Evicted at 99 years old
The pensioner who went to war with her landlord
Betty Hooper, of Hikurangi, was in the middle of planning her 99th birthday celebrations when she received an eviction notice. In hindsight, she’s of the view there wasn’t much to lose. The Northland villa where she had lived for 15 years was run down, particularly in the kitchen.
But the way in which her tenancy ended led Hooper to the Tenancy Tribunal, where she asked it to hold landlord Steve Poole to account.
It took until January this year for the tribunal to issue its decision — Poole was ordered to pay $1079.04, of which $408.60 was to refund incorrectly charged water costs and $650 for inconvenience and distress caused by works during her eviction period.
Poole is quick to point out that it was not only Hooper who suffered. “We’ve been hurting too,” he said. “We’ve been getting a lot of bad feelings out that way.”
Hooper, now 101, moved into Poole’s house in 2004. She was widowed in the 1970s with no children but was determined to maintain — as she does now — an independent life.
Her diary from the time records her enthusiasm for the reasonably priced rental — $210 a week back then — although that was balanced against issues she identified from the start.
It appeared to have been renovated — until she walked into the kitchen. “Light shades covered in fly dirt,” she wrote, “The ceiling brown with age, flaking green paint.” There was a large section of wood nailed to cover a hole in the ceiling.
“Discovered a large hole at the back of the oven after finding mice and rat droppings in the warming drawer and later on inside the oven and under the elements.”
There were other holes, including those at the back of the kitchen sink where it had been replumbed. Hooper eventually bogged those with plastic lids and glue. Lids from cans of pet food were used to cover a hole in the wall.
The “filthy, dirty, old bath” needed “scouring”; the toilet seat was cracked and yellowed with age. Her notes record “black stinky stuff” erupting from the shower after she took a plunger to it because the water wouldn’t drain properly.
And then there was the toilet. When it rained heavily, Hooper would be confronted with water almost lapping at the top of the bowl. “Had to use bucket as toilet,” she wrote. When she told Poole, he went under the house then emerged to ask: “You haven’t put anything down there, have you?”
No, she hadn’t. The problem, it emerged, lay with the council and Hikurangi’s low water table. Ten years into her tenancy, in 2014, Hooper recorded: “Heavy rain. Out comes the bucket. I know the drill.” It continued until 2017 when the council put in a new stormwater pipe.
Hooper, whose diary notes frustration with Poole, wrote of how pleasant he was to deal with that 2019 morning before the real estate agency property manager served the 42-day eviction notice.
She says she was stunned by the notice, but not as much as when Poole returned the next day. She says she watched as he cut to ground level two nut trees, and then a rose bush given to her for her 90th birthday.
Her notes record Poole snipping three blooms from the felled rose tree and presenting them to her. “Why did you do it?” she wrote. “I spent 15 years in your house having to make excuses for the grotty conditions, the worst being when I had visitors visiting from overseas.”
And then the workers turned up, waterblasting the exterior and using electric sanders to remove the paint. “The water blasting was a disaster,” Hooper wrote. “The water leaked into the bedroom, the passage walls were showered with black water. I spent every day mopping up and cleaning.”
Paint dust from sanding got everywhere. She blamed it for the ill-health of one cat, aged 18. Objections halted the power sanding, reducing it to hand sanding.
All this went before the Tenancy Tribunal. Hooper was awarded $408 for “incorrectly charged fixed water costs” and $650 for “all of the inconvenience, loss of amenity and distress (including catrelated distress) that the work caused”. She was also refunded the $20 filing fee for taking the case.
The tribunal rejected any payment for maintenance concerns raised by Hooper, which were centred on the kitchen ceiling. Poole told the tribunal “the rent charged reflected the condition of the house” and it had increased only slightly over the 15 years.
Poole told the tribunal he had intended to finish renovating the property “when Ms Hooper’s tenancy ended, not anticipating that the tenancy would run for 15 years”.
Tribunal adjudicator Nick Blake said: “I agree with Mr Poole’s arguments.” The kitchen ceiling could only be fixed without a tenant in the house. Blake said that evidence showed the toilet issue was not Poole’s responsibility but a council issue.
“Very inconvenient and unpleasant” as it was, Blake said “this is not an instance of a landlord failing to meet his or her maintenance duty”.
“There are no proven instances where Mr Poole failed to meet his duty to maintain the premises in a reasonable state of repair (having regard to the age and character of the property),” Blake found.
He also upheld the 42-day eviction notice. Under normal circumstances, 90-day notice would be given but the shorter period was for landlords moving into their own home.
Hooper complained that Poole and partner Donna Crowe instead sold the house, although evidence provided to Blake showed Crowe and Poole’s plans had changed after they couldn’t sell their million-dollar-plus Whanga¯rei home. Plans changed — they stayed in town and sold the Hikurangi home for $400,000, a month after Hooper moved out.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” Poole said. “We don’t want bad publicity. There’s two sides to the story. Unfortunately, our side is not really being represented. Betty won’t let it go. We acted within the law.”
The trees that were removed, for example. Poole, who has other rentals, explained: “I did say at the start — don’t plant the garden up. I’m the guy — every time a tenant moves on — who has to clean the garden up. Our policy is not to plant.”
Hooper, he said, had talked about the trees being dug out so they could be replanted but it never happened. The garden had grown out of control, he said, including the rose that needed to be “pruned” to allow access for the house painters.
Poole said the house was in worse shape than he had expected. “I didn’t realise the state of the exterior. There were some gaping holes. I didn’t realise it was in that state.”
But it had been agreed, he said, that the low rent would balance out the deficiencies. “What does she want? Her cake and eat it?”
Take the kitchen, he said. “We said at the start, ‘we will do it later’. I didn’t say when we would do it. We were always hoping to do it at a change of tenancy but unfortunately the tenancy went on forever.”
The work on the house couldn’t wait for Hooper to move out. “It was summer — the best weather of the year.” Also, his daughter was doing the work as a holiday job before returning to university.
The eviction notice and the reaction it inspired left Poole uncomfortable about going into Hikurangi. “We were painted [by Hooper] as bad people.”
Yet issues such as the toilet were not his responsibility, he said. Effort and money had been spent trying to identify the problem, only to find it was the council’s issue to resolve. “Why should we just have a negative investment? We’re going backward on the rent. It was never my problem with the drain and there is a public toilet two doors down.”
One weekend, Poole said, he paid to get a Portaloo into the property. “At the end of the weekend, it had not been used. That’s a waste of money, I thought.”
In an emailed statement later, Poole said he accepted the tribunal’s finding. “While we understand and regret that Ms Hooper is saddened by the termination of the tenancy, the property owners do not consider that the termination was unlawful or inappropriate.”
It ended well. Hooper does volunteer reading support at Hikurangi School. During the eviction period, she appeared distracted. When principal Bruce Crawford asked what was troubling her, the story came tumbling out.
“She had to get out of her house by the next Friday,” he recalled. He laid it out to staff at a meeting the next week: “This is the situation team. What are we going to do?”
On moving day, 13 teachers and five teacher aides turned up, along with some parents at the school. There were cars and trailers parked up on Hikurangi’s main street and a line of people emptying boxes and furniture out of Hooper’s home of 15 years.
“It was really a community effort,” Crawford said. Hooper even recalled seeing some of the senior students loading up the trailers — some of the many children who showered her with cards and letters when she celebrated her 100th birthday last year.
It was a short move. Today, Hooper lives about 20 doors up the road in a rental that cropped up through the school — a comfortable, modern, warm new home that looks north across farmland.
“I’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime,” she said.
“That’s the power of community.”
Heavy rain. Out comes the bucket. I know the drill.
Betty Hooper’s diary