Flat occupancy questioned

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 5

Flat occupancy questioned

An anonymous statement questioning the occupancy of a Christchurch City Council flat by a Labour Party North Canterbury Hospital Board candidate is being circulated in Christchurch. Mrs Jacqueline Steincamp, a solo parent with an adult son, said yesterday that she applied for a Bangor Street urban renewal flat in 1981 after returning from Australia. At the time, she did not have a place to live. Before leaving for Australia to look for work about six months before the application, she had sold the family house in Aorangi Road and put the cash with a lawyer. That money had been lent out and tied up in a longterm mortgage when she returned. Tte anonymous statement mH that Mrs Steincamp •Owd a flat in “a choicer

Ert of Christchurch” but ve never lived there. She rented it for more than she paid for the council flat

“The question to be raised is surely one of ethics,” said the statement. “How can a candidate, during a period of acute housing shortages among the city’s poor, claim to’represent the interests of the party of the working classes when she is accumulating wealth in the classic entrepreneurial manner? “More important, how does she qualify to live in a council flat at all?” Mrs Steincamp said she had applied to the council since she wanted to live in the Avon Loop because of the community life there.

She did not think she would be approved for a flat, but they had been

difficult to let because the rental was too high for many people. She paid $4B a week for the two-bedroomed flat, where she lived on her own. The second bedroom was too small for permanent use by an adult The anonymous statement said she paid $55 a week for the council flat.

Mrs Steincamp said that she had been in subsidised work for several years. Because of her “extremely dicey” employment situation, the council had considered her for a flat The council had been aware of the money she had tied up in a mor I 'age, and that she intend© to invest it in a proper! when it became availabl .

When she co Id use the money, she ba ght one of eight flats in a complex in Cheltenham S rest, Merivale. She rented that two-

bedroom flat to a couple for $lOO a week. She bad done the flat up and was making mortgage payments on it. Her only present income was from the rent and some freelance journalism. “I am quite appalled at the level to which people will sink,” she said. The statement was “a shabby political trick” and a smallminded thing to do.

She did not know whether it might have come from political opponents or because she had been a former chairman of the Christchurch branch of the Abortion Law Reform Association.

Mrs Steincamp said she was “extremely grateful” to the City Council for getting the Bangor Street flat It had taken her age (57) and her “extremely poor earning situation” into account

when renting to her, plus her years as a solo parent. Mr W. V. Morgan, the City Council’s housing and property director, said yesterday that at the time Mrs Steincamp applied for a flat, the council was having to advertise some properties to get tenants to fill them.

Over the last 18 months, the demand had become so great for flats that the council would not consider renting to anyone who had a separate property. At the time she applied for the Bangor Street flat, Mrs Steincamp did not have a separate property.

“A’t present, ownership of another property would preclude anybody from council housing,” said Mr Morgan. “Our housing criteria change according to demand at the time.” |