Hamilton’s filthiest rentals – house cleaner’s seen it all
The first job Sandra Chatterton went on, one of her helpers went outside and vomited.
A stench was coming from rotten food in the recently vacated Waikato flat she was charged with cleaning.
The curtains and carpet had to be replaced at that home, she said, as did cork tiles on the bathroom floor.
‘‘There was so much urine and cat faeces and whatever, it had soaked into the cork and they ended up getting a spade and lifting off the cork tiles and replacing it with lino.’’
‘‘There were skips of rubbish there . . . but, oh, the smell.’’
Chatterton sees the worst of what tenants leave behind, through the cleaning business she set up with daughter Dallas Quinn about five years ago.
About 1920 landlords have been awarded cleaning costs over the past 12 months, according to the Tenancy Tribunal rulings.
In a June example, tenants in Massey, Auckland, had to pay their landlords a total of $4370.48, which included pest control for a ‘‘severe cockroach infestation’’, rent arrears, cleaning and rubbish removal, water rates, and tip fees for three trailer loads.
The landlord of a Papatoetoe home ‘‘had to have a large wasp nest removed from a dumped couch before the couch could be removed’’.
Landlords, property managers, and tenants have been in the headlines recently – a woman was accused of leaving filth, felines, fraud and unpaid rent in her wake, and a landlord evicted a pregnant woman so her baby wouldn’t disturb his sleep.
There have been calls for property managers to be licensed, and others say tenants are getting away with trashing houses.
Chatterton has cleaned up after several evicted tenants, and wanted to show that side of the story.
She cleans in Hamilton and its surrounds, and is now used to rodent poo, greasy kitchen light switches, grimy window sills, and rotting lasagne in the pantry.
She and Quinn have learned to wear clothes which don’t bleach, because Janola’s their secret to getting rid of mould.
The smell of rotten potatoes is the worst, Chatterton said.
‘‘In the bottom drawer in the kitchen, say, there will be a bag of absolutely rotten potatoes . . . The brown liquid soaks out the bottom of the bag. It’s nasty.’’
In one kitchen, a lasagne had been half eaten and shoved back in the pantry to rot, she said.
Another time, there were whole chickens in their wrapping on the lawn, along with ham, frozen veges and bread.
They appeared to have been dumped from the freezer, Chatterton said, and sat for about a week before the cleaners came in.
In her experience, the worst cases tend to come to light when an owner brings in a property manager.
An inspection reveals the state of the flat, and the process to get the tenant evicted begins.
Mould can also be a feature – Chatterton’s cleaned a place where there was a blanket over the bedroom window and the walls and ceiling were black with mould.
At another place, a weed trimmer revealed clothes hidden in grass under the washing line.
Chatterton and Quinn have also dealt with rubbish bags piled up on the deck, in a garage, or in an empty room for weeks.
‘‘They’re leaking out the bottom and there are maggots and blow flies for Africa,’’ Chatterton said. ‘‘I just don’t understand that. Why would you not walk your rubbish bag to the gate?’’
People leave useable things behind too, like the seven black rubbish bags of children’s clothes Chatterton washed and took to an op shop, or couches and a washing machine.
But it’s the starving cats which get to Chatterton.
She adopted one – Possum – because she couldn’t bear it, and regularly buys food for others she encounters.
When Chatterton and Quinn take on on a new house, Chatterton starts in the kitchen and her daughter in the bathroom.
If one of those is bad, you can guarantee the other will be, Chatterton said.
She uses a paint scraper to get layers of grease off walls by the stove, and struck one formica bench so greasy that none of her products could get it back to normal.
The dirtiest homes the pair come across can take three days to clear out and clean, though that’s the exception.
They can whip through a ‘‘normal clean’’, if a place isn’t quite up to standard, in four to five hours.
‘‘People say to us ‘How can you bear it?’, but in actual fact it’s quite satisfying because you’ve made such a difference,’’ Chatterton said.
‘‘You’ve scrubbed every inch of it and it all of a sudden looks liveable again.’’