Banishing of ‘bogeyman’ lifts hope

Community providers hope meth report will encourage private landlords to accept social housing tenants

Providers of community housing hope private landlords will start offering their properties to social housing tenants now the “bogeyman” of meth contamination has been destroyed by a report which says it is not a significant health risk.

Lifewise chief executive Moira Lawler said the report, by chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman, hasd shone a light on the science behind meth contamination.

Lifewise has more than 100 social houses and offers the Housing First Pathways to Housing programme.

“This is the big bogeyman. This is the thing that ma and pa landlords have been encouraged to be frightened of, so I think this will be very helpful,” Lawler said.

“It’s the private landlords who are the most concerned about P [methamphetamine] contamination because they don’t understand it well; they can’t insure themselves adequately for P under the current framework. It was a real risk for them.

“To have some science shining a light on that issue is massive.”

Gluckman’s report, released on Tuesday, said there was no evidence third-hand exposure from methamphetamine smoking caused adverse health effects. He said people were more at risk from mould in their home than from meth contamination.

Housing New Zealand (HNZ) said it would immediately move to allowing a meth level 10 times higher than the 1.5mcg/100sq cm level that hitherto triggered decontamination.

Auckland Community Housing Provider Network chairwoman Hope Simonsen said the report was already having an impact.

“Already we’ve got some indication that private landlords are not now going to want to be testing with this news,” she said. “It . . . will reduce the pressure on the social, community and private market.”

Tenants Protection Association coordinator Angela Maynard said it had been a struggle to keep tenants in HNZ houses that had tested positive for meth. “We really welcome this

news but we are really horrified that people have been evicted, probably needlessly.”

Former National Government minister Paula Bennett, who at one point had responsibility for HNZ, told Radio New Zealand yesterday she didn’t think the contamination criteria be- ing used by HNZ when she was minister was right and was pleased it had been proven so.

Bennett believed HNZ should now look at cases in which people had been evicted under the old meth level, saying apologies and compensation might be required.

Housing NZ said in a statement it evicted eight tenants because of meth contamination in the 2016/17 year and just one in the past financial year.

It had referred cases to police and pursued tenants for decontamination costs in the past.

Asked whether it would now con-

sider compensation, the crown entity said: “As with the earlier change in levels between the former Ministry of Health guidelines and the New Zealand standard in mid-2017, the change in levels is not being applied retrospectively and that includes in relation to compensation.”