Boarding crackdown
Boarding houses face warrant of fitness checks in a bid to end squalid conditions faced by their often poor, often disabled residents.
The Government is planning to overhaul residential tenancy laws to give greater security of tenure to tenants, and to lift the quality of life of renters.
But it’s not only people renting houses and apartments it believes need protecting from landlords failing to provide stable, warm, safe, decent homes to their customers.
In a discussion paper, published by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), two options are set out for a boarding house crackdown.
The first is a ‘‘self-certification’’ scheme, under which boarding house operators have to prove each year they are meeting minimum standards under current law including health, safety and insulation, with tough penalties for those who fail to self-certify.
The second option is the WOF, paid for by fees charged to boarding house operators.
WOFs could even prevent people with serious criminal convictions from operating boarding houses.
Both WOFs and selfcertification would increase the costs of running boarding houses, MBIE noted, and could see some closing.
A survey from Christchurch in 2004 indicated many residents were vulnerable to exploitation.
That survey, by the Tenants Protection Association, found 55 per cent of boarding house residents had a health or disability issue, 10 per cent had mental health issues, 35 per cent had a history of substance dependency, and 16 per cent were currently addicted to either alcohol or drugs. Some 77 per cent were drawing benefits.