WILL IRVINE (HE/HIM)
On the 11th of July, in the Hub on Kelburn Campus, our beloved overlords at VUWSA launched a new petition with a provocative tagline: “Is your flat cold as fuck this winter?”. If you’re reading this article, chances are the answer is a teeth-chattering yes.
The new petition, addressed to Parliament as a whole, asks the Government to extend the enormously popular Winter Energy Payment to students. In VUWSA’s press release, they note that students “are the only beneficiary group who don’t receive the Winter Energy Payment”. The payment, supplied by Work and Income NZ, gives beneficiaries up to $31.82 over the winter season to pay for the seasonally increasing costs of heating their home. However, students who receive the Student Allowance are for some reason exempted for this, despite often living in some of the coldest flats in Aotearoa.
According to VUWSA, one in six students surveyed live into housing that doesn’t meet their basic needs— including damp and mouldy flats. At the campaign launch, one student shared their experience of “waking up in [their] bed shivering every morning”, while another said that the Winter Energy Payment would mean they “wouldn’t get hypothermia… again”.