Students Kicked Out of the Party That is Ada Street
An infamous Palmerston North street is losing its ‘student party street’ status
Burning couches, trolley fires, riots, drug trades, rubbish dump – this is what comes to mind when people think of Palmy’s Ada Street. The chaos has lost its student touch, but the sinister reputation has stuck. Sammy Carter investigates.
Five minutes down the road from both the centre of town and Massey University’s campus, it's the ideal spot for students. But its appeal is striking for others too, with locals saying gang presence, law enforcement, drug dealers, and fighting teens have pushed Massey students out.
Art / Luka Maresca
Palmy locals think back to a time when the street was student central, telling me story about people pissing in other people’s mouth, and using furniture as kindling for blazes. But they felt it wasn’t Massey students causing problems today, and the street should be returned to them.
Up until mid-last year, it was the most fire-prone street in New Zealand. In 2023 alone, Fire and Emergency New Zealand responded to 42 fires, 95% of which were deliberate. Lithium batteries and car tyres were thrown in too, putting first responders at extreme risk. The police are no stranger to Ada, as callouts were 50% higher than the average across the city in the year 2023/24 to April.
Helaina Witten, a fifth-year Veterinary student at Massey, was warned against moving to Ada Street three and a half years ago. But felt the student culture was already dying by the time she arrived.
This was pretty evident the year she moved in, when her flatmate was hosting a red card — a tradition where one flattie gets a pass to host a party.
“All was well, just 20 odd people in attendance. Cut to a few hours later into the night and I recall coming out into the living room to a sea of people who had swarmed in off the street.”
She didn’t recognise a single person there.
When the students eventually kicked everyone out, the house was trashed — smashed glass bottles everywhere, spilt drinks all over Witten’s books. “Worst of all someone had stolen eggs from our own pantry and then egged the inside of the house including the walls, the kitchen and the tv. There’s still egg on the bathroom window.”
Despite the roughhousing from non-students, the council can’t simply remove shady characters. Acting community development manager Amy Viles says the council doesn’t have the legal right to dictate who private property owners choose to live at their properties.
While the council can’t play landlord, last year they started a safety initiative for the street. Massey University jumped onboard, along with the student association, to address issues they said were not caused by students but affected them. The student association owns six houses which they’d like to all be filled by students, but currently just four are.
The council’s safety initiative included street BBQ’s and a survey. This resulted in higher police presence, traffic management cameras, and don’t forget tree trimming. Deliberately lit fires decreased from 42 in 2023, to just two in the year of intervention. Police callouts have reduced by 63% in the last year.
This isn’t to say the chaos has stopped completely — but the chaos resident Witten sees isn’t student fun. Donuts on the street in a van missing a tire, parked cars narrowly missed. A non-student neighbour will host a 24-hour long party with the bassiest speaker. The same neighbour will set off fireworks on the street at 5am. A lady will take one for the team and scream at them to stop.
“I definitely think Ada is no longer the student street it once was. Dare I say it, but I’m pretty sure the majority of Ada is mainly made up of drug dealers and gang members, with the occasional student house in between.” Witten can’t even remember the last couch fire she saw, but rest assured, there’s still plenty of trash.
A glimpse of this trash can be found at resident Don Ayong’s flat, with about a dozen rubbish bags on the front lawn. Ayong has lived on Ada Street for four and a half years, and says it has lots of character.
“This one street, aye, it builds you.” He said his landlord owns 13 houses on the street, giving a chance to tenants most people won’t take.
Ayong says fights happen occasionally with drunk teens. But when it came to couch fires, he has his own ‘ways’ of stopping them, which makes his eavesdropping flatmates laugh. “The couch fires, yeah I stopped that, I got over that” he says. “There was only so much fire brigade and cops you want to wake up you and kids.”
He feels it’s a handful of people who were giving the street a bad rap, and without them the street would go back to perfect.
“Get rid of the people who do bad drugs. We’ve got one house on the street that does it and they just seem to keep causing chaos.”
For Ayong, he wants the street to be known for something other than danger. Specifically, cars.
He has about a dozen cars crowding the front, driveway and back of the house. One, he tells me, was going to be a burn out car like the world has never seen before. He wants to build a car community on Ada, excited to have a space big enough to tutu with mechanics.
Another car enthusiast, Tuakana Nimarota has lived down the road for a few months with his family. His favourite part about Ada was the skids, “That hypes up our night. We see it and we run upstairs into my room, and we watch it from a big view. We love it.”
“Once in a blue moon when the boys get bored, they just chuck on their sets and off they go.”
While living on the street, he has seen couches, bins, and beds on fire. But despite this, he calls living there “peaceful”.
“It’s not setting the houses on fire so there’s not much point to being so angry about people doing that”.
Unlike others, Nimarota still got the student party feeling from the street, “we still drink like it's a party house”.
Some Palmy clubbers seem to think the same, recommending never to go to an Ada Street party unless you want to have a fucked night and see some shit. At popular club Speedway, two guys both named Michael — which they prove with their licenses — give the address for a party and say to go at midnight.
But when the clock struck 12, there was no party to be found, no burning couches, no riots. All I found was a blue sofa and trolley on the roadside, streetlights, and silence. Honestly, I felt completely safe.
