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Salient. Victoria University Students' Newspaper. Volume Number 39, Issue 6. April 5 [1976]

T.U. Campaign

T.U. Campaign

24 Portland Cres., Thorndon
13 Goring Street, Thorndon
17 Goring Street, Thorndon
19 Goring Street, Thorndon
21 Goring Street, Thorndon

Each of the above addresses is a rooming house administered by Kenneth David Anderson.

Each address is a tenant-factory returning 30-40% profit per annum to the production-manager, Anderson.

Each address abounds with breaches of basic civic housing regulations.

A family of five, including a pregnant woman, her husband, and three children, are living in a converted tool-shed behind one of the houses.

This incredible 'home' consists of one bedroom and a tiny kitchen. The rent is $24 a week.

In another building, a young man lives in a bedroom no bigger than a toilet cubical - approx. 7' by 6'. He is charged $18 a week.

None of Anderson's boarding-houses are the type of place people stay at for very long. They're large, ramshackle buildings with bedrooms for 30 to 40 tenants, and one lot of cooking and washing facilities each.

The shared facilities are all entirely inadequate and often dangerous, the buildings themselves contain numerous fire-traps, yet they are all filled with people.

The City Council could enforce it's own by-laws and close these slums down immediately. What do they gain by letting the situation continue? The Council has always acted in the interests of the powerful property-owners who can pay the rates and pull the strings.

They guarantee that Council revenue goes toward really worthwhile projects like a new Town Hall or car for the Duke of Wellington himself. Mayor Fowler. Without the intention of removing housing from the region of private profiteering, neither the City Council nor the Government is of any use to people who are forced to live in Anderson's houses.

So each week, Ken Anderson rides around the poorer parts of town in his new Falcon to collect the rents. Where all the money goes is still a mystery.

Anderson owns these properties under caveat, a legal arrangment which may conceal the identity of several financiers.

The Tenants Union (formerly the Tenant's Protection Assn) has begun a campaign against all the Anderson boarding-houses

Voluntary workers have visited all the occupants, and this will result in some decrease in rents and upgrading of conditions. Publicising Anderson's way of making a living, and helping his tenants to join forces may be more effective.

Landlord Anderson collects his rent

Landlord Anderson collects his rent

....and makes his getaway

....and makes his getaway