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Real estate agency Barfoot & Thompson is asking National to scrap its plans to repeal the Healthy Homes Standards.
Earlier this month, National proposed removing the heating requirement under the government’s Healthy Home Standards, which take effect in 2021.
Barfoot and Thompson Director Kiri Barfoot said landlords had a moral and social obligation to provide a healthy home for tenants.
“We don’t agree with everything in the Health Homes legislation … but people who can’t afford the houses should at least be able to live in warm and healthy houses,” Barfoot said.
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“I don’t know why people would have a problem with that, especially if they can afford to have a second home.”
The letter signed jointly by Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ, the Hutt Valley District Health Board, Community Housing Aotearoa, NZ Green Building Council, and university researchers called on national leader Judith Collins to support the Healthy Homes standards.
The letter said that “cold and damp houses in New Zealand have been linked to asthma, rheumatic fever and respiratory infections.”
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Barfoot & Thompson Director Kiri Barfoot says renters deserve to live in healthy homes.
“Respiratory disease affects 700,000 kiwis, is responsible for nearly 80,000 hospital admissions, a third of which are children, and costs New Zealand $ 6 billion a year, according to the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ.”
Barfoot said that the housing stock in New Zealand was “quite poor” compared to abroad and that tenants had less control over what they could do with the house.
“People should be able to wake up and not see their own breath in front of their face and have black mold on the roof because their house is not insulated,” he said.
“We don’t want slum owners, or to be taken to Lease Court for them.
“I think there is an obligation, if you are a real estate investor, to leave the property you bought better than when you first bought it, especially if it is more than five or 10 years old.”
John Hawkins / Stuff
The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ says the Healthy Home Standards could save the country billions in health care.
But spokesman for homeowner advocacy group Stop the War on Tenancies, Mike Butler, said the requirements under the Healthy Homes regulations were “unnecessary” and “costly” for homeowners.
“This is an additional cost for the owners and, ultimately, this cost is paid through the rent. The government has not provided any substantial evidence that there is any link to the standards and health of the people who live in those houses, ”Butler said.
“The only evidence the government presented to launch its Healthy Home Guarantee standards was a statement of a sentence about housing and hospitalization in a book written by a pro-Labor academic, an economist and a spokesman for the Salvation Army,” he said.
Braden Fastier / Nelson Mail
Kiri Barfoot says the housing stock in New Zealand is “pretty poor” compared to abroad.
Butler said the proposed measures would not have much of an impact. What would have the biggest impact, he said, is if the occupants opened the windows and ventilated the place and cleaned up after themselves.
“I have been an owner for 30 years and have seen the units in the same building perform differently in terms of mold and condensation and it has to do entirely with the way people live in them, not the building,” he said. Butler.
“The house does not make the house dirty or moldy, people do it.
“At the beginning of the lease, the owner has the responsibility to provide a clean property that is dry, all repairs made. At the end of the tenancy, the outgoing tenant has the responsibility to return the property to the same level as before it was leased, after accounting for wear and tear. “
