{"id":7688,"date":"2025-09-07T09:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T09:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/7688\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T09:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T09:18:07","slug":"mt-albert-tenant-awarded-6600-after-living-in-damp-leaky-social-housing-property","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/7688\/","title":{"rendered":"Mt Albert tenant awarded $6600 after living in damp, leaky social housing property"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the tribunal\u2019s<\/a> decision, Valerie Walters moved into the Mt Albert house in November 2022. Walters rented the four-bedroom, two-bathroom house from K\u0101hui, who leased the premises from Good Neighbours Real Estate. <\/p>\n

Within a year of taking the tenancy, Walters experienced significant maintenance problems that the landlord wasn\u2019t fixing properly. <\/p>\n

She wrote to her property manager at K\u0101hui complaining that two of the four bedrooms leaked during heavy rain, one of the bathrooms had no electricity, there were leaky taps in the kitchen and outside, and the water pressure was poor, with erratic water temperature. <\/p>\n

\"TheThe Tenancy Tribunal investigated the tenant’s complaint about the leaky home. Photo \/ 123rf<\/p>\n

About a year later, the owner spent $216 on what the decision describes as \u201cmodest work\u201d but that \u201cdid not appreciably lessen the leaks\u201d. By April this year, two bedrooms were uninhabitable because the leaks had worsened over time. <\/p>\n

It took almost eight months to restore electricity supply to one of the bathrooms, six months to fix the kitchen mixer and two months to repair the stove. <\/p>\n

In August last year, Walters complained to the tribunal that the landlord was failing to maintain the premises. <\/p>\n

After a hearing in March, the tribunal issued work orders giving the landlord two months to replace the toilet, repair a leaking outdoor tap, repair the front gate, fix the leaks in two bedrooms and fix electrical problems by May. <\/p>\n

The decision noted that despite reporting the issues in November 2023, most of the repairs weren\u2019t completed until July this year. The leaks in the bedrooms still hadn\u2019t been repaired, the decision said. <\/p>\n

These unaddressed maintenance issues had a significant impact on the tenant. As a result of the leaky roof, one bedroom had to be used as a storeroom, the wall below the window in the master bedroom became waterlogged and crumbled. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe house was damper, colder, and less healthy than it should have been,\u201d Kee said. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, the property\u2019s owner, Good Neighbours Real Estate, issued K\u0101hui with a notice terminating their lease. K\u0101hui in turn sought to terminate Walters\u2019 tenancy. <\/p>\n

The adjudicator was asked to decide if K\u0101hui failed to maintain the premises, failed to comply with the tribunal\u2019s work orders and whether its notice to Walters was retaliatory. <\/p>\n

Kee found K\u0101hui failed to maintain the house and comply with work orders, awarding exemplary damages of $3300 to Walters. <\/p>\n

But he refused to accept K\u0101hui\u2019s actions in ending the lease were retaliatory, describing their representatives\u2019 actions towards Walters as \u201cbalanced, fair and generally supportive of the tenant\u201d. <\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t display any animus or vindictiveness towards Walters and weren\u2019t overly defensive about her claims. <\/p>\n

He accepted K\u0101hui\u2019s claim that it gave notice to Walters because Good Neighbours had ended their lease. <\/p>\n

In addition to the exemplary damages, Lee awarded a further $3300 for loss of amenity.<\/p>\n

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to the tribunal\u2019s decision, Valerie Walters moved into the Mt Albert house in November 2022. Walters rented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10051,74,10049,1567,1558,1061,4509,334,10052,42,10053,3339,10055,78,10054,6853,10005,1357,4188,10048,43,10057,814,10056,9478,1072,10050,40,38,41,39,6123,102],"class_list":["post-7688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-10051","tag-after","tag-albert","tag-awarded","tag-been","tag-children","tag-cold","tag-compensation","tag-damp","tag-headlines","tag-house","tag-housing","tag-ignored","tag-in","tag-landlord","tag-leaky","tag-list","tag-lived","tag-living","tag-mt","tag-news","tag-problems","tag-property","tag-repeated","tag-requests","tag-social","tag-tenant","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-while","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}