Tenants forced to choose between pets or house

Tauranga SPCA's Margaret Rawiri with an abandoned male tabby-cat named Ziggy, which is up for adoption after being left behind by its owner. Photo / John Borren

Desperate tenants are being forced to ditch their pets to gain tenancy as they find themselves caught in the grip of Tauranga's rental shortage.

SPCA operations manager Margaret Rawiri said calls from people wanting to offload their pets in order to secure a rental property had almost quadrupled over the past year.

The news comes on the back of an overall shortage in Bay rental properties - with one expert last month saying he had never seen such a dearth of listings.

In a snapshot of rental properties available on TradeMe yesterday, 230 properties across the Western Bay region were listed. Only two of the advertisements said "pets okay" and one stated, pets were "negotiable".

Mrs Rawiri said a year ago the SPCA was getting one or two calls every two months but was now getting three to four calls a week. Most owners were in a bind because their new landlord did not allow pets.

"It's not just dogs, but more landlords won't allow tenants to have cats either," she said.

Mrs Rawiri said it was a shame landlords were not legally able to take a pet bond.

"My other big concern is that, as more landlords don't allow pets, it means the SPCA is going to find it increasingly difficult to adopt out animals in the shelter.

"We're a life-saving centre and do our utmost to help out owners who come to us for help. Some of these animals have been a family pet for eight or nine years or even more.

"It's very sad."

Mrs Rawiri said the SPCA was able to accommodate a few of those animals but the situation could not continue as the organisation was heading into its busiest time of the year.

The cost of boarding their pet for a couple of weeks while they searched for a pet-friendly rental property was also beyond the budgets of some prospective tenants, she said.

Tauranga rental owner Dan Lusby said quite a few landlords would allow tenants to have animals and some were willing to negotiate, subject to conditions.

That could mean the tenant paying an extra $10 to $20 rent a week, which a lot of tenants were happy to pay, rather than having to get rid of their much-loved pets, he said.

However, Mr Lusby said that, because of the huge demand for rental properties, if the landlord had two really good tenants to choose from, they were more likely to take the one without pets.

"Some landlords just won't allow pets, full-stop, even little handbag-sized dogs," he said.

Regulations

* Residential Tenancies Act rules relating to pets:

* Landlords cannot just add any conditions to a tenancy agreement.

* If the landlord lets the tenant have a pet, they should write the agreed conditions into the tenancy agreement.

* It could be helpful for tenants to provide references from previous landlords.

* The maximum bond landlords can charge is up to the equivalent of four weeks' rent.

* The tenant is responsible for any damage done by their pets.