Sorry to Bother You :/
New tenancy laws give tenants more power in their rental properties. What many students will tell you is that asking a landlord to follow these laws, can be pretty fucking terrifying. It’s become a part of student life to deal with mould on the walls, leaky roofs, and freezing temperatures. Students are expected to live in properties most landlords wouldn’t dream of putting themselves or their families in. As well as this, the rent they pay isn’t even covered by their StudyLink living costs, and it’s only getting more expensive. The flatting market gets more competitive every year, and students feel so lucky to have housing, that raising tenancy law violations with their intimidating landlord or dickhead property manager just feels like an unnecessary crusade.
A huge part of getting ahead in the bloody battlefield that is the rental market is building up a good relationship with your landlord. Getting on their good side can ensure your lease gets renewed or you get a killer reference to use on future tenancy applications. To build up your reputation as a low maintenance, definitely-doesn’t-throw-parties tenant, you accept that your living situation is shit, without telling the landlord that it’s shit. Bringing up issues with your landlord, no matter the scale can be a daunting experience, you have no idea how they’re going to react or whether something will actually be done about the issue.
Eva reached out to their university student association for advice after they discovered a rat infestation at their new flat. The overwhelming message they got from the SA was to not tell the landlord. “They basically told us we would get blamed if we brought it up to the landlord, so we just brought rat poison with our own money and sorted it ourselves.”
The responsibility of maintenance on a rental property falls on many students. Many tenants will take on the role of handyman, plumber, and electrician just to avoid approaching their landlord, as Caitlin, a fourth-year student, knows all too well. “We have a pretty steep set of concrete stairs outside our flat, with no handrail. When I reached out to our landlord he came back and said it had never been an issue with previous tenants. Instead of replying with building code laws and health and safety violations we ended up paying for one to get installed ourselves, to stay on our landlord's good side.”
It’s pretty clear that regardless of the problem, landlords will find a way to pin blame on the tenant. No student actually wants a rat infestation in their home. The issue of a handrail has probably never come up because no one has fallen to their death at the property yet. But in both of these experiences, students were made to feel like they were the problem, not the property.
Any student in any university town will be able to tell you stories about their flats that would give any middle-class mum an anxiety attack. The relationship between students and landlords is never a harmonious one. I would so far as to describe it as pretty fucking turbulent. In theory, this relationship is mutually beneficial, tenants contribute to their income and in return, a landlord provides housing for them. The competitive nature of the flatting market means landlords know they can take advantage of tenants because of how easy it would be to replace them.
“They get away with treating us this way because no one can be bothered fighting them, students don’t have the time or money. My New Year’s resolution was to be 200% more Karen when it comes to tenancy stuff so I’m basically my property manager's most hated tenant right now,” Eva says.
It seems illogical for landlords to neglect their properties. In theory, a well-maintained property is likely to earn them more income over time and build up a relationship with tenants who you can keep around long term. One landlord is also confused by this. Jane, who owns multiple properties in a popular Wellington suburb, states she doesn’t understand landlords who let property maintenance get away from them. “It doesn’t make sense to me; you can claim part of your maintenance bills off of your taxes. I don’t see why you wouldn’t make the effort to hire tradesmen to complete basic maintenance on your property.”
Jane says she has a very good relationship with her tenants and encourages them to come forward with anything that goes wrong at the property. She says it bothers her more when renters don’t inform her when something is amiss, and she finds out on her three-monthly inspections. Jane has kept many long-term tenants at a few of her properties, and credits this to the good relationship she forms with them. “If you follow the rules and treat them well, they tend to stick around. It’s like a marriage really, you come to an arrangement that benefits both of you.” Many students know that finding a landlord like Jane seems basically impossible. Having a landlord that actually wants to foster a good relationship with their tenants seems like a fairy tale. It’s obvious that there are good landlords out there, but they’re definitely an outlier in the experience of students.
One student, Caroline, says she struggled with even getting her landlord to print out a tenancy bond form ahead of a flat inspection. “It’s literally a tiny bit of paper, and we don’t have a printer to print it out. She refused and we were like….um, it’s your job.” In retaliation, the landlord responded “that has no problem with us looking elsewhere, in fact it would ‘make her more comfortable’ because then she could raise the room prices for new tenants. It was just so disgustingly frank. We quickly backed down, but it made us feel like we couldn’t even ask for the smallest of things, or we could face her ending the lease.”
The range of new tenancy laws rolling in this year aims to make it easier for tenants to get what they need from landlords without being unfairly denied. Tenants cannot be stopped from making minor changes to their properties (within reason). This means you can chuck up your Etsy prints and edgy film posters with Blu-Tack, and not have to take them down for every inspection. Landlords can no longer refuse their tenants a fibre install unless it will incur personal cost to them. High quality streaming, baby! Most significantly, by July, all rentals must have some form of heating in them to keep houses warm and dry in the winter (fucking finally).
If your landlord or property manager fails to follow these rules, tenants are well within their rights to take them to the Tenancy Tribunal or receive financial compensation. The choice that more and more students will be faced with is whether or not pursuing issues with their landlords is worth the risk. There is always a chance that a landlord will decide not to renew your lease, or claim money out of your bond for ‘cleaning’ or ‘rubbish collection’, which students claim to have been struck with before. With stricter tenancy laws coming into play throughout the year, time will tell whether they do their job to protect tenants or if things will continue the way they are.