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'I can’t wait to drop dead': Elderly couple desperate to leave freezing, mouldy flat
Vicki Anderson10:20, Dec 12 2020FacebookTwitterWhats AppRedditEmailComments149
8-10 minutes
CHRIS SKELTON/STUFF
Kevin Cotton and Gillian Pool struggle to keep warm in their draughty, damp and mouldy social housing unit. (Video filmed in winter 2020)
MAKING ENDS MEET: As the sting of Covid-19 hits home, Making Ends Meet by reporter VICKI ANDERSON and visual journalist CHRIS SKELTON offers a voice to those living and working on the frontlines of poverty.
Kevin Cotton scuffs at the threadbare carpet beneath his feet in the bitterly cold social housing unit he shares with partner Gillian Pool.
The wind whistles through the curtains in their bedroom from earthquake damage a decade ago, still awaiting repairs. The back door sticks and remains locked because neither of them are strong enough to open it.
Their landlord, the Christchurch Ōtautahi Community Housing Trust (ŌCHT), is a charitable trust. It leases the Christchurch City Council's social housing portfolio and also has trust-owned housing.
CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
Kevin Cotton and Gillian Pool live in a social unit which is bitterly cold, damp and mouldy.
It is the biggest non-governmental social housing provider in the South Island, with 2300 homes across Christchurch City and Banks Peninsula.
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CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
Kevin Cotton says it is “degrading” living in such poor conditions.
With one shaking calloused hand, Cotton gestures to the black mould which riddles their bathroom and runs a bony finger across it.
“I can’t wait to drop dead,” the 83-year-old says matter-of-factly. “I've had a gutsful. It is degrading. This place isn't fit for a young person never mind someone like me.”
Rheumy eyes shining, he places his hands atop his walking stick.
“I want to get my mind off dying, it goes into my head automatically,” he says.
“I’m sorry, but it does. I get so depressed that I think I might as well be dead... It's this place. I just want a bit of life, to enjoy what's left of my life.”
CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
Gillian Pool struggled to keep warm in the unit as she battled breast cancer.
Pool has breast cancer.
“I struggle a bit to manage caring for her,” Cotton admits. He has heart problems, “takes five pills a day” and is on a “push button service” with St John.
Pool has a pale complexion, wears a woolly hat and hugs a hot water bottle tightly.
Her eyes fill with tears.
“It’s sad,” she says, waving a hand around her limply.
“It’s just banging shopping trolleys together in the supermarket, isn't it.”
A gaudy stuffed parrot dangles from the ceiling, beside a newly-installed heat pump in the unit the couple nicknamed “the ghetto”.
However, the couple fear a large power bill so use it sparingly.
“I had a nice little vegetable garden out there,” Cotton says, pointing to a patch of dirt out front. “Raspberries, the lot, they ripped it all up to put the heat pump in and ruined it ... no respect.”
As a young man, Cotton “knew a thing or two about upholstery and carpets”.
Using animated gestures he recalls painstakingly measuring up the Wahine ferry for new carpet in 1968.
The carpet was stored in a warehouse waiting to be installed when the Wahine sank on April 10, 1968, and 53 people lost their lives in New Zealand's worst modern maritime disaster.
“Beautiful carpet that was, not like this rubbish,” Cotton says emphatically, peering disdainfully down at the floor.
Horse racing mementos of his family’s victories and a whinnying clock jostle for space with rugby paraphernalia on the walls.
“Go the mighty Crusaders,” Cotton says wheezily, pulling on a red and black beanie.
Unopened next to his worn chair are several cans of powdered nutrition, Ensure, prescribed by his doctor to supplement his diet.
“Tastes bloody awful,” he says conspiratorially when Pool leaves the room. “You've got to make it into a milkshake to make it drinkable.”
The couple spend $40 a week on groceries.
Brussel sprouts bought at a local market fill the kitchen sink and a fetid fug of sprouts and mould permeates the air.
Cotton says he's talked to his tenant manager “repeatedly” about his concerns.
Supplied
Otautahi Community Housing Trust Chief Executive Cate Kearney says regular checks are done on its units.
“I’m sick of talking to her, she's had plenty of opportunities to get it sorted.”
Cate Kearney, ŌCHT chief executive, says the homes are “regularly checked’’ and its warm and dry team do regular assessments “for draft-stopping and ventilation as part of the Healthy Homes upgrade”.
Kearney says property assessments were carried out in June 2020 with the tenant present.
“Where tenants were not at home, follow-up letters were sent to arrange another time for the assessment.
“Black mould was not specified as an issue when homes were assessed.”
Cotton disputes this.
“At our age we are vulnerable and June was the end of the level 4 Covid-19 lockdown. No-one came to see us, and we didn't get a letter from them at all,” he says.
CHRIS SKELTON/Stuff
Kevin Cotton says he would love to spend his final days living in the countryside.
Wind whistles through damaged windows
Cotton says when the council ran the units it sent a carpenter around to look at the earthquake damage and the windows.
“He said the windows would have to be completely replaced... he said he'd be back to do it, but we haven't seen him since.
“We never heard any more about it despite asking all the time,’’ he says.
“They say to keep the mould out you need to open the windows but these windows are so damaged by the earthquakes that the wind whistles through in the southerly when they're shut. You can only close them if you use a hammer.”
For people aged 80 and over, Covid-19 is just another hard time in a long list of many to navigate.
“As a generalisation, by the time someone reaches their 80s they have lived through a lot,” says Simon Templeton, chief executive of Aged Concern Christchurch. “They just get on with life.”
Dreaming of a life in the countryside
Cotton says budgeting is all about “using your swede”.
“I make ends meet no problem. $40 a week tides us through for food. Waste not, want not,” he says.
“It's how you use your food, you can make a couple of cans of tuna go for four meals if you wish, put eggs and things with it. Have everything on toast ... Anybody who can't keep a couple in food for $40 a week want their heads read.”
The couple dream of a better life together in the countryside or beside the sea.
“We shouldn't be living here at our age. Gilly and I would love to get away from this outfit and enjoy life out in the country or somewhere. Anywhere but here ... there's no future in it,” Cotton says.
Pool hugs her hot water bottle tighter.
“Peace,’’ she says softly, her eyes looking into the distance through a mould-encrusted window.
After this interview, Pool had a fall and was admitted to hospital. Cotton says Work and Income has admitted her into a care facility, and she “won’t be coming home”. The pair miss each other deeply.
“She’s my shining light,’’ Cotton says. “I talk to her at night in the dark... I go to bed at night and the wind whistles in through the broken window and I hope I don’t have to wake up. Christmas? Hopefully I will have croaked before then.”
