Thousands of mouldy homes were never investigated by Government
Thousands of potentially damp or mouldy homes have gone unchecked because Government reporting processes could not guarantee anonymity and tenants feared landlord retaliation.
The Healthy Homes Initiative (HHI) identified 25,000 poor quality rentals over a period of nine years, often referring families to a general practice doctor when those homes exacerbated health conditions.
Yet only 41 of those homes were investigated by Tenancy Services – a strike rate of about 0.16%.
There is a simple reason for the lack of follow-up: tenants are too fearful to give the go-ahead.
‘‘The landlord is allowed to ask – and the ministry will tell them – who made the complaint,’’ said housing researcher Nevil Pierse, who sits on the governance board of Well Homes, a Wellingtonbased provider for the initiative.
‘‘People are afraid – rightly, in my opinion – that the landlord will then take retaliatory action.’’
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which oversees Tenancy Services, said its tenancy compliance and investigations team (TCIT) worked closely with the providers from the Healthy Homes Initiative. Those providers, however, could not make referrals without the consent of tenants, TCIT spokesperson Dan Herlihy said.
When consent is not given, the provider can make an anonymised referral ‘‘about the landlord and alleged breaches’’, which might later feed into the TCIT team’s work – but won’t necessarily result in an investigation.
Green MP Chlo¨e Swarbrick said the enforcement process was ‘‘overly complicated and unwieldy’’, and renters were the ones failed.
‘‘It is utterly appalling that we have houses in this country that we know are making people sick and we have not made transformational changes to prevent that.’’
She called on the Government to implement a rental warrant of fitness (WOF) – a tool that would back up the Healthy Homes standards – and a register of landlords and property managers to track breaches.
Those standards first became law in July 2019, and include minimum standards around heating, insulation, ventilation, drainage and moisture levels in rental properties.
All private rentals must now comply within 90 days of any new tenancy, while houses rented by Ka¯ inga Ora have until July next year to comply.
Pierse said the standards were good – the current system for enforcing them wasn’t. The absence of a rental WOF was like ‘‘waiting for the crash to happen, then checking whether the car was safe to have on the road’’.
Pierse estimated 85% of homes identified through the HHI would not comply with Healthy Homes standards – about 21,000 homes.
Providers would send the landlord a letter – with the tenant’s permission – including a list of actions to make the house warmer. ‘‘There is a very high overlap between [those suggestions] and Healthy Homes standards,’’ Pierse said.
At that stage, about 40% of landlords would act – up from about 30% since before Healthy Homes standards came into force. That was generally where the conversation ended, with the majority of tenants opting against escalating the situation further to Tenancy Services.
Herlihy said landlords who did not comply with Healthy Homes standards faced penalties of up to $7200 – or $50,000 for large-scale boarding house landlords.
The Government does not collect data on how many rentals meet the standards, however, and properties are not required to be assessed by third parties to verify that they comply.
The Healthy Homes Initiative is government-funded and started in 2013, operating through community providers contracted to local district health boards. There are nine main providers around the country, with 28 subcontracted providers.