Another season of indoor cold for many Kiwis

New Zealand pays a chilling price for the brutality with which winter bites into our homes. The much-cited figure is that 1600 people – say, four times the road toll – die each winter due to cold housing, with thousands of hospital admissions on top of that.

That figure more properly represents how many more New Zealanders die every winter compared other seasons; most of them people with circulatory or respiratory illnesses and infectious diseases. The elderly and infants dominate the mortality figures.

It’s a finding first published as an Otago University study in 2009, when the qualifying phrase ‘‘part of the blame’’ initially prefaced the reference to housing. Since then what’s substantially changed? For starters ‘‘part of the blame’’ has been steamed off reproachful modernday political press releases.

And to be fair, we are hardly a society that needs convincing that cold homes are worse than miserable; they are big health dangers.

In spite of encouragements and some assistance to better insulate our homes, rising power prices and other financial pressures have led to what a new 1300-household survey by Credit Simple identifies as a ‘‘new reality’’ that more New Zealanders than not are now rationing heating and put up with at least a measure of snapping cold.

This is serious. The World Health Organisation has long recommended 18 degrees as the minimum household temperature. Drop to 16 degrees and the risk of respiratory illness increases. Below 12 there’s a higher risk of strokes and heart attacks.

And, for the record, that tradition of heating maybe the living room and kitchen but leaving other rooms colder means we’re frequently moving between warm and colder environments, which can itself be problematic.

The sorry state of much of our housing stock – particularly regrettable in the south – has been addressed on a thinner basis than is needed.

Educational programmes about insulating, ventilating and heating do help. A bit.

The Healthy Homes Guarantee Act stands to require some improvement for newly-tenanted homes, though there’s an 18 month process ahead to develop the regulations for the minimum heating and insulation standards.

The cold has certainly kicked in well in advance of the Government’s new winter energy payment for pensioners and those who receive a ‘‘main benefit’’. This grants an extra $20.46 a week for singles and $31.82 for couples or those with dependants. It was to have run MayOctober, and will in future years, but this time around it won’t start until the deep, dark depths of July 1 – a delay blamed on set-up complexities.

The Government says that, when it does show up, this payment will help 1 million people with heating their homes. For its part, National insists that this is not properly targeted. Leader Simon Bridges points out that much as they’ll enjoy getting it, his own parents simply don’t need it.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is getting $142 million for a new scheme to help lowerincome owner-occupied households insulate and warm their homes. But again, that’s really a drop in a frozen bucket.

Tell you what, though. There’s a great deal to be said for the ‘‘crowd power’’ initiatives which use collective bargaining to negotiate better deals with power retailers than individuals might be able to acquire. A review of retail power prices lies ahead too. Nobody should be in any doubt that this an issue not only of consumer rights, but of substantial public health significance.