On the day of the fire, the Dunedin City Council served a dangerous building notice against the owner of the building and required the tenants to leave.
The early-morning fire at 13 Stafford St on December 27 led to a man being hospitalised for smoke inhalation and fire officers discovering that the building’s wired fire alarm system was "dead" and seemed to have no smoke detection function.
The building warrant of fitness (BWOF) had expired in May 2024, the DCC said.
A "notice to fix" had been issued by the council five months ago requiring the owner to supply building warrant of fitness information.
There had been five prior instances of non-compliance since 2016.
Several sources said the fire began on the ground floor, which was occupied by five people. Tenancies on that floor were organised through the Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society (Pars) Otago, a charity for people released from prison.
The two upper floors — understood not to have been used by Pars — were empty at the time but had been occupied recently.
It is unknown where the building’s occupants are sleeping now. One source said a former occupant had said he was sleeping in a vehicle.
Pars Otago was contacted, but no-one was available to talk to the ODT this week.
Other fires in Dunedin boarding houses include a fatal fire at 3 Phillips St in 2022 which killed a man.
Last year, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) reached a settlement with Brent and Kerrie Matthews, the owners of 3 Phillips St, after details of a tenancy tribunal hearing about five boarding houses previously operated by them was kept underwraps.
A local enforcement taskforce is ramping up efforts to check Dunedin buildings that could pose risks to lives. It is meeting for the first time on January 28.
A boarding house at the former Carisbrook Hotel — now for sale — was shut down by the agencies last year.
They were alerted to the former hotel’s standards after the ODT reported vulnerable people were sleeping on the floor, without heating or a kitchen, with rents paid to the landlord by MSD.
Last year, some Dunedin boarding houses were included in a national audit of boarding house fire safety standards, prompted by the 2023 fatal fire at Loafers Lodge in Wellington. The audit was restricted to boarding houses three storeys or taller. Only one Dunedin boarding house met the audit criteria — Stafford Gables.
A DCC spokesperson said 13 Stafford St had not been defined by DCC as a boarding house because it was divided into three multi-room apartments.
Fenz community fire risk manager James Knapp said OBCG would investigate any type of buildings, not just those categorised as boarding houses.
Mr Knapp said it was "very lucky" people in the Stafford St building had been awake at the time of the fire as the fire alarm system was "dead as a Dodo" and only had a heat alarm system, not a smoke alarm system.
"When you have a small fire that is just developing, it is quite smoky and possible for a room to fill up enough to harm and kill someone before there is enough heat to set off a heat alarm and that is the problem when people are asleep.
"The tenants were relying on what they rightly presumed was a proper wired-in fire alarm system. To the average lay person, it is not going to occur to them that they need anything more than that ... It was the building owner’s responsibility to ensure the building was up tocode."
The owner of 13 Stafford St is Trending NZ Properties, which was registered in Auckland 18 months ago.
A property manager said he had an email from DCC requiring action to remedy the building’s problems, but it "wasn’t true" the fire alarm system was defective.
"There was nothing wrong with the thing, but then, as you know, the fire people came around and they wanted things done and we are in the process of getting it done."
He blamed "students who were tenants ... smoking in bed or something", but then agreed Pars was using ground floor rooms.
