Tenants are being told to speak up if they're living in sub-standard housing.

Reports have emerged from Auckland suburb Otahuhu of people who are paying upwards of $250 a week to live in leaky and mouldy houses, some of which are overcrowded, lacking water or electricity.

However, director of the New Zealand Property Manager Magazine Philip Macalister said there's no need for a landlord policing agency that can proactively investigate shoddy housing.

"The system is there's the tenancy tribunal and if either the landlord or the tenant has a complaint about the other, there is a process they can go through."

Macalister said most landlords feel tenancy laws are in favour of tenants.

However, one local group says people living in these houses stay quiet out of fear landlords will kick them out.

Town Manager Richette Rodger said between just four and six tenants have got in touch and believes there are more out there.

She said Auckland Council is willing to check properties.

"I'd like to see more people come forward if they have a house in their street where they know there are multiple people living there or the standard of the house is not right."

One of these residents, Mana Ru, said Barfoot and Thompson manage his flat on Great South Road, but for five years haven't been able to get the owner to fix a leak, which causes power outages.

He said he and his wife pay $520 a fortnight to live in the cockroach invested flat.

But Ru said he wouldn't take issues further for fear of losing the flat.

"The other time the roof almost fell in on us, because when the big trucks came through here, they shake the whole building and you've got concrete all over the place. I'm dying to get out of here."

Efeso Collins, the Auckland Councillor for the area, said tackling slumlords operating is now in the hands of politicians.

Collins said Auckland's housing crisis means those staying in the houses just don't have any other choice - it's that, or living on the street.

He said the ball's in the Council and the Government's court.

"That's the New Zealand that these people know. This is [a] third world situation, and we should be absolutely disgusted by this."

He said he has heard stories of tenants having to go to the local petrol station to use the bathroom.

Collins said the tenants are powerless in the situation - it's either the house, or the street.

"They are desperate for housing. Much of their income is going towards paying for that housing. Whether it's adequate or not, these people are in survival mode and [they] have absolutely no voice."