Healthy Homes Guarantee Act standards announced

[skid]

And saying "not everyone can drive safely so everyone has to wear a seatbelt". Problem is it's not the owners who are effected by the damp, it's their tenants. If everyone drove like little old ladies we wouldn't need seatbelts and if slumlords damp-proofed their rentals we wouldn't need "healthy home guarentee" rubbish.

Your assuming that tenants are going to be affected by the damp in a dry earth dwelling The logical procedure would allow room for an exemption if checked by a professional...same as something checked by a sparky.

Heres the issue...we have all seen the pictures of slum dwellings...and some regulations are fair enough,but unfortunately sometimes regulations swing toward extremes in terms of flexibility....where are the private home regulations?....Niow those tenants in well kept homes,who are more than happy with their residence(like ours) are going to be hit with a rent increase

[Perry]

Tech firm: Test rental properties before spending on heating


Housing Minister Phil Twyford should heed a warning from tech firm Tether that if rental property owners don't monitor the warmth and ventilation performance of their properties, they risk spending thousands of dollars on upgrades they don't need, Tenancies War spokesman Mike Butler said today.

Kiwi tech start-up Tether – which designs and manufacturers monitoring systems like the EnviroQ to enable healthy living environments – says "diagnosis comes before remediation".

Tether CEO Brandon Van Blerk said "you need to know what's going on in the house first. How do you prove consistent temperature? How do you maintain temperature? What happens when the tenant says it's colder than 18 degrees Celsius and it isn't?" See

The Housing Minister has made a fundamental error by assuming all rental properties are damp, cold health risks when the evidence is that only 2.7 percent of tenants surveyed by BRANZ complained of cold and damp, Mr Butler said. Check p40 of the BRANZ report. (Table 9)



When looking at those figures, the number of those surveyed needs to be factored.

83% of tenants said that there was no problem. So the 24% figure is 24% of the 17% of tenants who said there were problems. Roughly then, a quarter of the 17% said there was a problem with damp. That's 2.7% of the total number of tenants surveyed.

To put that another way, of the 1,080 tenants surveyed, only 46 had a problem with dampness.

Based on that error, Minister Twyford has imposed heating, insulation, ventilation, draught-proofing and moisture-proofing on all rental properties that may cost $7000 per dwelling when it is largely not needed, Mr Butler said.

The Minister has compounded that error by presuming that the 10,800 children hospitalised every year have been made sick by the poor quality of housing, while not allowing for other factors present in the dwelling, such as smoking, drug abuse, poor hygiene, overcrowding, not to mention medical issues sick children may have inherited, Mr Butler said.

The 290,000 owners of rental property in New Zealand form a substantial voting bloc. They can see that the Minister is acting against the interests of both owners and tenants and will vote accordingly, he said.

Stop the War on Tenancies is a group that - since last October - has been highlighting the evidence that successive governments have ignored while creating problematic rental property policy.

---

Contact:
Mike Butler 27-277 7295
[email protected]

[Learning]

Now those tenants in well kept homes,who are more than happy with their residence(like ours) are going to be hit with a rent increase

6 rolls of black plastic and four hours labour, $1000. Rent increase to cover cost over a 10 year period, $2/wk.

Box ticked.
Government happy.
LL can hold head high and say what a caring and responsible LL he is.
Noticable improvement to 99% of population, sweet FA.

[flyernzl]

I know (hope) you are not serious DBTH but it was announced that some sort of app is going to be available later in the year to input something or other and have the app return options that will meet the 18 degrees requirement. So the landlord will have to install tht or better and then there would be no comeback from the tenant. Given the history of this government around housing and other delivery, I don't have much expectation that the app will deliver.

Assuming the app will ask for volume of the living area, high studs and open plan will bump up the cost.

I am told that there will be a calculator set up on the MBIE/HUD website. You will need to enter in to that calculator the cubic measurements of the living area, geographic location, and other relevant details (carpeted? double-glazing? etc) and you will then be told the kw rating of the heater that you must install in order to be able to reach and maintain that 18 degrees.

If the power required is 2.4kw or less then you may use any fixed and permanently wired-in heater that you choose, but if more than 2.4kw is required then you must install 'an approved energy-efficient appliance', almost certainly a heat pump.

An open fireplace will not be acceptable option either way.

If you already have a heat pump of, say, 3.0kw installed and the calculator says 3.6 is needed then you must remove the old one and install the higher rating one.

If the compliance team do check your property, this is how they will work out if you have heater rating to meet the regs in your particular property.

Current advice is to do nothing until this calculator is operational and you can obtain an actual result. Don't spend the money until you know exactly what is required.

[Bob Kane]

If the power required is 2.4kw or less then you may use any fixed and permanently wired-in heater that you choose, but if more than 2.4kw is required then you must install 'an approved energy-efficient appliance', almost certainly a heat pump.

I would look at reducing the size of the room so that it only required a 2.4kw heater.
I think that would be cheaper.
Or maybe call the one of the bedrooms a 'lounge' and convert the lounge into a bedroom.
It may look silly but be legal.

[Keys]

Don't spend the money until you know exactly what is required.

Here Here!

[Don't believe the Hype]

I am told that there will be a calculator set up on the MBIE/HUD website. You will need to enter in to that calculator the cubic measurements of the living area, geographic location, and other relevant details (carpeted? double-glazing? etc) and you will then be told the kw rating of the heater that you must install in order to be able to reach and maintain that 18 degrees.

If the power required is 2.4kw or less then you may use any fixed and permanently wired-in heater that you choose, but if more than 2.4kw is required then you must install 'an approved energy-efficient appliance', almost certainly a heat pump.

An open fireplace will not be acceptable option either way.

If you already have a heat pump of, say, 3.0kw installed and the calculator says 3.6 is needed then you must remove the old one and install the higher rating one.

If the compliance team do check your property, this is how they will work out if you have heater rating to meet the regs in your particular property.

Current advice is to do nothing until this calculator is operational and you can obtain an actual result. Don't spend the money until you know exactly what is required.

Twitford - worries about energy efficiency with landlords money buy didn’t think about LED lighting for those u fortunate enough to be conned into buying a kiwibuild house.

[Wayne]

Here Here!

Or even 'hear hear'

[skid]

6 rolls of black plastic and four hours labour, $1000. Rent increase to cover cost over a 10 year period, $2/wk.

Box ticked.
Government happy.
LL can hold head high and say what a caring and responsible LL he is.
Noticable improvement to 99% of population, sweet FA.

there are 2 flaws in your logic---1-why spend anything if the issue is not relevant-----
2-often houses have many things accumulated under ...while that
may not be ideal,its a fact with many houses(private as well)--moving those things
can bump up the price considerably.----

If this logic was spread across all private homes,Im guessing there would be a rather explosive response
Some changes ,on some rentals are needed....but lets keep it logical.
the number 1 issue with tenants is price....this contributes to the biggest complaint of tenants across the board.

and of course none of this is relevant without a tenants complaint---so why not deal with slum landlords by simply encouraging tenants to bring it to attention of those who have the power to issue a notice to remedy.

[Learning]

there are 2 flaws in your logic---1-why spend anything if the issue is not relevant-----
2-often houses have many things accumulated may not be ideal,its a fact with many houses(private as well)

There's far more flaws to my logic than just two but in rebuttal... 1- because the government made it relevant and 2- don't highlight a potential fire or vermin risk cluttered under house to the numbskulls who come up with these rules. Perhaps you could argue the stored goods acts as a moisture barrier so you've already ticked that box? ;-)

and of course none of this is relevant without a tenants complaint---so why not deal with slum landlords by simply encouraging tenants to bring it to attention of those who have the power to issue a notice to remedy.

Would work in an environment of excess rentals but in the current rental shortage tenants are afraid of LL retaliation.

[Perry]

Lies, Damned Lies & BS Ministerial Statistics



Once you've read what follows, you and every other property investor will know for sure that the certain way to tell if a politician is lying is that their lips are moving.

Dhil Twitford must hate Mike Butler's guts. Or worse.

---

Rental property child hospitalisation claim contradicted

Housing Minister Phil Twyford justified the launch of costly new rental property standards in February by saying "6000 children are admitted each year for 'housing-sensitive hospitalisations' " but, when questioned, two Ministries provided contradictory data that undermined the Minister's claim.

Tenancies War spokesman Mike Butler sent a series of questions to the Minister's office, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and the Ministry of Health, all seeking evidence to support that rather specific claim made by the Minister.

The full quote was that "6000 children are admitted each year for 'housing-sensitive hospitalisations,' and that these children have been found to be nearly four times more likely to be re-hospitalised and 10 times more likely to die in the following 10 years."

Answers to questions asked under the Official Information Act revealed that:

* The Ministry of Health does not list "housing-related hospitalisation" as a condition that people are hospitalised for, but does list it as "circumstances that may cause diseases (or exacerbate existing conditions)."

* The category in a table on page 2 titled Publicly funded hospital discharges 2015/16, showed that of the 244,152 discharges of children and young persons to age 19 that year, there was one single entry recording a hospitalisation for a condition exacerbated by housing.

* MBIE said that the claim that "6000 children are admitted each year for 'housing-sensitive hospitalisations,' and that these children have been found to be nearly four times more likely to be re-hospitalised and 10 times more likely to die in the following 10 years" appears as an assertion on page 41 of A Stocktake on New Zealand Housing*, published last year. That assertion was made with no supporting data other than a footnote.

* The footnote, titled Risk of Rehospitalisation and death for vulnerable New Zealand children, identified crowding as the housing factor and said that death was rare.

In Stocktake*, there was another assertion about children and asthma on p43, and diseases resulting from crowding in p44, again without supporting data other than unhelpful footnotes. If that was the only support for the Minister's claim, it would appear that his "we are doing it for the children" utterances were exaggerated.

The Minister has made various "hospitalisation" claims while pushing for so-called "healthy homes guarantee standards."

During the first reading of the Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill on May 4, 2016, Mr Twyford said: "It is no longer good enough in this country of ours that there are 42,000 - in fact, the latest figures indicate 50,000 - preventable hospitalisations of children with respiratory and infectious diseases."

The foreword of the Healthy Homes Standards discussion document, signed by the Minister, says that Ministry of Health data ( 2018 ) shows that there are "approximately 10,800 children or 13,000 events with potentially housing related conditions presented to the hospitals in New Zealand each year."

The Healthy Homes Guarantee Act was passed in 2017. Standards had not been created when MPs considered the legislation. The standards would be created later, outside of parliamentary scrutiny, and were to be imposed as a regulation.

The standards which eventuated concerned heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture control and drafts, presumably to combat what the Minister thought was a prevalence of cold, damp housing.

These standards, of course, would have no effect on hospitalisations resulting from disease-transmission in crowded houses, respiratory diseases resulting from indoor smoking and unflued portable gas heaters, or infections resulting from poor hygiene.

This means that a fully compliant but crowded dwelling would continue to drive high rates of close-contact infectious diseases such as pneumonia, meningococcal disease and tuberculosis.

Insulation top-ups merely ensure that the costs of heating are marginally reduced and a fixed heater does not ensure that it is used. Extractor fans (which do not turn themselves on) would remove some steam from kitchens and bathroom, something which could be achieved by opening a window.

The news that data from one Ministry contradicted data from another Ministry and undermined the Minister's emotional “for the children” claim, and that the rental property standards would have no effect on crowding-related diseases, will go down like a cup of cold sick for rental property owners forced to spend up to $7000 per dwelling on largely unnecessary modifications.

* Authors: Alan Johnson, Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman, Shamubeel Eaqub. Download your pdf copy, here.

---

Stop the War on Tenancies is a group that - since last October - has been highlighting the evidence that successive governments have ignored while creating problematic rental property policy.

Contact:
Mike Butler 27-277 7295
[email protected]

[artemis]

Crowding a factor. Colour me surprised, especially as some of the research supporting this is from Professor Howden-Chapman herself.

Crowding is also a factor in damp and mould, which might have some relationship with sick children. I would encourage landlords to note any mould at all in their inspections and require it to be cleaned asap, unless caused by structural issues.

It is possible that landlords are preferring tenants with no or few children, and there just might be a correlation with state house waiting lists doubling under this government, and with funding for emergency motel occupancy rising.

[Bob Kane]

Have you seen this?

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/new-technology-let-you-know-if-your-house-making-sick-v1

Every year, 1600 New Zealanders die from conditions caused by cold, damp homes and Ms Te Rangi says that the recommended temperatures differ according to age, which is why a sensor will become most beneficial.

I presume the 1600 deaths are caused by the landlords?
Those bastards!

[Perry]

Wouldn't it be good to know more about the actual home?

This comes after Ms Te Rangi lost her grandmother to damp housing conditions igniting her to fight for change.

[AlFa]

Wouldn't it be good to know more about the actual home?

95% it was HNZ house but mentioning this is not "politically" correct