Council pleased by housing standards
Less than half of the Christchurch City Council’s social housing stock meets the new insulation standards for rental properties.
The council, which is the second biggest landlord in the country, is working to address the problem and is confident it will have insulation in all units that are practicable to be insulated by the Government’s July 2016 deadline.
On Thursday, Housing Minister Nick Smith announced the Government planned on strengthening the Residential Tenancies Act to require all privately tenanted properties to have floor and ceiling insulation by mid-2019. Social housing which receives government subsidies must be insulated by July 2016. From next year, all rentals will also need to have smoke alarms.
Council housing spokesman Cr Glenn Livingstone said the council was pleased the Government was taking steps to improve the quality of the rental housing stock.
The council had 2278 open social housing units, of which 1045 already had insulation that met the new standard. Over the next year, ceiling and/or floor insulation would be installed in another 475 properties. Of the remaining 756 units, 482 had been assessed as not being practical to insulate, while 276 still had to be assessed. If any of those 276 could be insulated, the council would find the money to do the work, Livingstone said.
The council already had smoke alarms in all its units but it would be ensuring they were within three metres of each bedroom door.
The Christchurch City Council has been pushing for a national warrant of fitness scheme for rentals and earlier this year Mayor Lianne Dalziel joined the mayors of Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Dunedin in writing to Smith in support of mandatory minimum quality standards for rental properties.
Dalziel said on Friday the new standards were ‘‘a great step forward’’.
‘‘One of the challenges here in Christchurch, which is probably different from the rest of the country, is that there have been a number of properties sold ‘as is, where is’, whilst the previous owner has taken the insurance settlement and that has left a tenantable property which may find it challenging to meet these standards. I’m actually hoping that as part of this whole project of bringing things up-to-scratch, that sort of difficulty might in fact be addressed for the city as well,’’ she said.
When asked if the council would continue to push for a full warrant of fitness scheme, Dalziel said that was something members would need to discuss.
She had listened to what Smith had said about the costs of such a scheme – estimated at more than $200 a rental each year – and appreciated there could be a less expensive way to improve the quality of the housing stock.
‘‘I do understand that sometimes taking a less regulatory approach can actually produce a better result for less,’’ Dalziel said. ‘‘What we are trying to achieve here is safe, warm houses. That’s the top priority.’’