Parking Not Included

Words by Lauren Walker (she/her)

Coupon parks are free for two hours. They exist on the outskirts of the city, lined with dusty-looking 1996 Toyota Corollas wearing roof-racks saved for surfboards. Chipped white paint revealing rusty bones too far gone and expensive to bother fixing. 

There are coupon parks on Roxburgh, Majoribanks, Abel Smith, Hopper, Glenmore, and others. I’ve created a mind map of my favourite parking spots in town. A personal favourite: the dotted yellow lines outside an old gothic-looking house on Roxburgh Street which I made into my very own ‘free park.’

Coupon parks cost $12 per day, $200 for a calendar month, and $30 for three months if you have a coupon parking exemption. Inner-city parking is about $4.50 per hour. There you can park your shitty little runaround for a total of two hours before the mysterious disc hidden in the dark, grey slab under your car alerts the seagulls. Swooping in for a bite, they’ll pinch every last penny your sorry student pocket has been hiding away. 

Residents' parking spaces are everywhere. Don’t park in them. You’ll regret it, especially if your rego is out. Above Glasgow Street, towards Kelburn village there are residents and coupon parks. If you go far enough towards Aro Valley parking will be free. There’s one free park on Fairlie Terrace right before you hit Landcross Street which you’d be lucky to get.

I can’t park in my driveway because the neighbour has threatened to tow my car. My landlord has taken two parks and my flatmates pay extra for the others. I can’t get a permit for a resident's park because I technically live on a lane… the lane has no parking. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve grown wildly obsessive over Wellington’s parking problem. Basically, I hate parking in Wellington. 

But parking isn’t the problem, because if I had an endless, interest-free overdraft then I wouldn’t care less about the fees and fines. Because if I really wanted, I could leave my car parked in a coupon park on my street all month and never move it. Parking is the catalyst to a much bigger problem. 

The rising cost of living has made the simple pleasures of life unattainable for many students. Let’s break down the costs: My rent is $210 per week, plus $15 for expenses. This leaves about $10 left of my student allowance. I work around ten hours per week for minimum wage, equating to about $190 before tax. After tax, with a KiwiSaver contribution of ten percent and a tax code of M SL, my average take-home pay is $148.41. If I subtract $50 from that for a monthly coupon pass, then I’m left with $98.41. 

Of my $98.41 left after I’ve paid for parking, rent and utilities, I have to buy groceries. When I calculate my weekly expenses on the New Zealand Immigration cost of living page it calculates that, with an average yearly income of around $28,000 (weekly living costs of $235 plus an average weekly income of $200), I can’t afford to live. It tells me that my average weekly income with a yearly salary of $28,000 is $439.44 per week. I should be living off a minimum of $589.20 each week. Of this $589.20, $117.70 is dedicated to food.

I’m a student in dire straits, living off canned tuna, basic veggies, a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs, and rice each week. With this, we can cut these costs down to about $60. This takes my $589.20 down to $531.50. We’re still above, so let’s cut the costs of transport in half from $72.30 to $30 for petrol, this comes to $489.20. Let’s take healthcare costs of $31.20 to $0 because who needs to see the dentist or a doctor anyway? No need for that as a student, pfft. Now we’re down to $458. We can keep doing this and keep cutting costs. We can keep adding and subtracting. We can keep calculating hours and pay and tossing up how much of what we need, the point is, the numbers don’t add up. Yes, Prime Minister Ardern, this is a cost-of-living crisis. 

As a student, I can’t afford to pay for parking. So I have to get up every day early to try and get that one free park between Fairlie and Landcross. The point being, I either have to work more hours and let my grades suffer or move somewhere cheap, damp, and mouldy, and live off frozen veggies and rice. Being a student in Wellington kinda sucks. It’s not the fact that I can’t find a park, it’s the fact that I have to pay for a park. It’s the fact that my rent is over $220 when my friends in Christchurch pay $130 for a room that is double-glazed, less than five years old, and a fifteen-minute walk from campus. It’s the fact that they can live off their student allowance while I can’t. I can’t stop the thought at the back of my mind that their grades will undoubtedly be better than mine because, while they’ve got free parking, I’ve got a growing mountain of financial stress bringing my surging anxiety into play, keeping me from mental clarity, and sidetracking me from my degree. 

As students, we’re living in what seems to be a financial paradox. You can send me to a financial advisor, great, but that’s not going to change my income. You can tell me to invest, you can tell me to stop buying that coffee, but if you’re going to do that then please, at least look at yourself. Would you enjoy life if the simple pleasures were no longer within reach?

To put it bluntly, calculating the cost of living right now is fucking stressful. It’s absolutely possible to meet my essential needs on this income, but the student struggle should not be classed as a part of the journey. Being a student should be fun, it should allow you to go out for a coffee with friends, a beer on Friday nights and allow you to pay your subs for winter hockey. Unfortunately, I simply do not believe we can afford to live this way. While the government has slashed twenty-five cents per litre off fuel tax, and public transport costs will be halved for three months, we have to ask: Will this be enough for students at Vic? I have begun to dabble with the thought: Why am I giving up full-time work to study if it means sacrificing enjoyment?

“Students should be able to have a beer on Friday nights and pay for winter hockey. Unfortunately, I do not believe we can afford to live this way. ”

National leader Christopher Luxon says, "It's good that the Government has finally accepted that there is a cost of living crisis in New Zealand. But now they need to address it […] It's not just petrol prices that are going up. Food prices are up more than 13 percent and weekly rent is up $150.” If I can’t afford to fill up my tank to get to the mountains, if I can’t source affordable veggies to cook a nice meal, and if I can’t find a place to park my god-damned 1996 Toyota Corolla without losing a kidney for the price of it, then what’s the point? 

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t care less about the 4 p.m. Covid-19 announcements anymore. As a matter of fact, I was only reminded that they were still a thing as of last week. If I’m going to indulge in the waffle, I at least want some toppings. Something a bit more refined. Too much sweetness is sickly, and we students have been drowned by it. The maple syrup bottle is empty, Ardern. I want a step by step plan to bring down rental costs. I want in-depth, honest and factual answers. We need something we can see and make sense of, an equation with a simple sum.

Facts don’t lie, nor do my numbers. I’ve done the maths. Wellington, the coolest little capital in the world, is not so cool anymore.