Changes for Healthy Homes Standards

By Ruby Harfield

Changes to the Healthy Home Standards came into force this month.

This included revisions to the heating, ventilation, and moisture ingress and drainage standards.

The initial standards were introduced in 2019 to improve the quality of rental homes in New Zealand.

According to the Tenancy Services website landlords are responsible for maintaining and improving the quality of their rental properties.

The new standards have been designed to help ensure landlords have healthier, safer properties and lower maintenance costs for their investments.

“By improving the quality of rental homes, New Zealanders who rent will experience improved health, as well as lower medical costs and lower levels of hospitalisations.

“Warmer and drier homes are also less likely to have issues with mould or mildew damage, better protecting a landlord’s investment.”

In response to rental sector feedback, the Government has amended the heating requirements for rental properties to reflect the higher thermal performance of new homes built to the 2008 building code requirements for insulation and glazing and apartments.

The changes will generally enable smaller heating devices to be installed in new homes built to the 2008 building code requirements.

The New Zealand Property Investors Federation is supportive of the standards and changes but has some concerns about the timing.

Executive officer Sharon Cullwick said as a whole NZPIF think that the Healthy Homes Standards is a great thing to increase the health and safety of rental houses.

However, it has been implemented at a time when there is a rental housing crisis with thousands of people in emergency housing, she said.

“It would have been better to increase the housing supply and then require houses to be bought up to the Healthy Homes Standards.”

The costs for landlords of bringing homes up to the standards have, at times, been prohibitive with no support available to help with funding the work, she said.

“All of these costs, unfortunately, have to be reclaimed through some method, and normally that is by increasing the rents to cover costs.”

Some properties have been left empty as the cost of getting them to standard is too expensive, Cullwick said.

“These houses in the past could have been rented – although not ideal, they do give people a roof over their head which is better than living in a car.

“This is especially the case of a property where the developer is waiting for the resource consent to put new houses on the land.”

With winter coming up, the best thing landlords can do to ensure their renters are healthy is to comply with the standards, she said.

Some additional measures could include putting in wall insulation and double glazing, however these have significant costs attached to them.

They could also help educate their tenants on things like opening the curtains during the day and using the natural heat from the sun to heat the house and closing the curtains at sunset to retain the heat in the property.

As well as drying laundry outside so the moisture does not go into the house and wiping up any moisture on the window sills when they see it.

The Humans Rights Commission’s Housing Inquiry, which was launched last year, has found that renters, Māori and Pacific peoples are among the groups most affected by poor housing habitability.

The Commission has focused on three human rights indicators - rates of damp and mould, household crowding, and cold - to show habitability trends released last month, as part of its Measuring Progress.

Chief Commissioner Paul Hunt said most housing indicators show rental housing is of significantly poorer quality than owneroccupied housing.

“These indicators lay it out clearly for us; local and central government, and private landlords must improve housing habitability in order to achieve the progressive realisation of the right to a decent home. “The recent Healthy Homes legislation should help to improve housing overall and reduce the gap between owner-occupied and rental housing.

“But this will only be possible if there is an effective accountability mechanism put in place to ensure that landlords comply, and it is not left up to vulnerable tenants to hold their landlords to account.”

Green Party MP and renter spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick said almost half of all New Zealanders live in a rental home and more needs to be done to protect them.

“People living in rental homes are putting their health and wellbeing into the hands of landlords and property managers who are currently unregulated and…potentially noncompliant to the Healthy Homes Standards.”

The inquiry confirms what the Green Party has been calling for - a rental Warrant of Fitness and a register of landlords and property managers, Swarbrick said.

“As the Human Rights Commission said themselves, the results of this inquiry are disappointing but not surprising.”

“Aotearoa New Zealand needs to get the fundamentals in place for a functional, fair and effective rental system, recognising our country’s commitment to the UN Human Right to Adequate Housing.”

The recent Healthy Homes legislation should help to improve housing overall and reduce the gap between owner-occupied and rental housing

Chief Commissioner Paul Hunt