News

The University of Otago Property Services division is prevaricating like a motherfucker when deciding whether or not to boot some students out of their flats mid year to make way for a new Castle St day care centre.
The prolonged saga can only now be reported in Critic after the University stalled our enquiries for over a week before deciding they had no comment to make on the matter.
 

Students in the Castle St complex of flats were called to a meeting with an employee of the ‘University Flats’ company - which head-leases flats from the Property Services department and on-leases them to students under the Kiwihost scheme - on Wednesday May 4. At the meeting, students living in the flats were told that the University was reclaiming the properties in July after the conclusion of first semester exams in order to turn them into a day care centre. One flat in the complex was to be allowed to remain, but would have had to put up with construction work in the short term, and screaming children in the long term.
 

Tenants spoken to by Critic stated that they had signed an agreement at the start of the year to occupy the flats for the whole of 2011, but had not been offered the usual protection of a standard tenancy agreement lodged with the Department of Building and Housing. All tenants spoken to by Critic stated categorically that they were not warned by anyone that they would be evicted midway through the academic year. One tenant commented that “this is the kind of stunt you expect from a slum landlord, not from the fucking University you attend.”

 
Critic sent an email to the University asking Property Services questions about the move late on May 4. The University replied that it would be unable to answer questions until Tuesday May 10, which prevented Critic from running the story last week. No comment was forthcoming and further follow up enquires made after May 10 proved fruitless.
 

Meanwhile tenants of the flat were called to a meeting with Tony Buchanan of University Flats on Thursday May 5. At the meeting Buchanan told tenants that there had been a “misunderstanding” and that the University had not confirmed it would be reclaiming the flats, but had instead merely meant to ask the tenants whether they would be willing to move out to make way for the day-care centre. Buchanan stated that the process was “a bit like Chinese whispers, white becomes black”.
 

Tenants told University Flats that they did not want to move. Some commented that the timing of the meeting almost immediately after Critic’s enquires smacked of a U-turn.

 
The final word on the matter came from a particularly disgruntled tenant, who opined that “the Uni needs to learn some manners. I prefer to wined and dined before I get fucked.”