An Auckland duo who own several motels across the city including the Parnell lodge badly damaged in a fire last on Sunday night received more than $22 million in emergency housing grants.
Entrepreneurs Suresh and Seema Chatly spoke to the Herald two years ago when they were running nine motels in Auckland.
The Herald attempted to contact the couple and also contacted a number associated with the pair. The person who answered confirmed the couple owned City Garden Lodge - the backpackers’ hostel on St George’s Bay Rd.
Suresh Chatly, the sole director of the motel operating company Chatly Group Ltd, said in 2022 that the couple switched to emergency housing during the pandemic - not part of a deliberate strategy but a way to survive financially.
“It was more of a survival to pay the mortgage.”
At the time Chatly said because tourism was resuming, six of their nine properties had reverted to only taking tourists.
Government emergency housing grants from 2017 to 2022 show the couple received $22,395,919 in total for the six-year period.
It’s not clear how many motels the couple currently own. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) confirmed City Garden Lodge was not an emergency housing supplier.
The City Garden Lodge address in St George’s Bay Rd is owned by another operating company, Ganpati Holdings Ltd, of which Suresh Chatly is the director and Suresh and Seema Chatly are listed as the shareholders.
Police and fire investigators, meanwhile, are combing through the wreckage of Sunday’s fire to determine how the blaze started.
Deputy Auckland Mayor Desley Simpson said the Parnell building was due to have its building warrant of fitness checked today.
The building had passed checks in August and November.
Auckland Council field surveying manager Jeff Fahrensohn said auditors found issues in the Parnell building were not compliant last year, including doors being wedged open, a damaged exit sign and the outside stairs were slippery due to moss.
After these issues were fixed he said it was deemed compliant and passed the audit.
A neighbour of the City Garden Lodge said she saw three men fighting on Sunday afternoon as fire tore through the property before one man pulled a knife.
She told the Herald she had issues with residents of the lodge, who often cursed and threatened both her and other neighbours for more than three years.
She believed the fire was lit among one of many weekly fights at the property.
The neighbour said she had complained to the owners of the property “about three times a week” for the last year due to threats she received and other dangerous behaviour.
She said the owners rarely got back to her, and if they did they were “very unhelpful”.
Another neighbour said they believed the building was home to many parolees and others who were just “down on their luck”.
One person said she was too scared to walk by the lodge alone even during the day due to threats that residents would yell at her.
Another neighbour said the fire was “very dramatic” and lit up the sky almost instantly.
*An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Desley Simpson said the Parnell building was due for its bi-annual audit for fire safety.