'No cause evictions' increase risk for Mum and Dad renters / A.J. Hendry
The loss of current protections will have a chilling effect on many tenants, increasing risk of exploitative and discriminatory practices...
Government is planning to put legislation in place which will allow Landlords to kick Mum and Dad renters out of their homes without providing sufficient reason.
No cause evictions allow Landlords to give their tenants a 90-day notice without cause. One rationale given for bringing them back is that it would encourage landlords to rent to whānau who have experienced homelessness, giving them confidence to "take a risk" on someone.
Landlords also argue that no cause evictions are only ever utilized as a last resort, and they are necessary to ensure they can respond to 'anti-social tenants'.
And yet, despite the claim that this is in fact a 'pro tenant' policy, housing and homelessness experts in NZ have strongly condemned the move, stating concern that this will actually increase risk of homelessness for our whānau.
One chief problem with the argument that 'No cause evictions' are 'pro-tenant' is that the claim fails to understand the reality of power and how dynamics of power work out between the landlord / tenant relationship here in New Zealand.
Many tenants (even with current regulation in place) are afraid to ask their landlord to uphold their responsibility to keep their home to current Healthy Homes standards due to concern the Landlord will resent this and punish them.
The loss of this protection will have a chilling effect on many tenants. There will be increased risk of evictions due to discrimination, and increased fear to ask for repairs and maintenance, which will result in some whānau remaining in unsafe and unlivable housing.
It will also be unlikely to support our homeless whānau.
In this current housing crisis, our whānau experiencing homelessness are not anywhere near the top of the list when they are seeking rentals. There is huge demand, and with Landlords having the pick of desperate people seeking housing, no cause evictions are still unlikely to bring our whānau to the top of that list.
What is more likely is that we'll see an increase in unjust evictions, with whānau pushed out of their communities, and some shoved into emergency accommodation and homelessness when they cannot find appropriate housing.
As already discussed, even with current legislation in place many mum and dads who rent already hold fear that keeping their landlords accountable for poor behaviour and poor property management will result in punishment through the threat of eviction.
If a landlord can move us on, without having to provide us with a reason, this threat will hang like a present and everyday reminder of the potential consequences of upsetting a person's landlord.
This move will only increase the power imbalance between families that rent and property owners.
In the real world, this means that parents, kids, people who rent, will continue living in unhealthy homes, afraid to ask their Landlord to do their job, to fix the mould issue, deal with the heating problems, repair the broken window.
We put up with these things because the fear of moving our kids again, of not being able to find a better place than this, a better landlord, of seeing the anxiety in our children's eyes when we tell them we have to move, keeps us in check.
The impact of less housing security will be felt by us all. The transient nature of a lot of our renting families is destabilising our communities and affecting our social cohesion.
If people don't feel like they have a stake in their community, if they don't feel they belong, if they know they may be forced to move soon, they are less likely to become connected to their communities, to build support networks, to develop the sort of relationships and social networks our communities rely on for social cohesion.
Lack of strong rental regulation is tearing at our social fabric. And we all suffer.
Housing is not a commodity.
It is the most basic and fundamental of human needs.
If we are serious about preventing homelessness and building strong, connected communities, we must begin to recognise it as a human right, and acknowledge that the right for whānau to live in safe and secure housing supercedes the right for landlords to make exorbitant profits at the expense of our people and our communities.
Landlords don't need protection. If they want to evict us, they can. All we are asking for is the basic human decency of being told why.
#LoveIsTheWay
A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and a Youth Development Worker and rangatahi advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads Kick Back, a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.