{"id":4597,"date":"2023-05-18T04:48:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T16:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4597"},"modified":"2023-05-18T04:48:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T16:48:00","slug":"loafers-lodge-fire-what-are-tenants-rights-community-law-expert-explains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4597","title":{"rendered":"Loafers Lodge fire: What are tenants&#8217; rights? Community law expert explains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The deadly fire at loafers lodge has raised questions about the rights of residents living there and at other boarding houses.<\/p>\n<p>What happens if they&#8217;ve paid rent up front? Is the building owner obliged to help them find replacement accommodation? Or could they be entitled to any compensation?<\/p>\n<p>Wellington Community Law senior lawyer Oscar Upperton told Checkpoint boarding house residents were technically tenants for the purpose of rental law: &#8220;As long as they are intending to stay at the property &#8211; or they stay at the property in fact &#8211; for more than 28 days&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Then they are covered just like any other tenant. Their landlord has the same obligations that any other landlord would have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"photo-captioned photo-captioned-third photo-right three_col \"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/rnz-ressh.cloudinary.com\/image\/upload\/s--7HmT-mSi--\/ar_16:10,c_fill,f_auto,g_auto,q_auto,w_288\/v1644556683\/4LWIVOD_copyright_image_286377\" alt=\"Oscar Upperton\" width=\"288\" height=\"191\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\"><span class=\"caption\">Lawyer Oscar Upperton\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Photo:\u00a0Russell Klein<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The landlord must provide the property in a clean state, repair and maintain it, provide it with working and compliant smoke alarms and meet all other laws that are relevant, for example the Building Act, Upperton says.<\/p>\n<p>In the event of a catastrophic event that means tenants can no longer live there, they can give two days notice to end their tenancy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Their rent abates accordingly &#8211; so if they&#8217;ve already paid some rent up front, they should get that rent back, if they&#8217;re currently paying rent their rent can stop from that date.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;it&#8217;s not on the landlord to find them some place to live&#8221;, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Upperton said news people were working with the Loafers Lodge hostel residents to find them somewhere to live was good: &#8220;It&#8217;s obviously an emergency situation for them&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The deadly fire at loafers lodge has raised questions about the rights of residents living there and at other boarding houses. What happens if they&#8217;ve paid rent up front? Is the building owner obliged to help them find replacement accommodation? Or could they be entitled to any compensation? Wellington Community Law senior lawyer Oscar Upperton [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4598,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions\/4598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}