Would you pay $370 a week for a unit with a shower over the toilet?

Barney Kuki-Wikitera, who works in community support in Auckland, was outraged to discover the conditions in a West Auckland caravan park, when he was helping a recently released prisoner find a home.

He said the unit, at Western Park Village in Ranui, was about 24 square metres and should be big enough for separate amenities. Similar properties were available in South Auckland with a separate toilet for $180 a week, he said.

"With a lazy search on Trade Me I find a one-bedroom unit nearby for $350 and it's beautiful, but they ask for a professional person as a tenant and if you know anything about accommodation in Auckland that means, if you have a Winz membership you got no chance.

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"I guess being in accommodation like this can be mentally challenging as well, and one may begin to think that this is their lot, and that's all they're worth - how do we expect our whanau to thrive and flourish if their surroundings suggest that they shouldn't even bother."

A $370 a week unit with a shower over the toilet.

He said, in this case, the tenant had no option because he had no references or identification and needed to live in central or west Auckland. The $370 a week would leave him without any other money to live on so Kuki-Wikitera's team was trying to find somewhere else for him to live.

Kuki-Wikitera said it seemed that boarding houses and caravan parks were taking advantage of people who are desperate.

"This was the last straw for me. I have seen it get pretty bad but this, I couldn't get my head around it."

This is the same park that it was reported last year had received $472,000 in housing grants from Work and Income in the past two years.

Kuki-Wikitera said he had spoken to the local community board but he was not sure what else to do.

"Do I complain to council about the amenities and see if they have broken any rules? Do I complain to the tenancy tribunal about the excessive rent? Do I make submissions to the Government about implementing better housing law?

"Or do I not rock the boat in case we lose these houses or I get blacklisted from putting whanau into their units?"

Matthew Heaven, a spokesman for Western Park Village, said the park provided numerous free services. "Most importantly perhaps are unlimited power and water plus meals daily, but there are many others."

"Can we not play monopoly with actual houses ... Better yet can we not play monopoly with people's suffering," Kuki-Wikitera said.

A Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment spokeswoman said whether a caravan park was covered under the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) would depend on the nature of the agreement the tenant had signed.

Caravans would be excluded, but cabins or caravans owned by the site and intended as people's primary places of residence would usually be caught in the Act.

"Depending on the nature of the accommodation that is rented, there may be other areas of the RTA that apply also. If the agreement gives the tenant the right to exclusively occupy their own sleeping quarters for at least 28 days or more as their principal place of residence, and they have access to other shared facilities such as cooking and laundry facilities, then the additional provisions contained in the RTA that apply to Boarding Houses may also apply."

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