Auckland Council compliance manager Adrian Wilson. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Auckland Council wants the government to help crack down on illegal boarding houses, which are taking advantage of beneficiaries and former prisoners.
As part of its Proactive Boarding Inspection Programme, the council is targeting premises like five- or six-bedroom homes, which have been unlawfully converted into rentals with up to 27 rooms.
A council report released on Tuesday said that in the year to the end of July 2025, 30 out of the 34 buildings it inspected were operating unauthorised transient accommodation.
"Several properties visited were illegally established and found to predominantly house referrals from Work and Income [WINZ] or the Department of Corrections.
"Due to the shortage of bed space, these agencies struggle to find appropriate accommodation at short notice."
The inspections involved Fire and Emergency, Environmental Health Officers, and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment's [MBIE] Tenancy Compliance and Investigations team.
The council's compliance manager Adrian Wilson said the main problems they found were overcrowding and high fire risk.
"Some of the houses, they're not salubrious, but they're not considered to be unhealthy. But when there's a fire, it tends to be every man for himself.
"Fire can spread quickly between the various rooms, and if there's no fire alarm, smoke detectors, or illuminated fire exits, and the fact that it was probably built for say a family of five or six and now houses a group of 15 strangers, that's what presents the risk and makes it illegal."
Inside a boarding house on Great North Road (file). Photo: RNZ / Eva Corlett
He said they were seeing more people operating multiple boarding houses, in some cases as many as 20.
"I think increasingly it's seen as a lucrative thing to convert houses into multi-occupancy accommodation. With rents being so high, it's easy money for the individuals who choose to do so."
He said a growing number of landlords were refusing inspection and preventing the council from issuing directive notices by lodging court appeals.
The council's report stated that one landlord had lodged five disputes with MBIE in relation to two boarding houses.
Wilson said the council aimed to work with the property owners to make their boarding house compliant, or if that did not happen, prevent them from renting rooms out.
He said its inspections had resulted in 20 directive notices, either a notice to fix or an abatement notice, being issued.
"We realise there is a shortage of accommodation, and in a lot of these cases, we're not talking about them being imminently dangerous.
"On occasions when we do find it impossible to make them safe, some have chosen to close down of their own accord, some have been fined for Building Act and Resource Management Act breaches.
"But we can't physically go in and evict people from premises unless we find a building that's extremely dangerous."
The council had called for the government to introduce a national register to help it and government agencies like WINZ and Corrections keep track of the number of boarding houses.
He said there also needed to be better measures in place to hold landlords accountable.
"Perhaps every 12 months, you have to be inspected to keep your registration going."
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