Healthy Home Standards: Your rights as a tenant. Video / OneRoof
An Auckland mum, whose children spent time in hospital with serious respiratory illnesses, has described how insect larvae would crawl out of a large hole as she washed in the dilapidated, mould-infested shower of her rented flat.
And Georgina Matautu claimed it wasn't uncommon to have creepy crawlies falling from the ceiling of the shower box, the Tenancy Tribunal has heard.
In a just-released decision Reliable Rental Management Ltd has been ordered to pay the mum-of-three $4462.52 to compensate for living in sub-standard conditions after there was no attempt to fix the property's extensive mould problem.
The tribunal heard Matautu moved into the ground floor Ōtāhuhu unit with her young son at the start of 2018.
The mould problem was not evident when she viewed the Great South Rd property as the bathroom had been recently repainted. However, over the course of the year black mould appeared on walls and ceilings of the bathroom, laundry, bedroom and living room.
In addition, Matautu told the tribunal there was also a hole in the shower floor where insects and larvae would emerge when she washed.
The mould problem in the shower became so bad the mum refused to wash her children in it, instead taking them to extended family homes to clean them.
However, the landlord claimed while the shower box needed repair it was "still perfectly usable" while property managers considered the mould situation something she needed to fix.
But the situation came to a head when her newborn child was discovered lifeless in his bed last August, her second child to need top-level hospital care medical specialists believed were caused in part by where they lived.
Matautu told the tribunal she spent many hours cleaning the mould off the walls using vinegar.
At a routine inspection in March 2019, a year into her tenancy, she was advised to use sugar water on the growth. The fungal issue was noted by the property manager as a tenant problem.
Tribunal adjudicator Toni Prowse said photos taken after Matautu had cleaned the problem areas spoke for themselves, showing ingrained mould on most surfaces of the bathroom and laundry.
"She tells me that she would have to extensively clean the mould weekly, particularly in the bathroom and laundry.
"She said that she used to use vinegar, but after the inspection in March where the property manager told her she had to use sugar water she did that, but it had little or no effect."
Continued scrubbing stripped the paint off the wall and photographs were produced showing mould growth coming up through the paint work.
Images captured mould ingrained in the timber around the shower box, and heavy mould on the shower tray and walls.
They also showed paint flaking off or bubbling and peeling on the bathroom and laundry walls with evidence of fresh fungal growth.
But worryingly the mum produced evidence showing her eldest, 4-year-old son was twice admitted to hospital in April last year suffering from pneumonia and respiratory infection.
As a result Counties Manukau Health wrote to Housing New Zealand noting they believed the family was living in cold and damp conditions and that they were "unsuitable in supporting the recovery and maintaining the wellbeing of a young child with ongoing heath issues", the tribunal's decision says.
A social worker, who inspected the unit, found the bathroom and laundry had an extreme mould issue, with black- and green-coloured fungal growth covering the ceilings and walls.
The shower was full of mould to the point it was almost coming apart and the bedroom and living room also had mould on the ceiling.
Mum-of-three Georgina Matautu has won a Tenancy Tribunal dispute after black mould covered surfaces in four rooms of her one-bedroom South Auckland unit. Photo / 123RF
The unit also did not have any form of mechanical ventilation in the kitchen or bathroom, the windows were draughty and cold and the family only used a fan heat to warm up the space.
On top of this the unit also suffered from a rat-infestation problem.
Then last July Matautu gave birth to a baby boy at 34 weeks.
The tribunal heard mum and newborn returned home at the end of August but within a fortnight the baby developed rhinovirus bronchiolitis and had to be rushed to hospital after being found unresponsive in his bed.
The newborn had to spend time in the hospital's paediatric intensive care unit.
Matautu said one doctor had told her that the baby's condition could have been caused by breathing in mould spores at home.
In her decision, Prowse said it was likely mould growth in the home contributed and exacerbated the children's health issues and that the family renting the property couldn't use the bathroom and laundry properly because of the mould and the state of the shower box.
She says the landlord should have made more extensive investigations about what was causing the mould problem after it was raised in the first property inspection report and moved quickly to fix it.
"I therefore consider it appropriate to grant the tenant a rebate of 50 per cent of her rent for the time that the defect was known to the landlord to the end of the tenancy," found Prowse.
"This amount takes into account general damages, for stress, inconvenience, health problems and loss of amenity, including that the tenant had to stay in hospital for at least two weeks because of her children's health conditions which were at least in part attributable to the mould problem, and yet paid full rent over this time."
Prowse noted the landlord's claims that Matautu had contributed to the problem by having more people living in the property than allowed for on the tenancy agreement. It allowed for just one adult and one child to live there.
But she was satisfied that having two additional youngsters living in the unit did not contribute to any of the deficiencies. A social worker who visited the property also considered the unit was sufficient space for a mum and three children.
While Matautu claimed there was a problem with larvae and vermin coming up the through the shower box, Prowse was not satisfied that this was an ongoing problem at the property, or that the landlord was aware of the problem.
The landlord was also taken to task for failing to fix a broken front door handle which fell out, leaving Matautu to stuff a sock in the gap. As a result there was no way of locking the home.
Prowse said the landlord had breached the Residential Tenancies Act and awarded Matautu $200.
