Sustainability student style

It’s called the Shit Show Chateau and it’s the worst flat in Dunedin. Literally – Mayor David Cull awarded it that distinction thanks to its rotten walls, draughts, damp, an absolutely disgusting toilet, a garden made entirely of trash tangled in a vast clump of old man’s beard, and… have we missed anything? Oh yeah – the anatomically aspirational graffiti scrawled all over the walls by a charming previous tenant…

It’s into this mess that Masters student Lindsey Horne cheerfully moved last year. Her reason? She was sick of the raw deal faced by renters and wanted to show that – with some community spirit and elbow grease, and by co-operating with landlords – renters can turn damp, unhealthy houses into snug homes with a small carbon footprint.

Lindsey is finishing her fifth year at Otago University where she studies science communication, so she knows Dunedin’s ropes – but not so the annual wave of new students. “First year renters look at flats about October when it’s starting to get warm and they don’t know what they’re getting into,” says Lindsey. “It’s blatantly not fair. Imagine if a young family was living in these conditions.”

Plenty of students finance their education through debt, but the maximum you can draw down from a student loan for living costs is $173 a week. With an average room costing around $110, and some paying upwards of $150, that’s a decent chunk of a student’s money gone before they’ve even thought about paying for heating. So come winter, Dunedin’s chill takes its toll on wallets, spirits and health.

“People say it’s part of the student experience,” says Lindsey. “But you get over it pretty quick.”

The makeover

Lindsey’s idea to fix the Chateau was to strike a deal with their landlord. The plan was for her and her friends to provide as much free labour as they could, while the landlord paid for materials and any professional labour – and at first the project was a great success. Local businesses donated food, drinks and materials and the flatmates created a party atmosphere around several working bees.

The jungle-like garden yielded to cheerful student muscle, and piles of trash were dragged from the shrubbery. Two microwaves, a TV, mattresses, and hundreds of bottles and cans were piled into skips and trailers to be hauled away, while vegetation that had covered one side of the house was cleared with chainsaws and slashers. For the first time in decades sunshine streamed into a dank space the students had dubbed ‘the rainforest room’ for its dripping condensation.

More working bees saw the house draught-proofed inside, a wood-pellet fire installed, and a “mean looking” edible garden planted with beans, carrots, parsnips, spinach, garlic, blueberries, feijoas, lemon trees, broccoli, “heaps of herbs” and sugar-snap peas.

Reality bites

Unfortunately this wave of enthusiasm hit a wall – specifically, a rotten wall. Lindsey and co. were about to install some insulation (kindly donated by Smart Energy Solutions) when they discovered some serious structural rot beneath the wall cladding – and further poking revealed the house had issues with its foundations. These were expensive problems that would need more expertise than they could rustle up, so the flatmates contacted their letting agency again – which saw progress grind to a halt for five months.

Lindsey’s idea had been to treat the makeover as a pilot scheme for better tenant-landlord collaboration, but after the frustrations of these delays she has switched her focus to educating tenants about their rights. She now reckons that renters, especially inexperienced students, need to know how to hold their landlord’s feet to the fire (see Tips for renters below).

A big part of the problem, Lindsey believes, is the growing number of owners based offshore who have their properties managed by letting agencies.

With a traditional local ‘mum and dad’ owner, tenants have a chance to build a rapport. Offering to pitch in with labour, or making it clear you want to stay long-term (which secures a landlord’s income) can work wonders if you want something done over and above the legal minimum.

But with overseas owners and dispassionate managers “no one really feels the blame”, says Lindsey. Incredibly, the Taiwan-based owner of her flat has no idea of its reputation as Dunedin’s grottiest.

Taking her idea nationwide

Lindsey’s plans for the Chateau have plateaued – yet she’s not stopping there. In November she presented the story of her fight against hard-to-heat, unhealthy and environmentally unfriendly housing at the Festival for the Future – a TED Talk style conference held in Wellington – and she’s also been selected for something called the Live the Dream programme.

Touted as a “new ideas challenge and accelerator programme”, Live the Dream is being run by The Tindall Foundation, Vodafone New Zealand, The Inspiring Stories Trust and Leadership New Zealand. Their aim is to mentor the next generation of social entrepreneurs as they try to create a better New Zealand – and Lindsey is currently attending their 10 week skills-building summer camp with 11 other “thinkers and doers”.

There she’ll be working on ways to make her vision of improving New Zealand’s stock of sub-standard houses a reality – an idea that’s already gaining political traction. The government is currently trialling a rental housing “Warrant of Fitness” scheme, which Lindsey welcomes in principle – so long as it doesn’t simply shift the cost of improving properties on to low-income tenants.

As for the Shit Show Chateau, Lindsey and all her flatmates have signed on for another year, which suggests their improvements may have cost their flat its ‘worst in show’ title.

“It’s been really fun and we’ve learned so much,” says Lindsey. “The result’s a win-win – better for students, better for the environment – and you’re also prolonging the life of the houses.

“The houses in Dunedin are so cool; I’d hate to see them disappear over time.”

Tips for renters

Hunt out draughts by carrying a lit incense stick around and watching the smoke. Plug them up to keep cold air out – even newspaper will do.

Tell your landlord about the up to 90 per cent subsidy available for insulating rental properties – see www.tinyurl.com/muchfs8.

Never dry washing inside – it makes the air damp, and damp air takes much more power to warm.

Develop a good relationship with your landlord. Would you consider paying a bit more rent, or taking on the gardening, in return for non-essential items (a heat-pump or insulation for instance) that could cut your heating costs in the long-run?

If the relationship sours, remember your landlord is legally required to “maintain the property and do any necessary repairs”. You can give them 14 days’ notice to sort out a problem by filling in a form here: www.dbh.govt.nz/pub-sorting-out-problems.

For more on the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords, see www.dbh.govt.nz/pub-tenancy-generalinfo.

Why is saving power green?

The more power you use to heat a home, the more likely you are to be adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as coal and gas-fired stations such as Huntly fire up to meet peak electricity demand. Saving on your power bills is green!