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KEVIN STENT / Stuff
The ban on rental rates and isolation requirements would remain in effect even with a change of government.
National would reverse many of the rent law changes made by the government over the past three years if it won the election.
But some elements of the changes would remain, including a ban on rental fees and insulation requirements.
The party’s rental policies have come under scrutiny in recent days after the head of the New Zealand Real Estate Investors Federation told the Herald of New Zealand homeowners must wait to install heaters until they see the result of the election.
National has proposed eliminating heaters required by the Government’s Healthy Home Standards, which will go into effect in 2021.
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However, leader Judith Collins said she was comfortable with the changes in isolation standards. The National itself passed a law in 2016 that required underfloor and overhead insulation, but the Healthy Homes Act set stricter standards around its quality.
“We will not repeal all the recent changes made to the rental standards. Those related to isolation will remain and we do not see the need to make any other immediate changes in this area, ”Collins said.
He said he was against “regulations that prescribe heating power on qualified heaters that require advanced math to interpret” and the major changes to the leasing law passed by the government in August.
Those changes, aimed at increasing security of tenure, include limiting rent increases to once a year, ending “no cause” evictions in which landlords can end a rental without stating a reason, and Allow tenants to make minor modifications to rental properties, such as changing fixtures. .
National opposed these changes when they were voted on, and public housing spokesman Simon O’Connor said: “National is a private property rights party, homeowners are not a social service.”
But Collins says he will not seek to reintroduce the “rental fees” that property managers charge tenants, which the government prohibited at the beginning of the period. National voted against the bill that bans them.
Robert Kitchin / Things
Judith Collins says the government has taken a punitive approach to landlords.
She has argued that laws that “pit tenants against landlords” will only hurt tenants by raising rents and taking landlords off the market.
“Too much regulation, too fast for landlords without any incentive just leaves fewer people willing to own, and all that will happen is rents become even more expensive, or landlords will sell out and there will be fewer places to rent,” Collins said.
“Labor changes are all sticks and not carrots for the owners, and a national government will solve this.”
National has blamed rent increases in recent years on burdensome regulations, saying landlords are abandoning the market, and if owner-occupants move out, they generally have fewer people per home than rents.
Rents have risen steadily in recent years, not just during this term of office.
Between June 2017 and June 2020, median national rents increased by $ 58. During the previous three years, they increased by $ 53 and the previous three years by $ 42.
Labor Minister of Public Housing Kris Faafoi criticized National for his proposal to scrap his reforms.
“Too many New Zealanders living in cold, damp homes was a legacy we inherited from the last national government, and it is a dubious legacy that Judith Collins wants to revive,” Faafoi said.
“A warm and dry home should be a basic right. The fact that National wants to break the minimum standards of healthy homes that try to protect children from contracting respiratory diseases shows where its values lie.
“Most of the homeowners are doing the right thing and providing good housing. These new regulations are intended to fix the lower end of the rental market and bring outlier owners to a fair and reasonable standard. “
