spinofflive
mould-el (10)

SocietyJune 23, 2021

Revealed: Wellington’s mouldiest rental homes

mould-el (10)

Wellington’s most mouldy flat is finally getting the recognition it deserves. A City for People shares the grand prize winner of Wellington’s Next Top Mould-el, plus spot prizes. 


Support our mission to analyse and uncover the new New Zealand. Click here to learn more about how you can support our work from as little as $1


Mushrooms, perma-soggy floors, and mummified rats: the biodiversity of our capital city’s “character”-filled rental homes has been flooding the inbox of A City for People. The organisation, which is a coalition of Generation Zero, Renters United and other concerned citizens, had a tough time picking the worst of a bad bunch – but they’ve done it.

The photos and stories witnessed by the judging panel were so wild they had to chuckle. “Because if you didn’t chuckle you would cry,” said spokesperson Marko Garlick.

“You can almost feel yourself getting asthma from looking at all that black mould. Many of our entrants told us they did indeed get asthma.” 

The pestilent conditions many renters are living in could be funny, but A City for People says the widespread dilapidation in Wellington rentals is symptomatic of the housing crisis. “We created this competition as a tongue-and-cheek gag in an otherwise fierce and polarising debate,” said Garlick. “We want to show councillors the result of hundreds of hectares of ‘character’ protection and council-enforced housing scarcity.”

Tomorrow Wellington City Council votes on the final draft of its notorious spatial plan. A framework for the next 30 years of housing will be decided by the vote, and there are growing concerns Wellington will keep its track record of building fewer houses per capita than any other region in New Zealand.

Mayor Andy Foster has called the spatial plan “one of the most significant and transformational pieces of work by the Council for many years”. However, a private briefing last week has given A City for People cause for concern as it appears the council might back down on initial plans to remove demolition protections for pre-1930s homes in the inner suburbs.

“Decades of inaction mean house prices and rents are out of control, while badly maintained properties rot from underneath us,” said Garlick. “We’ve chronically underbuilt over the past few decades, and have the worst housing stock and fastest growing rents in the country. On top of that, our population is forecast to grow up to 80,000 people by 2050.”

The protection of these pre-1930s houses is done in the name of “character” and “heritage”, but the renters living in them are breathing the wrong kind of culture (mould, it’s mould). Without further ado, let’s get to the unlucky winners.

Wellington’s Next Top Mould-el, 1st Prize

Suburb: Mt Cook

The first prize winner of Wellington’s Next Top Mould-el! (Photo: supplied.)

A huge congratulations to this Mt Cook flat! They’ve won $610, the median weekly rent for a Wellington home. However, this four-bedroom flat actually costs a massive $920 per week. Some of this value may arise from the “stunning array of heritage moulds” the judges observed in the pre-1930s build.

However, the prize money would cover a dehumidifier, which could suck noxious spores out of the air before they complete their daily journey from wall to lung, and a large supply of Exit Mould.

The flatmate who entered the flat in the competition explained her daily routine included a “swift hop, skip, and a jump” to dodge mouldy floor on her way to shower. She also sends regular prayers to keep the ceiling from crumbling above her and tries not to gaze into the abyss of the blackened shower extractor fan.

Spot Prize: The Shroom Room

Suburb: Maupuia

The only prize they’re winning is a free, disgusting mushroom dinner. (Photo: supplied.)

This three-bedroom flat is only $760 per week, but the judges point out this bargain is undercut by having to give up living space for a colony of fungi. “They may be cute, but they don’t pay rent,” they said.

Mushrooms love the moist, and this flat has had a leak spilling through its (now unusable) light fittings for a full year. Despite all the wet, one of these lights has managed to catch on fire.

The landlord did not fix the leak, which means the flat is rapidly being terraformed to suit a shroom-based civilisation. The flatties get to experience nature’s carpet instead of their old one, which has rotted away.

Spot Prize: The Wheezy Award

Suburb: Aro Valley

Easy, wheezy, beautiful: Covermouth. (Photo: supplied.)

This two-bedroom flat seems more affordable at just $450 per week, but that doesn’t factor in medical bills. The judging panel voted this flat the most likely to give you a lifetime respiratory illness.

An illegally built wall was installed alongside a running source of water, so anything left against or near that wall has grown a layer of pernicious mould.

Spot Prize: The Biodiversity Award

Suburb: Mt Cook

On the left, one of God’s children takes a little rat-nap next to the toilet. On the right, one is preserved by forces of nature even in the eternal sleep. (Photo: supplied.)

It’s not just mould – all of God’s creatures are welcome in a heritage home. This four-bedroom Mt Cook flat is shared by rats who, like mushrooms, have not yet mastered the art of rent-paying. 

It’s sunny, it’s rich with flora and fauna, and it’s just $960 per week. “This beauty has great indoor-outdoor flow,” said A City for People. “The atmosphere in this flat preserves nature the same way this suburb preserves our city’s rich history, delighting tenants with the remains of their once lively rodent friends.”

In addition to the home’s “natural decomposition”, this flat comes complete with old tenants’ junk, wall holes and a broken shower. It’s the Noah’s Ark of rental pests.

Spot Prize: The Storyteller Award

Suburb: Northland

The bathroom tells one story, but each room has its own tale to tell. (Photo: supplied.)

The judging panel felt this entry deserved a special prize for literary achievement. Please find the entry below:

“Great flat if you love living in sub-Antarctic conditions and for those who love water because nothing you own will ever be dry. It was lovely going to bed in damp sheets every night, with the roof dripping onto you, waking up cold just to put on damp and musty smelling clothing. 

I was lucky enough to have the only room with insulation and I sure knew it because I could see the outline of each bat moulded through on the roof. The corner walls of my room were made from the corflute sign used to sell the flat that they had taped together, painted over, and placed with long curtains over top. This wall dripped into a puddle on the constant mouldy floor whenever it rained. 

Our oil was often solid as it was sub-freezing and we couldn’t use any salt as it clumped even when triple bagged. Black mould was absolutely everywhere and I developed situational asthma in this lovely place. Our bathroom wall had completely rotted through and the tiles were slowly falling off the wall. We had a hole in our lounge floor boards – once a bag brushed against the wall and part of it broke off. Our outside drain was broken so they covered it with a board and our house flooded in heavy rain one day. 

Overall a great flat, I would 10/10 recommend!”

Honourable mentions

Suburb: Roseneath

(Photo: supplied.)

For $610 a week this soggy, 1920s three-bedroom comes with a rotten carpet the landlord will not allow the tenants to remove. The current residents, in their 50s, cannot afford to move anywhere else in Wellington. 

Water leaks through a hole in the roof when it rains (and this is Wellington, so). This leaking has resulted in persistent mould not just on the bathroom’s surfaces, but also in its extractor fan.

Suburb: Mt Victoria

It’s alive. (Photo: supplied.)

Black mould is present on almost every ceiling in this $720-per-week three-bedroom home. However, the panel noted that, depending on your definition of a “bedroom”, and whether that definition included “living room with a curtain down the middle”, there could be four.

It’s not just mould that’s living here: in the past, flatmates have had to push human urine and faeces out of the defective shower drain and into the back yard. More than once.

Suburb: Newtown

Holes (2003) was filmed in Newtown. (Photo: supplied.)

Not just one hole, not just two holes, not just three holes: like many noble fungi, this flat is covered in large pores. At last count, the tenants had to use 12 separate bowls to collect rainwater heading for the carpet. This has not prevented rot from setting in.

For just $680 per week this three-bedroom villa comes with bubbled wallpaper, rot-induced paint sliding, and carpet holes thanks to the decomposing fibres. 

This flat failed all five Healthy Home Standards. The tenants don’t want to brag, but an inspector told them it was “one of the worst he’d seen”.

However, the landlord has, benevolently, given them a dehumidifier – it turns out absolute power does not always corrupt absolutely. 

The Kitchen Project is behind a group of new food businesses in South Auckland. (Photo: Supplied)
The Kitchen Project is behind a group of new food businesses in South Auckland. (Photo: Supplied)

KaiJune 22, 2021

Bringing out the real flavours of South Auckland, one food enterprise at a time

The Kitchen Project is behind a group of new food businesses in South Auckland. (Photo: Supplied)
The Kitchen Project is behind a group of new food businesses in South Auckland. (Photo: Supplied)

An innovative business accelerator programme is not only helping people get a foothold in the hospitality industry but, as Justin Latif reports, it’s also changing the way South Aucklanders think about their local cuisine. 

When it comes to food in South Auckland, greasy corner-store takeaways or brazen fast-food franchises might spring to mind. 

But three local female entrepreneurs want to change that perception. 

The trio are part of a wave of newly established, authentically South Auckland food businesses, being supported by a council-funded business-incubation programme called The Kitchen Project. 

Upending stereotypes, however, doesn’t come without some challenges along the way. 

Bryone Vonk sells her pastries at the Grey Lynn farmers’ market every Sunday. (Photo: Supplied)

From London to Auckland’s ‘food bowl’

Spurred on by Covid, Bryone Vonk decided to leave her job at one of Gordon Ramsey’s Michelin-starred London restaurants to start a plant-based pastry business, The Good Baker, back in her hometown of Pukekohe. 

She says her time under the famously temperamental celebrity chef honed her skills and thankfully she was never the subject of one of his notorious tirades.

“He was often around. He would come in and shake everybody’s hand, but he never swore at us, apart from a waiter who got his coffee order wrong.”

When she returned to New Zealand, she wanted to start her own business, but knowing how was another matter. 

“Even though I’m qualified as a pastry chef, I really had no idea about the business side of things. So it was extremely beneficial for me to join The Kitchen Project, as it really just gave me the foundations for starting up.”

Beyond making delicious pastries, she also wants her baked delights to introduce customers to the benefits of sourcing locally from South Auckland’s food bowl and to “show people that plant-based food tastes just as delicious or even better”.

Vonk has already got the business to a stage where it’s financially viable, but her ultimate goal is to run her own cafe in the area.

“I started at the Oratia and Grey Lynn markets, and now supply to cafes and the New World in Pukekohe. So hopefully I can expand into wholesale and have my own location.”

Perzen Patel sells her Dolly Mumma products at the Parnell farmers’ market every Saturday. (Photo: Supplied)

Beyond butter chicken

After leaving Mumbai, India, where she ran a catering business with her husband, Perzen Patel decided she wanted to offer Kiwis an alternative to the watered-down curry pastes commonly found in supermarkets. 

“It has always been at the back of my mind that I want people to know there’s more to Indian food than just butter chicken.”

She hopes her Dolly Mumma products not only introduce customers to a wider variety of curry flavours, but are also really easy to use.

“Typically when someone wants to cook a curry, you either buy a sauce from the supermarket, or you go it alone, and you get 20 different spices from the Indian shop. 

“Hopefully we can be that middle ground. It’s a fresh product, not made with preservatives, using my grandmother’s recipes, but essentially it’s still a paste, so you can just tip and go.”

She credits The Kitchen Project with helping her to hone her products as well as being a sounding board.

“I call my business mentor ‘my therapist’ because I could call her anytime to get help with each and every issue that would arise.”

The Takanini resident says another motivation is to show people that South Auckland cuisine is more than what’s commonly available. 

“So much of the food that’s available in our area is fast food or your traditional European fare, and it’s not really reflective of the people who live here. I’m really passionate about showing people a real version of Indian food, not just this one version that people have in their minds.”

Jacinta Tuitavake takes orders via Instagram and Facebook. (Photo: Justin Latif)

Seafood soul connection

Jacinta Tuitavake says her business, Nom Nom Soul Food, started almost by accident. 

Tuitavake, who was born in Christchurch and raised in Auckland, had been experimenting during the Covid lockdowns with different sauces and recipes to go with the traditional seafood boil-up she grew up making with her mum.

“I managed to perfect my own sauce recipe, so I trialled out a few dishes, took photos and sent them to my brother, and he posted them online, without telling me,” she says.

“The next morning, he started forwarding messages from people wanting the food. Within 24 hours we had requests for catering gigs, heaps of order requests, and ever since then we haven’t been able to keep up with the demand.”

Tuitavake says cooking is in her blood, but she never imagined there would be such demand for her Pacific-infused seafood platters. Since starting in September last year, she’s been able to quit her job and is now eyeing up the possibility of opening a restaurant. 

“Our home was the hub for all the extended family so we were always cooking and always serving. And I guess our mum instilled in me a love for being hospitable.”

The Māngere resident says the enterprise is also about creating something unique in her region, where healthy and nutritious food can be hard to come by. 

“I hate what we’re served up as a community so it has to change,” she says.

“I want to focus on quality over quantity and show our people they can feed their children good wholesome food. 

“Also, being a NZ-born Pacific kid, we tend to only go back to the islands for holidays, so I feel this is one way to reconnect to our roots.”

She says The Kitchen Project has been instrumental in helping to sharpen her focus. 

“We couldn’t keep up with the demand and so we had to look at how we could get the right structures in place. The Kitchen Project has been able to connect us to others within the industry who have had some really good advice. 

“They’ve helped me find out my ‘why’, so when it gets really hard, that’s what I go back to.”

The Kitchen Project base at the Vodafone Events Centre in Manukau and, right, Eke Panuku’s programme manager Sreshta Sridhar. (Photo: Supplied)

Incubating for change

The Kitchen Project started in 2018 in Henderson and expanded into South Auckland in 2019, led by Eke Panuku, Auckland Council’s urban-development arm, with funding and support from Auckland Unlimited, The Southern Initiative and Healthy Families South Auckland and Waitakere. The programme itself takes place over six months, with South Auckland participants required to attend an intensive six-week series of workshops based at the Vodafone Events Centre’s commercial kitchens, which includes training on marketing, accountancy, food compliance and specialist advice from a range of vastly experienced food entrepreneurs. 

Sreshta Sridhar, Eke Panuku’s manager of the programme, says while it’s a big commitment, it’s proven to be effective, with the majority of the 38 entrepreneurs who have completed the programme going on to run viable businesses. 

“The key really is that it’s all about making sure we’re preserving people’s traditional foods and we’re also wanting to bring to the forefront healthier, more sustainable eating options.”

The programme was inspired by a similar project that started in San Francisco helping migrant women get a foothold in the city’s highly competitive hospitality industry. 

Sridhar says they try to leverage all the support and networks Eke Panuku and Auckland Council have, to ensure their participants have the best chance of success. 

“We wrap around as much support as we can, and we introduce them to a variety of opportunities. 

“It is so satisfying to see someone go from just an idea or a concept that their friends and family like, to see them grow to where they are now, where they can make their passion their full-time work.”