Election 2017 - Party Policies - Housing - Rental Issues
27th May 17, 9:36am
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Rental Issues
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Not yet available on their website.
- Normalise secure tenancies with three-year standard terms, a right of renewal, and the ability for tenants to make reasonable minor modifications.
- Make reasons for rent increases transparent and limit increases to once a year.
- Remove the obligation on tenants to pay letting fees.
- Professionalise the rental market with a licencing system for landlords; and introduce landlord maintenance bonds, so tenants can be assured repairs will get done.
- Set up FlatMates – a national tenancy advocacy coordination office who will work with and fund local groups to provide advice, assistance, and advocacy.
- Read more here, here, and here.
- Increase 42 day notice periods for landlords to 90 days to give tenants more time to find somewhere else to live.
- Abolish “no-cause” terminations of tenancies.
- Limit rent increases to once per year (the law currently limits it to once every six months) and require the formula for rental increases to be specified in the rental agreement.
- Give tenants and landlords the ability to agree tenants on a fixed term lease of 12 months or more can make minor alterations, like putting up shelves, if they pay double bond and on the basis the property is returned to the state it was in at the start of the tenancy.
- Andrew Little’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill will set standards that will require all rental properties to meet proper standards in: insulation, heating, ventilation, draught stopping, and drainage.
- Read more here and here.
- Freeze rents on all social housing stock and review every five years.
- Enforce compulsory annual warrant of fitness for all rental homes and introduce housing inspectors to ensure compliance.
- Create a new category of social housing within the private rental market where tenants with school-aged children and larger families are incometested and their rents topped up by government with the amount tenants are unable to pay.
- Introduce a cap on rent increases for all sate-owned social housing stock and explore rent caps for private rentals.
- Review the bond refund system and create fairer and more streamlined processes to get bonds released sooner.
- Read more here.
Not yet available on their website.
- Assist local authorities to develop aged-care housing and public rental housing projects.
- Provide accelerated deprecation for landlords to invest in energy efficient housing from insulation to HRV systems.
- Initiate the New Zealand Housing Plan to revamp the New Zealand housing market covering housing availability and affordability as well as rental homes supply and affordability.
- Read more here.
Not yet available on their website.
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