ZB ZB
Live now
Start time
Playing for
End time
Listen live
Listen to NAME OF STATION
Up next
Listen live on
ZB

Wellington authorities aware of illegal tenants living in earthquake-prone building

Author
Georgina Campbell,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 May 2017, 6:11AM
The earthquake-prone six storey building is on the corner of Dixon and Victoria streets (Photo / Georgina Campbell)
The earthquake-prone six storey building is on the corner of Dixon and Victoria streets (Photo / Georgina Campbell)

Wellington authorities aware of illegal tenants living in earthquake-prone building

Author
Georgina Campbell,
Publish Date
Mon, 15 May 2017, 6:11AM

Wellington City Council has been aware of illegal tenants living at an earthquake-prone building since 2013, but chose to do nothing about it.

The earthquake-prone six storey building is on the corner of Dixon and Victoria Streets, and a local business owner has described the place as "completely unacceptable for any decent human being to live in."

The foyer is covered in dust and flies, the upper floors regularly flood and rubbish is rife, but it is not the first building known to be housing people illegally.

Prime Property is due in court this morning over residential tenancies at 61 Molesworth Street, a building that's now been demolished following the Kaikoura quake. And as of last week, the council is also investigating fresh allegations of people sleeping in another commercial office building in the CBD.

Urgent work has been done to ensure fire safety at the Dixon-Victoria property, and the council now has no reason to believe the building is dangerous. However, the owner is yet to obtain a building consent and change the use of the property to include people sleeping there.

Authorities say that in some cases, they'd rather work with non-compliant building owners than kick tenants onto the street.

"What we've got to do is assess the risk of the people staying in the building as opposed to the risk of putting them out on the street," Wellington City Council building compliance and consents spokesman Peter Burnet said.

"Where would the money be better spent?" he asked. "Working with these people to bring the building up to a better level of compliance? Or doing a prosecution?"

"The threat of the prosecution sometimes encourages them to do the work."

Steve Watson, National Compliance and Investigations team manager at MBIE, relates that many landlords are unwittingly breaking the law while others know exactly what they're doing.

"We are aware of some isolated cases," Watson said.

"The Wellington situation is one that we're monitoring quite closely because the housing situation is quite fluid at the moment."

"It's never ok to live in conditions that will likely make you sick, or below the minimum building requirements, or the standards that have been set."

Lambton Ward councillor Nicola Young believes that people living illegally in squalid conditions is a sad reflection on the the city's growing housing shortage.

"In an ideal world, I don't want any illegal tenancies," Young said. "It's not the Wellington we want to have."

"But the reality is we have got them."

"If we can increase the numbers of houses available and if we can increase the number of flats, then it will squeeze [negligent landlords] out of the market."

Take your Radio, Podcasts and Music with you