. The capital’s students can spend months looking – with no success. Ethan Te Ora followed five students, over three months, as they did everything they could to find a flat.

“We believe this is the perfect home for us.”

Elizabeth Hodgson​ copies and pastes this sentence into every email or message to a property manager or tenant. Two-dozen such requests for viewings, during the first weeks of her flat hunt, end with that line.

Yet, every time, it’s true.

The villa with the gorgeous bay window and outdated 1950s kitchen is the perfect home. A recently converted office block apartment is the perfect home. Even a house which reeks of damp is – potentially – the perfect home.

Ask any student renter in Wellington, and they’ll tell you – the perfect home, at a certain point, is whatever rental you're offered.

**READ MORE:

* Life in unaffordable council housing – the social housing tenants paying an untenable cost

* 'Eat noodles while you finish your degree': Is the student allowance payment too rigid to meet inflated housing costs?

* The truth about The Setup on Manners, Wellington's notorious emergency housing hotel

* 'Students will leave Wellington': Fears of a student exodus as rental shortage bites hard

**

It’s mid-October, and Hodgson still has the illusion of choice.

The second-year film student lives in the halls, and is searching for her first ever flat – a four-bedroom house to share with her three best friends. Sign a lease before trimester ends, they are warned, even if that means paying thousands of dollars in rent for an unused house over summer.

One house appears more perfect than others: light, spacious, and just a five-minute walk from Massey University’s Wallace St campus, where the friends study. And at $909 a week, it’s more affordable than most.

The viewing, Hodgson estimates, lasts minutes. With a queue of 30 other prospective renters trailing down the driveway, there isn’t time for a closer inspection.

The timing seems off: the move-in date – just two weeks away – would mean double rent at the halls for roughly a month. However, walking down the driveway, the friends convince each other to apply anyway.

They adapt an online template for job applicants as a flat-hunting CV. Don’t be afraid to brag in your application, friends tell them. In the same way a masters degree often leads to an entry-level job, a barrel of academic awards might get you a lease.

The flatmates-to-be list prizes and scholarships in their bios, each ending on a personal statement packed with dutiful synonyms: “tidy”, “clean”, “respectful”, “responsible”.

Then, they hit send – and nothing happens. Until a week later, when the flat group chat pings with confirmation of an offer. Hodgson cries when she reads the screen-shotted email. “This was too easy,” she remembers thinking.

Within days, they sign the paperwork and move in, and that’s when the whole thing falls apart. A rickety loft-bed frame in one of the bedrooms seems as if it might also fall apart – and doesn’t even fit a single mattress. If you did use it to sleep, your head would be inches from mould, they realise. Instead, Hodgson’s flatmate throws down a mattress on the living room floor.

Crevice by crevice, the house reveals its imperfections. More mould in dark corners. An ant infestation elsewhere.

The property management company ignores emails at first – then offers them a different rental, a hundred dollars out of budget.

By December, the flatmates realise they will need to look for a new flat, while trying to break the lease on the current one. They consult a student advocate about taking the landlord to the Tenancy Tribunal.

Hodgson goes home to Tauranga for Christmas and, before she does, packs her belongings – all of them. She arranges to move in with Wellington-based cousins in the New Year, rather than return to the flat.

The day before she leaves, however, the flatmates receive an email – their landlord strikes first, bringing a claim against them before the tribunal. “The scariest afternoon of my life,” Hodgson will say later.

“Now, we need to find something quick, or we’ll be homeless,” she says. “It’s like: apply for everything. Even real in-the-dumps houses, or ones that are super far away from uni. We just need something – literally anything.”

About the same time, Ellis Cole​ was also leaving Wellington for Tauranga, her hometown. Except she wouldn’t be coming back.

Enrolling at Victoria University the year before was like fulfilling a dream. She first visited Wellington as an adolescent, and afterwards set her sights on studying in the capital. The first seven months live up to every expectation. Now, Cole wants independence from the residential student halls; a flat in the inner-city suburbs.

Along with six friends, the sociology and philosophy student begins browsing rental ads in September. The next month the group are attending viewings back-to-back-to-back. After a week on that treadmill, Cole starts to waver. On average, she reckons, rooms are going for $250 a week, without expenses.

“That’s a lot of money. For a flat that’s either quite far away from uni, or an absolute s..thole.”

Her brother, she knows, is paying around half as much for a flat in Hamilton.

And that’s not surprising, Wellington has often been called the worst place in the country for renters. The most recent data from Trade Me shows weekly rents in Wellington City reached an all-time high last month – $675 a week – with 12 per cent fewer listings, in the larger Wellington region, than a year ago.

Over the past five years the median rent in the region has gone up by 50 per cent, from $400 a week to $600, according to rental bond data from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (The median rent in the Waikato region has gone up 42 per cent over the same time period, but is still $125 a week cheaper on average.)

And that discrepancy made Cole think. Those thoughts turned into idle browsing on Waikato University’s website, and conversations with her parents about a transfer. Ultimately, the decision came down to rent. “I felt like the sensible thing was to go somewhere cheaper.”

And, as the study year in Wellington draws to a close, it seems like her friends are spending more time searching for a flat than preparing for end-of-year exams.

And, yet, Cole feels guilty. With one fewer person in the group, certain flats are eliminated. “I felt like I was letting them down.”

Rebecca Scholtz​ can relate to that feeling.

The postgraduate classics student looks for larger flats with five or six friends, in various configurations. Keeping across the fluid arrangements is confusing, like creating a seating plan for a shambolic dinner party, where the number of attendees fluctuates.

One by one, friends drop out, taking single rooms instead – leaving Scholtz and her friend as a twosome.

“It puts a strain on friendships,” Scholtz says. “In some ways, it’s a very impersonal thing, and then it becomes personal, ‘cause they’re your friends. No-one is inherently doing anything wrong, but it can still be quite hurtful.”

The sequence of events, which led to her search, will be familiar to many students. Firstly, the landlord signalled a $50-a-week rent increase at the four-bedroom flat. Spread across five people, including one couple, that equalled $10 a week more per person.

Then the couple decided to leave – meaning $40 a week more per person, after the redistribution of rent among four people. Scholtz can call on hard-earned savings, but decides $275 a week is more than she can justify.

It’s early January, and time is running out. She has to leave her current flat next week. If she doesn’t sign a lease in time, she’ll go to Auckland, where her family live, and continue the search remotely. That’ll be 10 times harder, she tells herself.

Instead, she pounds pavement, attending viewings all around Wellington: Te Aro, Wellington Central, Thorndon, Kelburn, Mt Victoria, and Mt Cook. But, at the end of the week, she still doesn’t have any offers.

And the prospect of finding a room begins to feel remote. Now in Auckland, she begins to consider a drastic alternative.

“I’m getting disillusioned with the whole process. I might not come back. If there isn’t a flat for me to move into, I might just have to stay in Auckland – try to do post-grad studies remotely.”

For Morgan Teague​, move-out day begins with confusion. By the end of the day, there’s pizza on the pavement.

It’s a Saturday in late January. Teague is facing an impossible weekend: work commitments, an uncle’s birthday, a busy flat-viewing calendar, as well as moving their stuff.

They start work early, in order to also finish early and attend the birthday celebration, then realise they’ve mixed up the dates, and the birthday is tomorrow. Later, their former flatmates help them drop a few possessions, before movers arrive to relocate the rest. Except the movers show up early.

Teague isn’t moving into a new flat – despite more than 70 inquiries and 30 viewings over a period of three months, they are unable to find one before their lease ends.

And, so, instead they are moving into a hostel – $170 a week. Movers, for an hour, are $240. The storage unit comes to $180 a month.

Constant life disruptions – viewing after viewing, rejection after rejection – are more taxing. Even getting viewings requires persistence. Within minutes, listings generate hundreds of viewings. Within hours, tens of people might have applied. Most of the time Teague won’t even hear back. “I know it’s a numbers game – there are so many other people looking. It’s nothing personal against you, but it feels a bit personal.”

At the end of the day, they buy a pizza to bring back to the hostel. But on the walk back, they drop it on the concrete.

“A very small problem, I realise. It was just like one small thing on top of another, and that was too much.”

Ava* is running out of options. Crashing on a friend’s couch, once her lease ends, seems more likely by the day. The stress is intense, and familiar. She hadn’t flatted before she came to Wellington two years ago, yet this isn’t her first experience of housing insecurity.

Ava grew up in an abusive household. Once, when she was nine, her mother kicked her out for a whole night, for no apparent reason. Then, intermittently, threatened her with eviction during her teens. Ava took to sleeping with a grab-bag, in case something happened overnight. (She’s no longer in contact with her parents, and uses a pseudonym in this story for her own protection.)

Ava often experiences transphobia in her flat search. “There’s a little look in their eyes sometimes,” she says. “You just know you’re not going to get that flat, and it really sucks.”

Ava’s budget, at her current flat, is razor-thin. And chronic pain and exhaustion mean she can’t take on part-time work, as students often must, to make ends meet. “Jobs I can do, I’m not qualified for,” she says. “And the jobs I qualify for, I can’t physically do.”

Her weekly living costs payment from Studylink barely cover rent – leaving $35 a week for food, and a coin-operated laundry service. Week by week, the money adds on to her student loan balance, and lines the pockets of her landlord.

It’s a common problem. Student advocates say thousands of tertiary students are opting out of study due to insurmountable living costs, while others have specifically left Wellington to escape high rents.

“We’ve heard thousands of stories from students who have dropped out – or chosen not to study – because they can’t afford to live,” New Zealand Union of Students' Association (NZUSA) national president Andrew Lessells​​ says.

Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association president Ralph Zambrano​​ says that is happening in the capital. “I know many have pondered leaving due to high rents, or have left.”

Victoria University chief operating officer Mark Loveard​​ says the student roll isn’t shrinking due to housing costs, with outgoing transfers typically matched by incoming ones – although the university didn’t yet have this year’s figures.

But rents have undeniably increased over the last few years, and he has “a lot of sympathy” for students struggling to pay rent.

The Government remains steadfast in its message to students: We’ve done a lot to help you.

Student allowance and living costs entitlements are due to increase by $25 a week from April 1, says Katrina Sutich​​ of Te Puna Kaupapahere, part of the Ministry of Education. And that was on top of a previous increase – $50 a week in 2018.

Studylink has discretion to assist students “facing urgent or unexpected costs”, too, she says.

Student allowance entitlements vary, and are means-tested. A single student – under 24 years old, and not living in a parental home – will get $270 a week after the increase. A single parent with children will get $434 a week. Living costs will increase to $272 a week, an amount added to a student’s loan.

Critics say the Government is doubling down on a broken model. Increases to the allowance still don’t cover rent, in many cases, Lessells says. Instead, students live in poverty, and take on debt to survive.

And many aren’t eligible for the allowance anyway – under-24s have parental income tested, and the threshold is low: $58,000 a year.

“The threshold is tiny – barely above minimum wage,” Lessells says. “And that assumes families don’t have other kids, or financial commitments.”

The policy is inherently racist, he says, disadvantaging Māori or Pasifika students from larger families. And the scheme discriminates on the basis of age, or type of study as well – under-24s having their parent’s income picked over; postgraduate students not getting the allowance at all.

The accommodation supplement, available for some students, didn’t bridge the gap.

Living costs, on the other hand, entrench crippling student debt. In 2021, students borrowed $421m in living costs. “People are dying without ever paying off living costs debt,” Lessells says.

Meanwhile, millions from a Covid-19 tertiary hardship fund didn’t reach some students, even as they struggled to pay bills and buy food during the pandemic.

Sutich says the Government knows times are hard for students, and in response has increased its hardship fund to $30m. Money from the Covid-19 hardship fund is also still available, and students should talk to their education provider about accessing that support.

Available data from 2021, meanwhile, indicates the increase in students leaving study was smaller than 1 per cent, she says. And Sutich believes tweaks to the allowance scheme will “make a difference for some students”.

Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick​ says the scheme helps very few students. She crunched the numbers and found 43,369 students received the allowance during 2021– approximately 8 per cent of students.

“It’s easy to ignore students when you continue to rationalise the student struggle as somehow normal, which completely erases the fact that things are getting incrementally worse,” she says.

The NZUSA is calling for a universal education income (UEI) instead. That would be a weekly allowance based on the cost of living – upping assistance to $339 a week – and would be available to all students, removing age or means-tested requirements.

It is estimated the scheme would cost $2.5 billion a year, which would be repaid over time as students participate more in society.

Sutich says the Government “has not undertaken a detailed analysis of the universal education income proposal”, however.

Any changes need to address the elephant in the room, Zambrano says: landlord greed. “Landlords treat students as cash cows – when the Government ups the allowance, they up the rent,” he says.

The Government has promised to pull all levers to address the housing crisis – but rental advocates say several ideas have thus far been discounted.

Renters United spokesperson Geordie Rogers​ wants rent increases to be limited to no more than inflation, unless a landlord makes “meaningful improvements” to the home.

The Greens say a register of landlords and property managers would help with ongoing regulation, and could go hand-in-hand with a rental Warrant of Fitness. Those measures could track breaches of Healthy Homes standards, for instance, and make it easier to crackdown on repeat offenders.

Rogers says the remedy to long flat hunts is obvious: more houses.

And while focus on increasing supply in the private sector was positive, there also needed to be more investment from the Government in public housing.

“If we want to ensure that everyone – regardless of income, or social class status – can access a warm, dry, safe, affordable home, then public housing is the best mechanism to do that.”

None of those measures will come in time for this year’s students.

By February, Elizabeth Hodgson and her flatmates have gone through mediation with their landlord, who pays out $1000 in compensation – slightly more than a week’s rent, which they also continue paying.

In the meantime, Hodgson starts as the co-president for Massey at the Wellington Students’ Association (MAWSA). “It’s been surreal advising students about their flat search at work, and then dealing with this at home,” she says.

Ellis Cole is offered a flat in Hamilton almost immediately – at the second viewing, on her first day looking. And the rent is just $140 a week. Over the summer, she sometimes regrets the decision to move cities, but never for long.

“Thinking long term, it’ll probably help me to save all that money,” she says.

Her friends in Wellington end up paying $280 a week, for a flat 30 minutes from campus.

Rebecca Scholtz gets lucky. A friend of her sister’s needs to fill two rooms at a central city apartment. After some back and forth, she arranges to move in with her friend.

It’s telling, she says, after all the applications, the flat she gets is one she didn’t apply for.

“The frustrating part is that in the end, even after months of looking, I didn’t get to choose. This was the only option.”

Morgan Teague is offered a room at a different central city apartment – for $258 a week – after two weeks roughing it at the hostel.

“I won’t turn it down – I’m not a gambling person, ‘cause I’m not very lucky,” they say.

Even so, they don’t take their possessions out of storage just yet, in case it doesn’t work out.

Ava finds a room – once a lounge – in Newtown, a week before her lease expires. At $175 a week, it’s cheaper than her previous flat. The extra $30 doubles her food budget. “I guess this is what a good outcome looks like,” she says.

After 20 viewings, Hodgson and her flatmates still don’t have a house. Once, they lose out due to another applicant having family connections to the landlord. They feel confident following a different viewing, then never hear back.

When the group chat finally pings with confirmation of an offer, Hodgson feels numb. It’s hard to picture herself in the house – in fact, she’s only seen pictures. Her flatmate viewed the Vogeltown flat alone. By that stage, the flatmates were spread too thin across multiple viewings to attend together.

The group chat notifications come in a flurry: “I’m so happy.” “I’m screaming with my mum.” “Yay, we’re not going to be homeless.” And this makes Hodgson feel good – not the house itself, the relief of her flatmates.