An advertisement seeking a flatmate to sleep in a garage next to a car has caused outrage online and angered a Green Party MP.
The advert was posted on a west Auckland flatmates wanted page on Facebook. The post included photos of a double bed, a mirror and a chair set up next to a silver car in a garage. The price for the room wasn't included in the advert.
It drew swift backlash from social media users who condemned the listing.
The man who posted it told NZ Herald he's been targeted by threats and has removed the listing.
And it's not just Aucklanders who are upset, Green MP Chloe Swarbrick told Stuff the listing was "cooked".
"Most young Aucklanders, strangely, wouldn't be particularly shocked, given the state of housing that many of us have lived in," Swarbrick said.
She said a landlord register and rental warrant of fitnesses need to be implemented immediately.
"We're so frequently putting the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, [despite] all of this is being obviously messed up.
"And that’s why it's really important to actually start reversing some of these trends," she told Stuff.
Auckland has some of the highest rental prices in the country with the median rents recently hitting $600.
The super city's median weekly rent cracked $600 for the first time in October, an increase of 5 percent compared to the same month last year, according to Trade Me's latest Rental Price Index.
Rents in the Auckland region have been edging closer to the $600 mark since the beginning of 2021, Trade Me's property sales director, Gavin Lloyd, said on Friday.
"We saw the region's median weekly rent stagnant at $590 from January right through to June, before it climbed to $595 in July where it sat tight right up until last month."
Wellington is the only region with higher rents than Auckland with a weekly median rent of $620 in October.
