Bye bye! (Image: Gabi Lardies).

PoliticsJuly 2, 2024

If this bill passes as is, your landlord could evict you for the following reasons

Staff writer

Bye bye! (Image: Gabi Lardies).

Submissions on the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, which would reinstate no-cause evictions, close tomorrow. While the housing minister says it’s a ‘pro-tenant’ move, renters’ advocates disagree.

If passed, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill would allow landlords to give tenants 90-day termination-of-lease notices for periodic tenancies if:

They didn’t like the colour of your shoes.
They’ve taken an online colour course and want to test their talents by painting every room of a house in a custom colour scheme.
They didn’t like the tone of your text.
They reckon they can get more money off someone else.
It’s suddenly occurred to them them there might be treasure buried in the garden.
They feel like it.
They’ve been eyeing up your vege patch and the cabbages are almost ready to harvest.
They don’t like your new haircut.
Their friend wants to move in.
Last time they did an inspection you left your bed unmade.
They simply want to be mysterious and edgy.
They suspect you might be cooking fish in the kitchen and they don’t like fish.

Worst of all, they won’t have to tell you why, so while you’re desperately hunting for somewhere else to live, you’ll be worried that your shoes are ugly, your haircut is unflattering and you’re bad at texting.

Your hunting will be even more desperate if their reason for evicting you is that you’re more than three weeks late on rent, they or a family member need to live in the property or they need it for their employees or contractors, because you will have just 42 days to get out (currently it’s 63). You will also only have 42 days if they’ve sold the house and the new owner wants it empty (currently it’s 90). If you’re on a fixed term lease, start running, because your landlord will be able to give you just 21 days’ notice before the expiry of the fixed term to end the tenancy, with no reason needed.

Oh, and having signed your lease under a different understanding (eg the current law) won’t matter. This will apply to all tenancies, existing and new.

Perhaps we shouldn’t pooh-pooh the legislation in its entirety – part one introduces pet bonds, which the government says will make it easier for people with pets to find rentals (provided they can pay the bond, of course). It’s part two (termination of tenancies) where no-cause evictions have been resuscitated (they were banned in a 2020 amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act), which has housing and renters’ advocacy groups worried.

The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill’s first reading in parliament was in May, and it’s now with a select committee, which is inviting submissions from the public until 11.59pm tomorrow (Wednesday, July 3). Groups like Renters United are calling for people to submit criticism of the bill, saying that no-cause evictions undermine every other right that tenants hold. If you can be evicted for no reason, you might be cautious to ask your landlord to comply with the healthy homes standards, or respect other rules, because the easiest thing for them to do would be to kick you out and get a tenant who doesn’t ask for their rights – or so the logic goes. Evictions without cause would also allow landlords to increase rent (significantly) between tenancies. The current law allows them to increase the rent every 12 months during tenancies, and if it seems excessive, tenants can challenge the increase. There could be an incentive, then, to evict tenants and get new ones who pay more.

The bill’s stated aim is to remove barriers to rental supply and incentivise owners to rent their properties. It says there are more than 1.7 million renters in the country, and that’s anticipated to increase as more people are renting for longer and later in life. What it does not mention is a multitude of research that shows that being evicted is stressful and expensive, moving can age adults and has negative long-term effects on kids. Housing minister Chris Bishop has attempted to paint the return of no-cause evictions as a “pro-tenant move”, but according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s regulatory impact statement, there’s no evidence of that being true.

Landlords don’t have to like your shoes or your cooking, and anyone is allowed to be jealous of your cabbages – but most people would agree these aren’t grounds for eviction. There are a few legislative steps to go through before the bill becomes law. The select committee has six months to gather information (including submissions) and then prepare a report, including recommended changes. If changes are recommended, a second copy of the bill will be published, then read in the House and voted on. It could be voted down here, or progressed into another copy with further changes from the House. Then there’s a final vote. By that time your landlord could be eyeing up your tomatoes.

‘Help keep The Spinoff funny, smart, tall and handsome – become a member today.’

Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer

Keep going!

There are many more gifts awaiting the prime minister (Image: Tina Tiller)

OPINIONPoliticsJuly 2, 2024

The government has discovered Pharmac. What should it find next?

Hayden Donnell

Contributing writer

There are many more gifts awaiting the prime minister (Image: Tina Tiller)

Having found an answer to their cancer drug-funding predicament, Luxon and co may be happy to learn of some other useful tools hiding in plain sight.

Nicola Willis had hardly finished saying “fiscally responsible” when the criticism started flowing. Somehow her 2024 budget had neglected to fund 13 cancer drugs National had promised before the election. It was just temporary, the minister explained. But cancer patients were for some reason relatively impatient. They wanted their drugs “soon” so that they could “not die”.

Besides money, the thing standing in the way of an emergency fix was procurement. “What we’re working on is how we procure,” prime minister Chris Luxon told RNZ. “Those procurement processes are quite complicated.” His administration sweated through a parade of nightmarish headlines for what felt like years as it worked to address the issue. Then during last Monday’s post-cabinet press conference, a breakthrough. Luxon stood on stage and told journalists his administration had realised the government’s drug-buying agency Pharmac might be good at buying drugs. They’d been trying to work outside its systems to acquire the 13 drugs, he explained. But then a flash of inspiration struck. “As we came to government it became pretty obvious we’ve got a good model,” he said. “Why would we want to create a second model?”

Eureka. The solution was hiding in plain sight all along. But Pharmac is hardly the only existing process or institution the government might not have realised could help it solve its problems.

Chris Bishop wants to fix the housing crisis. He’s promised to eliminate the social housing waiting list and outflanked Labour by calling for continued reductions in property prices. In his eyes, the way to put housing within reach is to build more than we ever have before. He’ll be pleased to learn the perfect legislation to achieve that aim is already in place. The 2021 Medium Density Residential Standards allow people to construct up to three townhouses on almost all the land zoned for housing in our biggest cities. One of its authors, Nicola Willis, calls it a “historic commitment that will help put new rungs on the property ladder, placing it in reach of more people, and rebuilding hope for the next generation”. Those benefits are locked in. The only way to sabotage them would be to introduce new rules allowing councils to opt out of the legislation, and there’s no way a pro-housing minister like Bishop would do something like that.

Housing minister Chris Bishop and prime minister Christopher Luxon at parliament in March (Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

While he’s enshrining the MDRS, Bishop might consider enabling Kāinga Ora to continue its record-breaking build programme instead of commissioning a highly contestable report on its finances for $238 a word while the agency pauses big public housing projects and sells land.

Our leaking, poo-spewing pipes also pose a long-term problem for the government. Thanks to councils keeping rates artificially low for decades while letting everything that’s not a convention centre or a sports stadium rot in the ground, the repair bill for the country’s water infrastructure is now visible from space. National’s “Local Water Done Well” legislation aimed at addressing the issue is currently hampered by the fact that it appears to be sending our smaller councils bankrupt. Though they likely deserve that fate, one compromise solution could be found in the pages of something called the “Affordable Water” legislation proposed in the last term of government. It may not deliver councils the same level of local control, but that hasn’t mattered when it comes to speed limits, planning, Māori representation, consenting or taxation.

Similarly, it appears a deal might already be on the table for some new ferries that don’t veer off course and crash into the walls of Cook Strait. All the government would have to do would be to not scrap the deal without an alternative plan, or even guaranteed cost savings, in place.

Other solutions to pressing problems could be right under the government’s nose. Māori health provision remains a vexed issue, with Māori living shorter lives and getting less timely care on average. The government is currently building a new bureaucracy inside Te Whatu Ora to address those problems at some expense. But that might not be necessary. A look through the history books shows something called the “Māori Health Authority” had already been set up to deal with long-term health inequities. Hopefully it hasn’t been disestablished.

Just like the Pharmac model, some of these solutions have their issues. But they could also be cheaper, and in some cases, more effective than trying to invent a solution from scratch. Maybe if the government took advantage of some of the work already in motion, there’d be more money and time left over to do stuff like fund community food banks, give disabled workers the minimum wage, save some species from going extinct, or even just rescue the incorrectly labelled “blind” frog Freddie. I love that little guy, and I hope he gets the care he needs. Maybe Pharmac can help.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’

Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor