A group of Auckland pensioners claim Kāinga Ora has been a party pooper by quashing their regular end of week get together.
For 15 years the group of Ellerslie tenants at the housing complex, who are aged from their mid-50s up to 93, have met on a Friday afternoon for a few drinks and a catch-up from 4pm to 6pm, or 8.30pm if it’s a special occasion like a birthday.
However, Kāinga Ora, the landlord of the complex, said it has received complaints from other tenants about alcohol consumption and noise in the common room, and has restricted the hours the tenants can use it.
The doors are now locked at 4pm, Monday to Friday.
Kāinga Ora said there is a blanket ban across the country on drinking alcohol in its common room facilities.
The tenants feel this is unfair, and that Kāinga Ora has not been willing to compromise, moving straight to a rule change without negotiating an alternative.
Tenant Lisa Howard told RNZ’s Checkpoint programme today the group of five to 10 tenants kept the music to 60 decibels.
“The room is double glazed- once you’ve got the door shut you actually can’t hear our music. We’ve got the music on in the common room and you can’t even hear it when you’re sitting out on the deck, that’s how loud it is,” Howard said.
“I’ll go on Spotify, so it’s the 40s, 50s, the 60s. It’s a bit of Elvis Presley, it’s a bit of country. We’ve got age range from probably 58 up to 93.”
Usually, only four of the 10 tenants will drink alcohol and other six drink tea and coffee because they are on medication.
“I mean, the gentlemen will probably bring one or two stubbies. I usually bring half a bottle of wine. I have two glasses of wine. That’s my limit,” she said.
“Half of us can’t get out of the chairs because we’re in walkers, so we’re definitely not dancing on tables and being raucous.”
The latest the group has been in the common room has been 8.30pm, to celebrate a milestone birthday, she said.
“70, 80, 90 – we’re talking those milestone birthdays days here.”
The tenants are disappointed the common room is shut on a Friday and cannot be used at all over the weekend as it affects different members across their community.
“This whole thing isn’t just about our Friday night drinkies.
“It’s the fact that we can’t use it on weekends, and we’ve got a group of two or three Filipino tenants that aren’t ambulatory, and they have family come and they hold a Bible study down here on a Sunday with a shared lunch. They now can’t use the room,” she said.
“We have a lady that comes usually on 4pm on a Thursday to hold exercise classes for some of the residents to improve balance and stability and mobility. Well, she had to get special dispensation from Kāinga Ora to continue to hold those classes.”
If they want to drink alcohol socially, they have to take to their apartments, she said.
“A lot of the people here are elders, and we’ve got some Māori elders here, they feel really disrespected. We feel that we’re adult enough to control what goes on – this complex has been here for 15 years.”
She said as far as they were aware, they had received one noise complaint, and they had resolved the complaint with the concerned tenant.
“We said okay, we monitor the noise level now it’s 60 decibels. We don’t put the speaker beside the internal wall because apparently the bass was travelling up the internal wall. We moved it to an external wall,” she said.
“That tenant now said he doesn’t hear us. We’re not blasting Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath till 10 at night. It’s easy listening music, we keep the noise level down.”
This week there was a meeting with the tenants and their local MP, Greg Fleming, to discuss their concerns. Another meeting is planned for next week.
Fleming told Checkpoint he was hopeful if he could give Kāinga Ora an alternative, they would re-open the common room.
“From the meeting that I had with them back on Tuesday of this week, it’s pretty clear that they don’t like the fact that they’ve had to close this room, they just didn’t feel like they had any alternatives.
“All of the residents here will be hoping that is the case and the common room will be able to be used again, to help foster their community spirits, bring people together and have a few drinks on a Friday night.”
In a statement, Kāinga Ora said the community room at the Ladies Mile complex has units directly above it and other tenants have found noise from the Friday afternoon “happy hour drinks” to be disruptive.
Late last year, tenants were reminded that drinking alcohol in the room was not permitted, and noise should be kept to a minimum. As a landlord, it said it has a responsibility to protect the “quiet enjoyment of all tenants in the complex.”
Kāinga Ora said it had received more complaints in recent weeks and implemented changes to the opening hours of the community room.
It said it was simply making sure the community room continues to be a safe and welcoming place for all residents to enjoy.
