Concerns legal loophole is allowing landlords to run underground boarding houses

There are concerns a legal loophole is allowing landlords to continue running underground boarding houses.

Auckland Council inspected 38 illegal lodges last year and all but nine opted to revert to whole household rental agreements or have a single tenancy agreement with one of the occupants.

Among them, a 24-bedroom complex on Auckland's North Shore - four homes each with six bedrooms with their own bathrooms and a rumpus room that was used as a sleeping area.

Each bedroom was numbered, the kitchen and lounge were shared, and until recently the landlord sublet the rooms.

Milton Cassidy lived nearby and notified the council last year.

"My only concern as a person living in this area ... is the safety of the residents. It appears that if it's not classified as a boarding house they don't need to have these fire emergency evacuation proceedures, sprinklers and things like that."

Council documents showed only domestic fire detectors were installed but boarding houses were required to have more fire safety measures.

"The council, they said to me that it's definitely a boarding house. Now all of a sudden it's not a boarding house, something's not right."

Council's compliance manager, Adrian Wilson, confirmed the houses were supposed to be five bedroom family homes, but the landlord was using them as boarding houses.

"The addresses in question were all consented as five-bedroom family homes, however the owner was using them as boarding houses in that each room was rented on an individual tenancy agreement," he said.

There were four homes within the two addresses.

"Each address had 12 sleeping spaces and up to eight tenants. The occupants were unrelated and living at the premises for various lengths of time," Wilson said.

"Under the Building Act, there are specific requirements predominantly related to fire safety that must be met once a boarding house exceeds five people."

The council issued the owner with options to comply - if the owner continued operating a boarding house, it could have required a resouce consent.

Instead, the landlord reverted to a single tenancy agreement and reduced the number of people living there.

Wilson said if the number of boarders did not exceed the five permitted per household then that was lawful and no longer classed as transient accommodation.

"Where individual rooms are rented separately in a boarding house situation, there is no link between the occupants which increases the risk in an emergency," he said.

"This is why systems are required such as fire separation between rooms and smoke/fire alarms depending on the layout of the property."

A property under one tenancy was expected to have a link between the residents, either a family or group of friends flatting.

"In an emergency such as a fire, they are more likely to ensure everyone is alerted and gets out of the building."

Property lawyer Joanna Pidgeon said it may be a legal loophole of sorts for landlords.

"It does seem that the landlord has used a back-door way of providing accomodation by constructing a head tenant in a flatting situation which doesn't accurately reflect the nature of the tenancy."

One-tenancy agreements were designed for households of family members or friends flatting, where the people know each other.

"It doesn't change the nature of the fact that the property does not meet what would usually be required in a building housing these sorts of tenants."

Pidgeon said tenants in more transient accommodation would be better served by individual tenancy agreements.

"It means that these vulnerable people are open to exploitation in terms of being flatmates with no rights rather than having direct rights under the legislation from the landlord."

The landlord of the North Shore properties declined to comment, except to say the matter had been resolved.

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