In honour of OUSA flatting week we’ve decided we’d jump on board and print a couple of features and news stories surrounding flatting in Dunedin. This week, we have a hair raising feature from Amber Allot on the many haunted flats in the student area, the ‘Darryl Kerrigan, My House my Castle Awards’, and Joe Higham has a look at the current state of flats on the market at the moment.
Flatting in Dunedin north appears to be a changing practice. Gone it would seem are the days of slumming it in a damp, mould covered flat, and playing parents to pet mice, with students now demanding a better standard of living.
Students seem to cop the brunt of the abuse when it comes to the state of the North Dunedin student areas, but landlords also need to be found accountable for the role they play in the formation of this so called ‘ghetto’. One councillor, David Benson-Pope recently explained that driving around the North Dunedin area was not too dissimilar to driving around a slum, commenting that many of the flats were similar to pigsties. But when landlords expect tenants to live in sties like that, surely they’re not all to surprised when they act like pigs.
So why then isn’t there more social pressure on landlords from the cities residents to tidy up these flats? When you as a landlord rent out a flat that has ripped carpet, stained walls and a toilet without a seat, I think you’re a few fingers short of a high-five if you think that it’s going to be respected by the tenants.
If the major stakeholders involved really want to clean up these so called ‘slums’, then surely something needs to be done about the state of the properties in the first place.
Hugh Baird
Critic Editor