After a fire at Loafers Lodge left at least five dead, attention has turned to Wellington’s hostels and the housing crisis they embody
Chris, 48, had lived there since November 2022. He said smoke alarms were a frequent occurrence – set off as people burned toast or their cooking – so he paid little attention when he first heard the familiar sound ring out on Tuesday evening. A few hours later, he was woken again. This time, he heard yelling.Photograph: Tess McClure/The Guardian
Taking a seat a little way down the street, Chris stretches his feet out in front of him: they’re pinched and painful. The shoes he’s wearing are two sizes too small, but for now, they’re all he’s been given. He escaped the fire barefoot, with nothing except his phone and a vape in his pocket. “That’s just material things though,” he says. “There’s others that lost their lives.”
Clutterbuck, 50, has spent much of the past 12 years living in Wellington’s boarding houses. He wasn’t a resident of Loafers Lodge, but has lived in many places like it, converted apartment blocks or old commercial buildings, transformed into packed human warehouses. Clutterbuck has long-term disabilities, including chronic kidney failure that mean he lives with help from a government benefit – a tight income, which leaves most other options for a home out of reach.
“We’ve got to start re-thinking that acceptance that these places are not great but they’re the best we’ve got to offer so that’ll do,” says Murray Edridge, the head of the charity Wellington City Mission, which already worked with many residents of Loafers Lodge. “I’m not suggesting that they shouldn’t exist at all, but there should be acceptable levels of standard in them which shouldn’t be the bare minimum.
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