Interview with Robert of Renters United Wellington

Today I went and interviewed Robert Whitaker, of the organisation "Renters United Wellington". It was very helpful on getting a picture of the myriad of problems facing renters in Wellington. Robert also happened to be a web designer at Chrometoaster, and so offered me some valuable insights on the opportunities to tackle aspects of the problem through design.

Notes from the interview below.

What prompted you to form Wellington Renters United?

5 or 6 people started the organisation, activist things… Keep MMP campaign… “left”… politics outside of the actual parliament building. thinking about why the housing problem/election went that way. Not enough grassroots organisations for people to turn to outside of the govt, nowhere to express politics outside of parliament. 

—what could you build a platform around? not representing renters. 

Renters organisations.. 

Are there any similar, or associated, services around Wellington like yours? 

not really much of them, a few have survived. The TPA, Christchurch. One in Auckland. Individual cases, not campaigning around renting. 

What do you hope to achieve with this organisation?  (campaign angle)

Don’t want to have constraints around what they want to see. For all renters vs case specific renting scenarios. Power from the userbase… 350 - 400, Broader engagement…1000 followers/likers.  The TINZ database of bad tenant… 

Wanna make renting better for everybody.. quality of rental homes etc. Make people more secure in rental properties. Campaigning, local party pressure. Affordability, cost of renting. discrimination sort of stuff. Mainly in Wellington. Local election.  VUWSA..

Design angle…

Process design service design. Collateral. A brand.  Angling for the landlords? 

Real challenge… property management companies.. Problem in wellington is there is no market incentive. Enforcement of rights. 

Informal…

14 day notice

Mediation

Nuclear bomb solution 

Enforcement. 

Improve advocacy services for tenants. 

Unclaimed bond…. campaigning vs service. what would a service look like. 

Design… you can design a good fire exit sign, but there has to be a fire exit.  get that from the ministry of business .

Letting fees - encourages property management companies to do short term tenancies. no increase in quality. a Data angle…  Service design around an advocacy service.. 

Mediation process - itemise, work shit out, onerous and difficult, at that point… unfriendly emails, building an atmosphere of hostility, not holistic + humanistic. Mediation process itself. Just real crappy process. No wonder tenants don’t use it, intentionally unusable and confrontational. Adversarial process. Investigative model, burden falls on judge, if the tenancy tribunal was for the tenancy to continue afterwards. Collaborative vs adversarial. 

tenancy tribunal is designed in a way that subtlety focus on the landlords… thats how its happened to be designed. Address the imbalance, the obstacles. Itemised list… of financial penalty? Tenancy tribunal hearing. The district court… does it even need to be like that? How does that affect a tenant in this process. Redesigning the process. 

flatfish.co.nz .com 

A business/social enterprise, you can submit a maintenance request through this, use of tradesmen compensation etc. 

University of Otago school of public health

home truths - summarises the case and the situation 

Branz Limited.  building research organisation in NZ - survey of building qualities. 

interview flatmate about Tenancy Tribunal experience. 

Contact Tenancy Services, an adjudicator and a mediator, the bond database, how many rental properties in Wellington.