First, Vanessa Estupinan says she signed an agreement to pay $270 a week, plus bills, to the head tenant of a Fernhill flat.
However, in her first week there that was raised to $300.
Additionally, she says the head tenant’s behaviour was "quite intimidating", sending her messages all the time and invading her personal space.
At the time she was working for a large company that rented staff accommodation — two houses and two units — in Fernhill, so she moved there.
Her rent for a room initially was $350 per week plus a weekly $50 power bill, which was even going to be charged in summer.
Estupinan says the tenants were all given two weeks’ notice rent was going up to $400 a week — in a normal rental, a landlord has to give at least 60 days’ written notice of a rent increase.
It meant at the time, when she was only working 30 hours a week, rent was gobbling up 62% of her wages.
She says she queried her employer’s HR person about the notice period and was told the 60-day rule only applied to the property owner renting the accommodation to the company.
She contacted Citizens Advice Bureau and was advised she’d have to pay a fee to Tenancy Services if she wanted to make an official complaint.
In the end, Estupinan says none of the tenants pursued that avenue as they didn’t want to risk losing their jobs if their employer decided to retaliate.
She adds she went to Mountain Scene after finding out, after her employer quit its lease, that a tenant was now renting a room there for only $200 a week.
