Like many University of Otago students, when I moved into my first flat in second-year, I went in blind. All I knew going into flat hunting was my sister telling me to chase sunshine, my mum’s tip to test the shower pressure at viewings, and that if you don’t sign by August you’ll be living in a cardboard box. When my three best friends and I signed in the first-year flat July rush, I was so hungover that I vomited in a motel hedge on the way to Edinburgh Realty and treated the tenancy agreement as if it were any old terms and conditions: scrolled to the bottom and signed my life away.
The naivety of fresher me only continued into second-year. I had no idea how to set up WiFi, or that that would be a separate payment to power. I had grand ideas about composting food scraps but didn’t know how to sort the Council bins. I was baffled to find out that when the fridge broke, it was the landlord’s problem, not ours. Same with the floor caving in, finding mould on the curtains, servicing the heat pump, and removing that one rotting rat corpse from inside the walls. I also didn’t know that we could ask for rent reimbursement when the landlord renovated the entire bathroom and kitchen, forcing us to outsource showers and live off microwaveable meals (not that we didn’t already). If it weren’t for my clued-in flatmates, I would almost definitely have been taken advantage of by the Dunedin rental market.
Your first tenancy in Dunedin is a bit like a budget overnight hike in shitty weather; how much you enjoy it will depend on your crew. Sure you’re trudging through the literal trenches, the op-shop raincoat you bought isn’t as waterproof as you’d have hoped, and you’re living off canned tuna and crackers you hope haven’t gone soggy. But with the right people, it’s a hardship that binds you tighter together, and makes the beer at the end of the trip that much sweeter. Hell, if it weren’t for one of you misjudging a puddle and winding up knee deep in mud, you wouldn’t be laughing as hard. Without good mates around you it wouldn’t be quite the same.
We all know that the flatting market in Dunedin is fucked, and it has been for decades judging by Critic’s archives. In 2019, then-editor Charlie O’Mannin summed up articles from just that year showing the depressing reality for North D tenants, covering landlords who used illegal fixed-term contracts for flats that were legally boarding houses; the impossibility of navigating Tenancy Tribunal cases; and property managers displaying all characteristics of a shitty boyfriend when you bring up issues: being either unhelpful, defensive, or straight up ghosting. Six years later, we’re still reporting on the same stories – there are three horror stories in this issue’s feature.
There’s no immediate solution to the minefield that is student flatting. Landlord licenses have been floated – which would come in real handy with one who has been to the Tenancy Tribunal over 30 times – and Healthy Homes standards are slowly being implemented. While we wait for sluggish political progress to be made, however, the squalor of the student rental market will still be accepted with unsurprised sighs and we’ll still laugh at jokes about how awful it is, before fading into a sad silence. In the meantime, though, there are ways to ensure you’ll be laughing over trauma-bonded memories at the pub, rather than fleeing Dunedin in defeat. Three students share their lessons learned in Hanna’s feature: Google your landlord, trust your gut if Facebook finds feel fishy, and be wary of legally binding strangers to your home – especially ones with criminal records.
The most important lesson I came away with, however, is the importance of good flatmates. It was through the luck of having my three best friends to lean on that my flatting experience didn’t scar me. There’s something to be said for how a damp, dark, and rat-infested shack can feel like home with the right amount of lamp-lighting, taking turns making the communal pot of soup for your perpetual colds, and – in worst cases – having each others’ backs dealing with a difficult landlord or property manager, taking them to the Tenancy Tribunal and poring over legal documents at your janky kitchen table like generals going into battle. Then saying “cheers” with cheap wine to soldiering through it – together.