The National party is trying to spin that the government is waging a "War on Landlords" which is to blame for Queenstown's housing crisis, and local councillors and business leaders are increasingly parroting this disingenuous propaganda. It's a direction which will only lead to further pain and suffering for Queenstown tenants who are already extremely vulnerable - they need more protection, not less.
At a recent protest organised by homeless local workers who have increasingly resorted to sleeping in cars and tents, Southland MP Joseph Mooney claimed that Labour was to blame for the housing crisis. Mooney said the stricter rules over long-term tenancies, the removal of interest-deductibility for rental landlords, and the increase of the Brightline test from two to 10 years, has all contributed. "Labour's made it a lot less attractive to become a landlord and I think they've gone too far," Mooney said. "There has been a war on landlords and tenants have been the casualties of that."
This line will no doubt be repeated ad-nauseum at the upcoming public meeting on April 27 which will feature Mooney and ex-tobacco-lobbyist and fearless class warrior for the already privileged, National party Housing Spokesperson Chris Bishop. The spin should be no-surprise coming from a political party that has always resolutely stood with landlords against tenants and with employers against workers. For National, tenants and Queenstown workers are resources to be exploited to make profits for their mates, not people deserving of more rights or needing protection.
But worryingly, some local councillors and business leaders have begun to publicly echo this propaganda. In a recent Crux article, councillor Lisa Guy says government legislative changes have removed "agility" for landlords, wants the government to make “long-term renting attractive again” and singles out the Healthy Homes Initiative as a problem. Upper Clutha Councillor Barry Bruce argues the housing crisis has been “compounded by the effects of successive central government legislation and controls”.
Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce head Sharon Fifield has a more nuanced take, but also says "What we're hearing at the moment is the barrier that new tenancy legislation is placing on landlords. It’s making it less appealing to rent their house out long term.” She says healthy homes is a good initiative, but it comes at a cost for homeowners. While councillor Esther Whitehead is less keen to blame the government legislative changes, even she says “In all fairness, those regulations are good, but the unintended consequence is that those house owners are better off to use their properties as visitor accommodation - this takes another house off the rental supply list.”
Labour, far from getting out there and disputing the spin, or defending their policies, is conspicuously absent. Whether or not Labour's infamous reluctance to actually stand up and publicly argue for their policies will come back to bite them in the next election has yet to be seen, but in the absence of Labour perspectives it's become far easier for the right-wing parties to propagate their takes unopposed in the media. The Queenstown Workers Collective has reached out to local Labour candidate Jon Mitchell, but has yet to hear back from him.
So what has the government done that has so upset some landlords and right-wing politicians, and what, if anything, needs fixing?
Residential Tenancies Act Changes 2020
Labour introduced the Residential Tenancies Amendments Act , "striking a balance between protecting a landlord’s interest in their property, and making sure tenants get fair rights for the rent they pay."
The key changes:
Rent can only be increased every 12 months.
Landlords can't end a periodic tenancy without giving a specified reason
Tenants can make minor changes to a rental property, if the installation and removal of them is low risk, e.g. changing curtains or installing a baby gate.
Landlords can’t ask tenants to bid on a property or offer to pay more than the advertised price.
Tenants will be able to provide their landlord with a family violence withdrawal notice if they need to leave a tenancy quickly because of family violence.
If a tenant assaults their landlord or owner, the landlord's agent, or a member of the landlord or owner’s family, and are facing an assault charge, a landlord will be able to issue a 14-day notice to terminate the tenancy.
Government-funded transitional and emergency housing are exempt from the Act unless the provider and the tenant choose to opt in.
Our Take: Hardline Communism this is not. NZ was so far out of step with other comparable countries in terms of our lack of regulation or protections for renters that our property rental market had become a wild-west of exploitation slanted firmly in the favour of property investors. These minor improvements by Labour still fall far short of the protections tenants can expect in most of Europe, for example, but the reaction to them is proof that for some landlords and politicians, only a return to full legislative serfdom will suffice. Queenstown renters were particularly at risk from many of the problems addressed by these amendments such as bidding wars, summary no-cause evictions, and endless unwarranted rent increases. If the most basic of protections for tenants are causing some landlords to throw their hands in the air and give up, perhaps that shows they're the sort of people who should never have been allowed to become landlords in the first place?
Healthy Homes 2019
Introduced by Labour in 2019, the Healthy Homes Standards: "introduce specific and minimum standards for heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping in rental properties. Between 1 July 2021 and 1 July 2025, all private rentals must comply with the healthy homes standards within certain timeframes from the start of any new, or renewed, tenancy."
Our Take: Queenstown is cold. Really cold. It's sometimes quite damp too. Older NZ houses are notoriously badly built and lacking in the most basic of heating and insulation that has been a minimum standard in most comparable parts of the world since double glazing and central heating were invented. So you'd have to have a pretty cold, dead heart to claim that Queenstown tenants don't deserve to live in warm, weathertight, healthy and mould-free homes. And yet... even Healthy Homes is something that the Nats and their friends are prepared to rail against. It would be hilariously farcical if it wasn't for the real damage that unhealthy homes have done and continue to do to the health of real-life NZ tenants and their children. Shame on anyone opposing Healthy Homes - it shows just how low some people are prepared to stoop, and who they're prepared to step on in order to make more and more money. Should AirBnBs also have to meet the healthy homes standards? Sure thing! But this should lead us to change the legislation to make that happen, not get rid of Healthy Homes altogether. Just nonsensical.
The Bright-line Test 2021
According to Labour, "The bright-line test is a way to tax the financial gains people make when they buy and sell a house for income. As part of our plan to level the playing field for first home buyers, we’re extending the bright-line test to 10 years. This means if you sell your investment property within 10 years of buying it, you may have to pay income tax on the profits. The bright-line test does not apply to your family home or inherited property, or to residential properties used for business or for farmland." [bold added for emphasis]
Our Take: Labour chickened out of introducing a real Capital Gains Tax in order to slow NZ's unaffordable housing death-spiral, and the bright-line test changes were the measly compromise that the focus groups obviously told them were more politically palatable. Paying tax on income is something that most of the world considers normal, but in the unregulated world of post-Rogernomics NZ, having to pay a small amount of tax on the profits from buying and selling investment properties is clearly a step way too far for our monied, propertied elite. Let's face it, there's still plenty of money to be made from property in NZ for those lucky enough to be able to afford to buy investment properties, but some of them will never be happy until they pay 0% tax. We shed tears for them, obviously.
What becomes clear when you actually go through what National and some others are calling the "War on Landlords" is that for these people, anything, any regulation, any protections for tenants, anything that makes it slightly less easy for them to continue to accumulate unearned financial capital gains at the same time as ripping off workers living at the extremes of their financial abilities is unacceptable. Profits before people - same as it ever was.
No Queenstown resident should be buying in to any of their arguments. Any person who has rented a property in this town knows how much it is already slanted in the favour of rich landlords - and that's even after Labour's weak but necessary changes. Let's not let Mooney, Bishop and co exploit this real housing crisis in order to further their extreme, cynical, ideological crusade against normal working people and tenants in NZ. Let's send them a strong message when they come to Queenstown on the 27th that tenants in our town need more protection from exploitation, not less.