'Warm homes' rhetoric cold comfort for tenants

Just over two years ago, Housing Minister Nick Smith announced that "this year" the Government was developing a housing warrant of fitness. It would be tested first on state houses, then on other social housing providers and "may be extended to other rental property where the Government is providing a housing subsidy".

Mr Smith said: "There are real gains for the health, safety and welfare of New Zealanders, particularly children and the elderly, from having a better standard of housing."

He added that "the Government needs to first get its own house in order. That is why the housing warrant of fitness will firstly apply to the 69,000 Housing NZ properties ... the new standard will ensure tenants can live in warm, dry, safe, and healthy homes".

Unfortunately for 2-year-old Otara toddler Emma-Lita Bourne, this ministerial hot air didn't get to warm the damp, cold, uncarpeted state house in which she lived. A house which, in the opinion of coroner Brand Shortland, was "unhealthy" and contributed to her death from a respiratory infection 15 months after the minister's statement.

The Government's Maori Party allies say there was a WoF trial on 500 state houses last year but no results have been published. After the coroner's report was released last week, Prime Minister John Key conceded "it would be better for us to do more". He hinted a limited WoF for rental houses was being considered.

But he said the Government was reluctant to introduce a "really rigid warrant of fitness" to the private rental market for fear it would drive some landlords out of the business and reduce the rental homes available. Better crappy, unhealthy, mouldy, draughty, unheated rentals, he is saying, than none.

What he seems to forget is that National's vision of New Zealand as a "property-owning democracy" is slowly fading. At the 2013 Census, more than a third of households (35.2 per cent) did not own their own property; 453,135 households were renting.

Still, the lack of urgency from our parliamentarians about taming the rental market is hardly surprising. The housing profile of the politician class is very different from the nation at large. Last month's register of MPs' financial interests reveals the 121 MPs own nearly 300 properties between them, including 17 farms, five overseas boltholes, one castle (Metiria Turei), a section at New Chums Beach (Coromandel MP Scott Simpson) and one hotel room (Tim Groser).

When the National Party borrowed the British Conservatives' "property-owning democracy" in the 1950s, its aim was to turn as many voters as possible into homeowners. State house tenants were encouraged to buy their homes on sweetheart terms - 5 per cent deposit and 40-year mortgages at 3 per cent interest. Cheap state loans were offered to other home-buyers. By 1954, state loans were 34 per cent of all new home mortgages.

By 1991, 74 per cent of households owned their own homes. Today, it's 65 per cent and on the way down.

In present-day New Zealand, instead of helping voters become property owners, MPs seem more skilled in amassing property portfolios for themselves. When you exclude the seven who own no property and the 34 who have just one each, the remaining 80 average more than three each. And that's excluding shareholdings in assorted Maori blocks. Among the haul are 60 investment or commercial properties, 17 lots of "bare land" and more than 170 houses, flats, holiday homes and "residential".

Could it be that as landlords and "investors", rather than renters, there's an understandable reluctance among MPs to bring the Wild West that is the residential renting market under control.

Dr Smith lists only a residential property, Mr English a family home and a farm, Mr Key a family home, a Huapai office, a London apartment and holiday homes in Omaha and Hawaii. So none would be personally affected by a warrant of fitness, either as landlord or tenant.

However, as a group, fewer than 6 per cent of MPs are non-home owners, compared to 35 per cent of all households. Is it any wonder that while they mouth support for minimum standards on rental housing, the landlord in most of them ensures the Emma-Lita Bournes continue to suffer.

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