80,000 homes expected to miss deadline in July

An insulation industry representative believes more than 80,000 rental homes are not compliant with a regulation that kicks in this July.

Tenants in homes without insulation could then win up to $4000 in damages from their landlords in the Tenancy Tribunal. The regulation comes not from the healthy homes standard announced on Sunday, but from a 2016 law passed by the-then National government.

The law requires that every rental have underfloor and overhead insulation, unless it is impossible or extremely cumbersome, by July 1, 2019.

A survey in March 2018 found that between 126,000 and 220,000 rental homes were still not insulated to the proper standard.

Just over two-thirds of total rentals were insulated to that standard.

Insulation Association of NZ head Richard Arkinstall said there had been a lot of activity ahead of the July 1 deadline, but he still believed 80,000 to 100,000 homes were without insulation.

‘‘We’ve seen an increase definitely, to the point where people are saying: I can’t get it done for months. There’s a large backlog,’’ Arkinstall said.

An unknown number of landlords within that group would have installed the insulation themselves or decided it was too cumbersome, however.

Arkinstall believed the industry would not be able to do all the work before July.

He said some landlords had sought statements from insulation professionals that their properties were unable to be insulated reasonably, while tenants had sought statements saying the properties could be insulated.

In December of last year Housing Minister Phil Twyford said landlords could not expect any leniency. ‘‘We have no intention at all of shifting that deadline.

‘‘This has been well signalled,’’ Twyford said.

‘‘The deadline is set in law. ‘‘And if they don’t upgrade the properties then they are facing a breach.’’

The law was changed in 2016 and a subsidy was offered to landlords with low-income tenants.

The tenancy compliance team, which got a financial boost in last year’s Budget, will have the resources to carry out roughly 2000 investigations of rental properties every year.

Arkinstall said it would make sense for landlords already upgrading their insulation to insulate to the more stringent standards set by the new Government, even though that regulation would not kick in for a number of years.

A spokesman for the Ministry for Housing and Urban Development said Arkinstall’s numbers were reasonable.

‘‘There are also uncertainties around the number of exempt properties (for example, because of inaccessible spaces) and DIY installs (for example, done by landlords themselves).’’