Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to Lilith __,
In this situation, which is common, the landlord is not required to give the tenant any notice at all to vacate, except they must wait for the rent already paid to expire. (ie. if you’ve paid a week or a fortnight in advance, that time must elapse)
Not under the Residential Tenancies Act. As you note, the RTA doesn't cover flatmates or boarders* (whether of the landlord, or of the "head tenant", i.e. the person(s) with the Tenancy Agreement). Because flatmates and boarders aren't covered, there is no RTA requirement to wait until the rent already paid has expired. The landlord would have to give any overpaid money back (otherwise the flatmate could seek its return in the disputes tribunal), but they can still turn you out with zero notice. People who are going to be flatting or boarding can only get some rights by having a "flatmates agreement" or "boarders agreement" that specifies how much notice must be given by either party, or (if in a group tenancy) by making sure they're on the Tenancy Agreement too - though that carries the risk of making them jointly and severally liable for any damage or rent-skipping by their flatmates.
I suspect this information won't be necessary for most of the people reading here, but if you have children flatting, it may be useful for them.
*Boarders are covered by the RTA if there are more than 6 boarders in the property.I don't personally have much problem with landlords/head tenants being able to turf their flatmates out with no notice. It's a different deal when you're living with someone.
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Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to RBentley,
Eli's point, though, or one of them, is that landlords had a choice about whether or not to invest in real estate. Even if you are an "accidental" landlord, renting out your house because you're somewhere else for a while, or because you couldn't sell it for the price you wanted for it, you had a choice about whether or not to put your money into property. Landlords must be aware of the possibility of selecting bad tenants, and therefore factor in the possibility of losses arising from bad tenants in their decision to invest. If they don't, they can hardly complain about it later, any more than people who gamble on the stockmarket can complain if the stocks they choose lose value.
Tenants, on the other hand, seldom have a choice about whether or not they rent. Their choice is renting, or homelessness. That's a very different choice from "to buy a property, or not to buy a property".
Also, I don't see anyone foaming at the mouth. Elinor was very careful to recognise that there are good landlords. The biggest problem is not bad landlords, but bad rentals, coming from a legacy of poor quality housing, and an ongoing view that it is acceptable to let out houses in poor condition. -
Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
I agree entirely that the landlord-tenant power relationship is heavily imbalanced, in favour of the landlord. I also agree that the option to take a matter to the Tenancy Tribunal is not exactly a simple solution, and was just this afternoon having a conversation with Eli (whose office is down the hall...) about how interesting it would be to do research on whether tenants who take things to the TT have difficulty renting in future, even if they're in the right.
My point was that there IS law which limits landords in how much they increase rent, not just how how often they increase it. Whether the law is accessible is a different issue.
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Speaker: The problem of “horror tenants”…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
ETA: Also courtesy of National, there is no limit on how much a landlord can increase rent provided it’s not raised more often than once every 180 days.
Not entirely accurate.
If rent is increased beyond market rate, the tenant can apply to the Tenancy Tribunal for a market rent order. Adjudicators use Department of Housing, Tenancy Services data-based statistics to determine local market rents.s25, Residential Tenancies Act 1986
“Market rent
(1) On an application made to it at any time by the tenant, the Tribunal may, in accordance with the succeeding provisions of this section, on being satisfied that the rent payable or to become payable for the tenancy exceeds the market rent by a substantial amount, make an order reducing the rent to an amount, to be specified in the order, that is in line with the market rent. …
(3) … the market rent for any tenancy shall be the rent that, without regard to the personal circumstances of the landlord or the tenant, a willing landlord might reasonably expect to receive and a willing tenant might reasonably expect to pay for the tenancy, taking into consideration the general level of rents (other than income-related rents within the meaning of section 2(1) of the Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992) for comparable tenancies of comparable premises in the locality or in similar localities and such other matters as the Tribunal considers relevant.” -
Up Front: Lighting the Dark, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Health workers, police and women’s rights activists say women and girls face the risk of rape and harassment when they go out into fields or bushes due to the lack of toilets in their homes.
If one was being kind to the author (and I haven't read the rest of the article), one could read this as a description of where/when women are at most danger, rather than why they are at danger, i.e. "women and girls face the risk of rape and harassment when they go out into the fields or bushes. They go out into the fields or bushes due to the lack of toilets in their homes."
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No doubt that too, but I was mainly thinking of when disabled parents don’t “let” (want to let) their children take risks or live their own lives because of expectations that their children will provide them with support, beyond or earlier than what parents without disabilities may expect.
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Extra reliance on family for support can amplify the usual struggles most parents face letting their children take risks and live their own lives
This line reads as though it was written about families where it is the child(ren) who has the disability, so I thought I'd note that it can also be true when it's the parent(s) who has the disability.
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to ,
Indeed. It makes me cross when people building new houses don’t just automatically make at least the main "public" spaces (i.e. entry, access to living space) wheelchair accessible (unless the constraints of the site make that completely impractical). To me those houses say “I don’t care whether people with mobility challenges can visit me in my home”, which is close to implying that the occupants don’t want people with mobility challenges as their friends.
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There is certainly a high association. And I agree that people appear to accept impairment in others better if they think it's the result of age. But not everyone who gets old becomes disabled (except of course all of us, in the end). To me "how many are simply suffering from having grown old" suggests that it doesn't really count as a disability if you're old. It's important that it does count as disability, both because I think it can help people see disability as the result of settings and circumstances rather than a result of physical attributes; and because those whose disabilities are the result of ageing still experience their physical impairments as disabilities.
I think of my grandmother and her sister at my wedding. They were both in their 80s. My grandmother had terrible tinnitus, and found it hard to participate in group conversations, particularly if there was a lot of background noise. My great-aunt had no hearing difficulties at all. My grandmother's hearing difficulties were certainly the result of age (in combination with individual susceptibility), but in the company of someone of a similar age with no hearing trouble, I'm not sure that she felt it as "being old" so much as "being deaf".
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Access: Who Are Disabled New Zealanders?, in reply to Richard_Elwin,
Richard, the phrasing of your question bothers me, but I'm not sure I know why. Maybe it's the combination of "simply" and "suffering" (I don't think suffering is simple). Maybe it's the implication that disability is an inevitable part of ageing. Maybe it's my own possibly wrong inference that you think disability as a result of age doesn't matter or doesn't count. Or maybe I'm just overthinking it. But it would help if you were able to explain why you ask that question.