Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images

ParentsMarch 22, 2017

‘I started to get sicker. And sicker.’ What it’s like renting from a slumlord when you’re a chronically ill parent

Guest writer
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images
Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images

Think your rental situation is tough? Try living with a chronic medical condition in a dark, mould-infested dump – and with a child to care for. One anonymous renter tells her story.

Renting a shit hole when you’re 15 is an adventure – especially when you’re paying shit hole prices of 60 bucks a week. When you’re 30 and paying most of your income to live in the same shit hole it definitely starts to lose its appeal.

I’ve worked full time since I was 15 and I’ve always been a grafter. Despite having chronic pain issues and the poor health that goes with that I’ve always worked. I’ve always just pushed through the pain. I’ve discharged myself from hospital when I thought I was missing too much work. I have always been the one that is the first to arrive and the last to leave, going far above and beyond, doing my best, doing my work. I coped with the occasional hospital visits, I took them in my stride.

But about five years ago the rental market started to change in an astonishing way. My wages just weren’t going as far. I live with my three- year-old son and my best friend. When we started looking for a rental it didn’t take long to realise we were going to have to drop our standards significantly.

We couldn’t be fussy and expect a clean, warm house without mould. Insulation? Pfft! You may as well ask for a working oven, a decent landlord and the moon while you’re at it!

The flat we settled on was a ‘score’: a basement flat with few windows (although the ones we had did let in a hell of a lot of water, so perhaps it was for the best that we only had a couple). There was of course a mould problem and oh so many flies. And all of this we managed to get for a stellar Auckland price that would make anyone else in New Zealand cry.

But it was central, close to the hospital, university, my work and my son’s pre-school and, later, school. So, in this market, it seemed like we had hit the jackpot.

And at first we had.

But with the benefit of hindsight I can see that the dingy little flat was where it started.

I started to get sicker. And sicker. My hospital admissions went up. Winter was the worst. I started getting pneumonia and flu and every other bug that went around, including one memorable occasion when the bug turned out to be swine flu. My pain was getting worse (so much worse that on one occasion my lung spontaneously collapsed due to it). I was hospitalised more frequently and for longer.

I couldn’t just discharge myself because I was just so much sicker. I ended up having five surgeries while living in that dump.

Eventually it became too much.

The constant hospitalisations and specialist visits were just too much. The surgeries and recovery times felt relentless and constant. The medications had strange side effects it was never ending. People just don’t understand how much energy it takes to be chronically ill and to not be getting better despite doing everything right.

I just couldn’t work any more. This was absolutely devastating to me.

So I went on the ‘sickness’ benefit and things went rapidly downhill.

I couldn’t afford the rent and got further and further into debt, which made me stressed which translated to more hospital visits. I was put under a specialist team out in Greenlane around the time the rent was going up again. And I couldn’t do it. I was facing homelessness with my child and I truly believe that would have been what would have happened if I wasn’t one of the lucky ones.

A family friend had a house in West Auckland and her tenants were moving out. We could have it for cheap (Auckland cheap, anywhere else and the price would still make you faint). So we moved out West.

We now have a house with insulation and my health has been improving.

After a year on the waiting list I have now been transferred from Greenlane to the Waitemata DHB. Good news right? No more monthly trips across town to see a pain team?

Nope.

Because in our wonderful city, the WDHB pain team is based on the North Shore. So now it takes half a day to get there and back, with multiple bus and train transfers. I can’t afford a car (even with a car its over a hour outside of rush hour).

And I’m still paying 90% of my income on rent, which means once bills are paid and my son is fed, there is nothing for me.

I survive on his leftovers and the odd snack thanks to a truly wonderful flatmate. You can imagine the wonders this does for my health.

I’m searching for work, but being disabled is a barrier to that even without an employer looking at the year and a bit gap on my CV. And the reason I have been out of work is a direct result of the lack of rental standards in Aotearoa. The cowboy slumlords who won’t do anything to fix up the dumps.

All a landlord has to supply is an electricity outlet, access to hot water, and something to cook on. I’ve lived in flats that literally supplied just those.

I truly feel that in my case at least, and I’m sure in others too, Auckland housing is contributing to people being on the dole.

When you’re spending all your money on rent, you can’t afford to run a car or catch the limited public transport to get to interviews. When you’re spending all your money on rent so that you are literally suffering from malnourishment and your doctor is seriously worried and puts you back in hospital just so you can eat, well – try job hunting as well. When you are constantly getting sicker because of your damp shack that you are forced to call home you aren’t particularly employable. Our employment laws aren’t strong enough to protect you. When you’re sleeping the day away so you don’t eat or so you save the little energy your health affords you for when your kid gets home from school, looking for work seems like an insurmountable struggle.

We need a rental warrant of fitness and we need it soon.

We need landlords who care and we need them to be forced to care by laws that protect the vulnerable if they don’t.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

The truly truly lucky.

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    ParentsMarch 21, 2017

    Mind the carpet! On the special misery of renting with small children

    Guest writer

    People say that children help make a house a home, but what about when your house is rented and you could be turfed out at a moment’s notice?

    “KALE EAT WAMATO” shrieks my son, as he wrenches yet another budding tomato off the vine and hurls it at the kale, before shoving more of the tiny fruit into his mouth.

    I have stopped telling him to wait until the tomatoes go red before he eats them. Partly because he is two and I prefer to save my energy for battles like teeth brushing and keeping pens out of the toilet, but it is also because our landlord won’t be renewing our lease, so the tomato plant, with the kale, will die soon anyway.

    OK, not much of a sob story. I am well aware that I have it pretty bloody good. For a start, my husband and I are both employed, and we were able to find a new place within a week of receiving our marching orders. We both have family members that would, and do, help us out financially if and when our incomes aren’t enough to tide us over. In the event that we look to buy a house (lol) it will not be without a lot of help from our parents.

    As a student I didn’t have the means, the maturity, or even the desire to commit to a mortgage. Living week to week in a freezing villa with a bunch of other degenerates was exactly what I needed at the time. I met some of my favourite people in the world flatting, and one of my first ever flatmates is my now husband and the father of my son. It’s a classic Kiwi love story and without renting it wouldn’t exist. Flatting meant shelter, a roof over my head, and people to watch reruns of The Office with.

    Now I am a mother, a wife, a thirtysomething. And goddammit, I want a home.

    With a baby comes responsibility. With a baby comes projectile. With a baby comes a placenta; a placenta that sat in our tiny freezer for six months because it felt too weird burying it under a feijoa tree on someone else’s land. (You’ll be pleased to know we settled for a potted grapefruit tree that is now too big for its pot. Hot tip: Grapefruit trees get big, especially if you feed them placenta).

    It is true that at 22 I assumed that by 30 I would have my shit together in ways that, frankly, I don’t. But even in my most modest imaginings of my grown-up life, I certainly didn’t predict poos on the carpet featuring on my list of worries.

    Yes it affects my parenting. It affects whether I let my kid run around the house with no nappy on. It affects whether I let him play with felt pens. It makes me think twice about feeding him anything with turmeric or tomato because there’s nowhere I can sit him that’s not flinging distance from carpet. And for the home-owning parents who live like that anyway, all power to you in the fight against stains, but I’d take gay abandon over cleanliness any day, and if it was my own carpet, I wouldn’t give it another thought.

    A favourite line of some of the property investors I’ve come across is that this generation needs to get used to renting – everyone rents in Europe! And you don’t hear them complaining! Oui, oui. In the dense hubs of Europe and the UK it’s true, apartment dwelling and renting is commonplace. But in Europe you can sign a long-term lease. In Europe you can paint your bedroom fluorescent orange, chuck up some velvet curtains, and not worry that your landlord’s son will have a fight with his wife and need the place in six weeks.

    And, if we accept that regardless of any sudden pull-finger policy from the government, we are going to have families renting in NZ, surely it’s time we look at providing homes rather than houses.

    As good a person as a landlord may be – and hey, some of my best friends are landlords (just kidding, their parents are) – their bottom-line is not the welfare of me or my pooey, sauce-covered family.

    We need long-term leases. I’m talking 15 and 20 year leases. I’m talking a space you can buy furniture for and not expect to move it every other year. I’m talking feature walls and fully-lined curtains. I’m talking grapefruit trees.

    I’m not an expert on economics, or investment, or tenancy law. I’m full-blown layperson in all those departments. The layest. But as a mother, I am deeply committed to nagging the shit out of anyone who can get this sorted. Any takers?

    Disclaimer: I would like to note that my current landlords are bloody good sorts, truly. Especially if they’re reading this.