Don Rowe speaks to the founder of a new chatbot connecting tenants with the rental information they need. In a world where Facebook is culpable in genocides, sham elections and the corrosion of trust in the media, it’s nice to know it can be used for good, too. Rentbot is a new chatbot from Citizen … Read more
Ethan Donnell, director of Sick Homes, the latest in the Frame documentary series produced for the Spinoff by Wrestler and funded by NZ on Air, describes the people he met, and the reality of the places they live Once a week, Brett Johnson takes apart the small machine that pumps air through a mask and … Read more
The MP who rumbled property managers talking about the so-called ‘KFC test’ for tenants writes about why they need to be stopped. It is clear that most landlords and property managers are doing it right – they are providing an essential service for New Zealanders and are doing a good job, in a respectful and … Read more
With 84% of Māori now living in urban areas, away from ancestral lands, it has become difficult for many of us to maintain a sense of tūrangawaewae. Meriana Johnsen finds out how Māori stay connected living in the cities and how some iwi are working to bring their people back home. This is the first … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Riding into office at least partly on the inability of the National government to solve – or acknowledge – the housing crisis in New Zealand, Labour now faces the titanic task of actually making something happen. Don Rowe speaks to Minister of Housing and Urban Development Phil Twyford about just how Labour … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Shortland Street expert Tara Ward finds the best – and worst – places to live in the mythical Auckland suburb of Ferndale. It’s a hard road finding the perfect place to live, but friends, I bring exciting news. I’ve stumbled across a suburb that is the answer to every renter’s dream, a … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Property managers. Two words to make the blood run cold, whether you are a tenant or a landlord. Rebecca Stevenson weighs up the data and anecdotal evidence, and her ruling is final: property managers suck. Hear me out. I’ve been on both sides; yes, I have been a landlord (pretty much by … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Madeleine Chapman spends a long, soul-sucking day at an Auckland tenancy tribunal. It’s 10:30am at the tenancy tribunal in Auckland District Court and everyone would rather be somewhere else. The first case of the day features two property managers in sleek attire who wait outside the courtroom and talk about friends and … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Māori and Pacific kids are sick of cold, damp, crowded houses. So when are we going to start treating poor quality housing as the health crisis it is, asks general practitioner Bryn Jones. This week Simon Bridges acknowledged that the National government might not have “shown it was doing enough on housing” … Read more
Rent Week 2018: With legislative changes set to increase costs for landlords, some smaller players may be forced out of the market. Property Investors’ Federation head Andrew King warns this won’t be good news for tenants. There appears to be a generally low opinion of people who provide rental properties for tenants to live in. … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Earthquakes knocked houses down in Christchurch and, unsurprisingly, rents went up. But it’s a different story now in the garden city, finds Jamie Small. Lots of people left Christchurch after the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, and many who stayed were delivered another kick in the pants in the form of rent … Read more
Rent Week 2018: His friend did it, so he thought he would try it too and save some money. In his last year at university he started living in a van. Now, two years later, he’s moving on. As told to Jamie Small. Recently I sold the van I lived in for two years. And … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Last month The Spinoff reported landlords in Wellington were actively encouraging bidding wars in an attempt to hike rents. Here NZ-born, Melbourne-based tenancy lawyer Joseph Nunweek outlines a simple legislative change that would make the concept obsolete. Since I last wrote for The Spinoff about newly-unveiled changes to tenancy law in Victoria … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Pushed to desperate measures by the high costs of renting with a small child, single parent Nichole Brown made a dramatic decision to reduce her housing costs. The hidden cost of single parenting goes beyond simply clothing and feeding children. Becoming a single parent had a huge impact on the cost of … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Like all media companies, we spend our days looking at Reddit for things to repost. The difference is that we ask. And so, with the permission of Chelsea S aka /u/PavementFuck, we present Renting 101 – everything you need to know about being a tenant in New Zealand. Since it’s renting season, … Read more
Rent Week 2018: Two tales from a small Tauranga community illustrate the challenges solo mums still face in the renting market. It was reported in January that Tauranga now outranks Auckland as New Zealand’s most unaffordable city and in the city’s pressured rental market, landlords these days have their pick of tenants and of rental … Read more
Rent Week 2018: A new Wellington-based service is looking to match rooms with roommates with as little pain as possible. Don Rowe talks to co-founder Brayden Gosse about Flat Candy, the so-called ‘Tinder of flatting’. Finding a flatmate is almost universally a total pain in the arse. From listing the ads, through filtering the applicants, … Read more
Read more from the Spinoff’s Rent Week 2018 here. This content was made possible by the NZ Human Rights Commission. The Commission is calling on all Kiwis to stand up to racism by giving it no encouragement. No respect. No place. No power. For more information on how to get involved, visit www.givenothing.co.nz
It was the surprise hit of March 2017, and now Rent Week is back, baby. And we want your stories. Many of us live in homes that we could never afford. And yet they’re not even nice to live in. What a conundrum. But the Rent Life doesn’t have to be a greasy carousel, carrying … Read more
Finding a rental in Wellington isn’t only a battle for students and young professionals. Here, single mothers tell their accommodation search stories, and public policy researcher Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw explains why housing insecurity is so damaging for families. Jane It is tough when you are a sole parent. I didn’t renew the lease on my small … Read more
Following our report on the increasingly chaotic rental market in Wellington, one young government employee explains why she’s being forced to leave town. As told to Don Rowe. I have been living in Wellington since 2010 and I have been left homeless four times during my seven years here. Despite being a professional civil servant … Read more
The State of Victoria has just announced a raft of reforms aimed at strengthening the rights of tenants. NZ-born, Melbourne-based tenancy lawyer Joe Nunweek reviews the changes – and the chances of New Zealand following suit. For three years as of last month, I’ve been living in the State of Victoria. There’s living here, and … Read more
The Opportunities Party wants to bring German-style renter protection laws to New Zealand – and that’s great, says Berlin-based New Zealander Maddie Holden. But how exactly does that policy fit with Gareth Morgan’s devotion to neoliberal economics? Gareth Morgan’s The Opportunities Party (TOP) unveiled an interesting new policy about rental housing this week, proposing to … Read more
Last week Otago University tenancy researcher Dr Elinor Chisholm suggested nine things the government should be doing to improve conditions for tenants in New Zealand. We asked the Property Investors Federation to respond, and this is what they told us. While improving people’s living conditions is a great goal, sometimes what looks like an obvious … Read more
Spinoff editor Duncan Greive looks back at rent week, a pop-up campaign which laid bare the numerous and vicious problems with renting in New Zealand. We first mooted a Spinoff ‘rent week’ in late 2016. It was based on the idea that the stories of home ownership were being told constantly, but the challenges and … Read more
As more and more young and vulnerable people are locked out of the market, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has declared war on bad landlords, releasing their tenancy compliance team into the wild. Don Rowe talks to their leader. Some time during Rent Week, it might have been around the time a doctor … Read more
Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website, featuring a lot of rent week and Hit and Run. A Landlord: I’m a landlord – but the negligence and greed of other landlords makes me ashamed to admit it “And lucky, lucky us. It has cost us nothing, not a red cent of our own … Read more
Rent week: a reader shares the story of her struggles to buy a house. She’s done everything you’re supposed to do as an aspirant home-owner – yet the banks won’t lend to her. Here she shares her story. I’m one of what I presume are many embittered twenty-somethings who feel like Stuff and NZHerald are … Read more
Economist Shamubeel Eaqub’s ‘Generation Rent’ helped quantify the massive changes to the way New Zealanders owned and rented in 2015. Here he looks at what can be don to fix the problems that created. The statistics are clear: fewer Kiwis are living in their own home – more Kiwis are renting. The home ownership rate … Read more