The Tenants Protection Association was called to a house at Taranaki Street on the Saturday during Easter. The landlady and some assistants had taken all the belongings of the tenants and dumped them on the veranda and the front lawn of the house. Under the watchful eye of two constables they had carried a pregnant girl, one of the tenants, and put her on the street.

The tenants were three and a half weeks behind in their rent, although they say they had tried twice in the last week to pay some of the money to the landlady who lives just round the corner in Hanky Street, but both times no-one had been home. The tenants had received no notice of any kind, and because of this the landlady's action was completely illegal.

When TPA members arrived, the house was barricaded by the landlady and her helpers — her brother and her 17-year-old son. They had moved in bedding and food in preparation for a seige, and jammed planks up against the doors. The tenants were standing outside. While a TPA solicitor, George Rosenberg, tried to talk to the people inside the house through a mail-hole in the front door and explain that the eviction was illegal, another member phoned the police.

Police reluctant

Police said that they had been present that afternoon, and that as the matter was a civil one, they were reluctant to get involved, and would intervene only in the case of a breach of the peace. It was pointed out to them that the landlady had to be told that she had acted illegally, and had to let the tenants return. Unless this was done the tenants and TPA would have no alternative but to break in and forcibly repossess the premises. When the police heard of this likely breach of the peace they sent a senior sergeant and three constables.

"Passionate love" (faces blacked out for legal reasons).

Photos by Hillary Watson

After TPA's lawyer had talked to the police in the car the sergeant talked for over an hour to the people in the house, and later with the lawyer and the tenants. The landlady claimed she had acted on the advice of an Auckland lawyer whom she refused to name. She offered to put the young mother and her son into the (Salvation Army's) Florence Booth Home, but the tenants refused. She would not admit that the eviction had been illegal, nor allow the tenants to return.

Passionate love — Screams of pain

Finally, while some of the tenants and the lawyer stood talking to the landlady's brother in the front doorway, members of TPA forced their way in and immediately began to move the belongings back into the house, while the landlady and her brother scuffled with tenants in the hall. The landlady kicked one TPA member in the shins, and threatened one of the tenants with a broom.

She became more and more hysterical as a TPA member tried to keep her out of the way while the tenants shifted back in. She stroked and patted his arms and head and then, screaming "I'm not hitting you, I want to make love to you — passionate love!" she grabbed him by the hair and tried to pull him to the ground.

When she was pushed away she saw Hilary Watson taking photos from the veranda. The landlady pushed through the people in the hall and chased Hilary some thirty yards down the road, grabbed her by the hair, shoved her round and threw her onto the road. Only Hilary's screams of pain brought any response from the police who had sat in their car across the road the whole time; by the time they got there Hilary's friends had dragged the landlady off her, and the police led the landlady back to the house.

Son hurls abuse

After all the tenants belongings had been returned, it was possible to get a good look at the flat. There was effectively no hot water, because the gas pipe leading to the califont burst into flame whenever it was lit; there was no washing machine, no vacuum cleaner, the gas stove was so old and rusted that most of the elements did not go. It was impossible to tell what damage had been caused by the removal of the tenants and their belongings, and what had been there before this. The landlady's brother gave the tenants screws and a lock for the front door, because the old one had been removed, and went away.

Police conferring with landlady. In the foreground, some of their ejected furniture.

Later in the night, the landlady's son returned to shout abuse at the tenants and a TPA member who had stayed with them, and smashed two glass panels in the front door. Although the police were called, they never came. The landlady's brother made a final appearance, refusing to look at the damage his nephew had done, instead saying his sister had chased "the girl" only after she had got in the first punch, and asking whether TPA would help the tenants clean up the flat, and what we would do with tenants who left dirty dishes lying around, or who had a rubbish tin in the kitchen.

Incidents like this are not common, but the peak to which feelings can rise between landlords and tenants, and the unreal situations they can produce, are fairly typical. Landlords feel that tenants who do not have the same values and standards as themselves do not qualify for all human and legal rights. "Have you seen the place? How can you say people who live like that have any rights? What would you do if tenants of yours treated a house like this?" And TPA must explain to them that even the lawmakers have given all tenants some small protection against arbitrary and immediate eviction and that, subjective issues like who is right or wrong aside, these tenants in particular will receive at least the protection the law offers, as well as any other kind of protection TPA can give.

Tenant's child, bewildered by it all.