Ventilation needed

Only one reason for cold damp homes with mould, that is lack of ventilation, allowing dead air. Such causes are lack of underfloor ventilation, inside clothes driers and homes not ventilated during the day.

One never had such problem in the old days before the advent of plaster board, aluminum joinery, refrigerator, etc. Yes, back in my childhood day homes were homes; draughty, yes but healthy compared with today’s homes. We did tape our wooden windows in the winter in the Wairarapa and King Country from the gale-force winds and snow. During the winter days as children we would play outside in the snow and mud, and many of us too lived active lives.

One has to ask if today’s lifestyle is not the problem to the ills that the Government is claiming on rental housing, funny that their regulations do not cover private homes. Somehow I once more believe I am smelling a real rotten rat, which I believe is politics, as the nanny state takes further control of our lives.

I ask our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, how come we need all the proposed new regulations for rental housing in New Zealand, when people in the Arctic regions, etc, live in conditions people in New Zealand will never experience?

If people accept rental housing, then I say what they accept is what they get; if renters do not accept the landlord’s conditions, then the landlord would have to upgrade their properties to the renters’ requirements or go bust.

If renters are unhappy, perhaps they need to review their lives and buy their own home. I brought my own home, when I had an income of 32 cents per hour, yes it was hard going with a wife not working and four children but the longterm results have been positive as to what it would have been profiting a landlord instead of myself and my family.

I say many people need to take a good look at themselves and their future as I cannot see much of a future in their present direction in life. JOHN BASSETT

Diggers’ Valley