Harley Neville is one of many New Zealanders living in conditions that would not meet warrant of fitness standards that the Green Party would like to see introduced. The old villa is cold with mould and a rat problem.

The rats have evolved. They used to fall for the traps Harley Neville set out in his bedroom but that's just succeeded in killing off the weakest members of the herd.

The strongest are left, he says. They're smarter and walking straight past. He's tried colby, he's tried camembert. All the rats want to nibble on are his candles.

It's not a house in a third world country.

BEVAN READ / FAIRFAX NZ Harley Neville lives in a poorly insulated villa in Grey Lynn.

It's a four-bedroom villa in central Auckland that costs $720 a week. But people don't care, he says. Buyers are the ones with the money. Renters are the unheard voice. It's a castle compared to the rest of the rentals in this article.

Thanks to rising house prices, stagnant wages and social inequality, renters now make up at least half of our population. The power imbalance between landlord and tenant is widening and rising rental prices have not resulted in better conditions.

Politicians are waking up to the other side of the housing crisis: fewer people buying could mean a generation of life-long renters.

1 of 4 SUPPLIED A bedroom in Crystal Williams' rental property that she has just moved out of. 2 of 4 SUPPLIED A bedroom in Crystal Williams' rental property that she has just moved out of. 3 of 4 SUPPLIED Neville's mice trap. 4 of 4 SUPPLIED The mould on Sarah's roof.

Housing Minister Nick Smith has created a Minimum Standards Bill, being introduced into Parliament next month, which would require mandatory insulation – but only to the standard of an insulated house in 1978.

This is because the greatest benefits were obtained from the first minimum amount of insulation - when it became required in 1978 - according to Smith. Insulation required at a higher level would pass the costs on to tenants, he says, and the policy is aimed at the 600,000 uninsulated houses we currently have.

The Greens have recently put a member's bill in the ballot that would go further – it would require a Warrant of Fitness for rental properties, scrap tenants paying exorbitant leasing fees, change six month rent increases to only occur annually, and make the default tenancy term three years.

If successful, it would be good news for people like Neville, whose laconic attitude towards his flat helped him weather a barrage of mould, duct tape for draughty windows and the relentless troop of rats who continuously invade his room.

The film-maker and actor is about move into a better, but pricier flat, after his rodent troubles started to impact the happiness levels in his relationship.

MOULD PROBLEMS



Damp spongy floors, peeling wallpaper and the smell of "mud" and "pond water" are recognisable descriptors to anyone who has lived with mould – which, it turns out, seems to be most Auckland renters.

Andrew King from the Property Investors Federation, whose group represents about 6000 landlords owning 22,000 properties, says that some of the power to stop it is in their hands. He says tenants often do things that encourage mould, such as not heating homes and drying clothes on clothes racks.

"A lot of tenants actually keep their curtains closed during the day. Both parties need to take responsibility for mould."

Similarly, Housing Minister Nick Smith is proposing a $1.5 million education programme as part of his Minimum Standards bill to educate tenants and landlords about mould.

"The Green Party says mould is solely the responsibility of landlords," says Smith in response to their alternative draft amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act of 1986. "But professional advice I have received is that mould largely depends on the way tenants are ventilating their homes."

But the renters Sunday Star-Times interviewed, at least, have gone above and beyond their duties in ventilation – often spending lots of money on dehumidifiers and heat pumps – and find Smith's comment patronising.

The dire conditions are making them sick, they say. In the case of one 20-year-old, mould destroyed the possessions of her dead mother.

Janine had moved into a Mount Albert flat following her mum's passing two years earlier and stored her belongings – including birthday cards, shoes and clothes – in her wardrobe. Three months later, everything was ruined.

"The wardrobe door was kept open because it smelled in there. I stuffed it with everything under the sun, including silica gel. I was absolutely gutted and went through some grieving again.

"I was sick the whole time in that place and the landlord told me I needed to open the windows more…I'm not sure how you can open your windows more than 24/7."

She left the flat because she was worried about the amount of time she was taking off work due to her health. "I thought I was going to lose my job if I stayed much longer."

It's not just young people. With the average Auckland house price now ten times the standard income of a couple in their thirties, more families are looking at renting permanently.

When Sarah, who doesn't want to be identified for fear of losing her home, moved into her three-bedroom North Shore rental in April, she didn't realise her children were about to become very sick. The house costs $490 a week.

"Since being here we have all been sick on a weekly basis. My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter has had a hacking cough for two months and has to use an asthma inhaler regularly."

Patches of mould started to spread in the corner of the bedrooms, crawling up the window panes – even though Sarah airs the house out everyday.

The white curtains are a "disgusting" shade of grey, covered in stubborn mould that even a drycleaner (paid for by Sarah) couldn't fix. The mould recently spread to her 13-year-old daughter's pillows.

"When I pulled the bed back I discovered huge patches of mould that had been painted over but was still showing. She's been constantly sick since moving in and had more time off school than in it.

"Our landlord lives overseas so there isn't much we've been able to do about it. We don't want to rock the boat as rentals are so few and far between in Auckland."

It's worth noting that under s16A of the RTA a landlord must appoint an agent if they're out of the country for more than 21 days. Exactly how many landlords violate this is unknown.

Crystal Williams paid $450 a week rent for her West Auckland rental. She moved out yesterday.

There were no light bulbs or shower curtains upon moving in, but she let that go out of relief for finding a home. What she can't let go is that her children, aged six and nine, haven't used their bedrooms for four months as the mould made them sick.

"Towards winter I noticed my six-year-old's room was like a freezer at night and thick mould was growing on her toys if I left them against a wall. Even leaving a pillow down the side of the bed for the day would make it smell really bad and wet.

"The girls slept out in the lounge on mattresses as it was cheaper to keep one room dry and warm for all of us at night.

"It makes me sad as a mum. We all work hard to provide a roof over their heads and I tell her she can't sleep with her toys in her room at night."

In the bathroom the smell of mould comes out from behind the wall and the bath is sinking into the floor.

"Mould has eaten through the carpets. The landlord advised I use the old heat pump in the house which did nothing but cost me $600 a month in power."

When Williams asked her landlord about insulation he sent a text saying he had "no money" but if she continued to pay rent he would save up for it.

Her children, like Sarah's, had endless days off school.

The landlord said she was "free to move out" but finding another rental close to her children's school was difficult halfway through the school year.

Upon telling the landlord she would be taking further action and going to the Tenancy Tribunal, he served her with a 42 day notice to get out so his family could move in, despite previously asking if she wanted to renew her tenancy.

Under s54 of the Residential Tenancy Act this is illegal as a landlord cannot terminate a tenancy on a retaliatory basis because a tenant proposes to exercise a power they're entitled to.

"It disgusts me that landlords take the money for rent but don't give a little back to fix the problems and then move onto their next victims."

THE POWER IMBALANCE BETWEEN LANDLORD AND TENANT

Legally, landlords need to give 24 hours notice if they want to inspect a tenant's home. However, this is something New Zealand landlords regularly flout.

Tenants interviewed for this story have had landlords turn up unannounced to garden at all hours, make a cup of tea, sleep in a very dilapidated greenhouse in the backyard when visiting, and walk in and use appliances without paying.

Sarah Reid, who lived in an Arch Hill six bedroom shared villa which cost $1100 per week, says her room was slowly sinking down the hill.

"Its number one feature was a wardrobe built in the space under the stairs. I considered it a walk-in as someone had taken the door off years ago. Inside was a half-height cupboard door that leads to a void underneath the rotting deck.

"Our landlady insisted on checking in there unannounced to make sure I wasn't growing weed like former tenants had. She then decided to paint the whole flat outside – proceeding to sell it to the painters, who then complained the windows they had painted were painted shut and asked for it to be remedied in order to seal the deal."

Tom ran into more dangerous problems when he lived in an Eden Terrace flat during his last year of university and his former Head Hunter gangster landlord took it upon himself to renovate.

Tom, who doesn't want his full name used for fear of repercussions, said the landlord started turning up without telling tenants.

When the flatmates, who studied law, asked exactly what he was doing turning up at odd hours of the night and, removing fence posts, he responded with a two sentence email: "yeah, youse guys will need to leave, either I give you notice or you can give me notice".

More trouble arose when windows were painted shut, as it became clear the landlord knew nothing about renovating. Trying to prise a stuck window open to air the room, one of the flatmates cut her hand.

"He said if we wanted to get legal he didn't give a shit because he was ex-Head Hunter. I was quite frightened because he's a big guy and I'm small. He had a key to the house and knew where I slept."

One night Tom and his flatmates came home to find their back deck completely gone. The washing line that ran above it was still intact, so they scaled the remains of the porch to take down their clothes.

Since the landlord was the owner of the property, Tom wasn't able to order a trespass notice but he worked out a deal with police where they would come around whenever the landlord came onto the property.

"The thing is that 30 minutes after police told him to leave, he came back and knocked on the door. So we also changed the locks."

The final straw was when a brick was thrown through the window of a car while parked in the flat's carport.

What is being done?

Metiria Turei says the number of home owners in new Zealand has dropped to the lowest it has been in decades and that Smith's attempts at changing the law are "miserable".

"It's the absolute minimum possible measure you could put in place beyond no standard at all. It's disgraceful because kids will get sick. We have the chance to make a real reduction in the 40,000 hospitalisations each year from respiratory conditions."

She says tenants are treated like "second class citizens" and understands their reluctance to complain.

In 2007 there were 3211 complaints from tenants to the Tenancy Tribunal and last year there were 3556 - yet these numbers only make up about five per cent of complaints to the Tribunal. The rest are from landlords.

It's a small number of renters, Turei agrees, but tenants are unlikely to speak out for fear of losing their homes.

"In a housing crisis, when rental properties are very hard to come by and affordable ones are even harder to come by, people are reluctant to complain.

"It's a feature of how pressured families are that they would rather deal with living in cold, damp, mouldy conditions or try fix it themselves than complain about landlords not meeting their obligations.

"By law you're not allowed to rent out a house that is damp but there's no enforcement of that and tenants are expected to complain and manage that for themselves."

The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is in charge of Tenancy Tribunal complaints, but doesn't have an enforcement role. There's only one full time and one part time staff member working on compliance for the whole country.

King says if the insulation standard was to be raised to a level higher than that of 1978 it would cost landlords almost as much as getting entirely new insulation. He says the same about enforcing Warrant of Fitness laws, arguing that both costs would ultimately be passed on to the tenant.

"The only reason a tenant would choose to stay there if it was in an unsafe condition is if the rent was really cheap. Then it's kind of their choice."

His association is working with the Children's Commissioner and Otago Medical School to see if families of children who are suffering can get electricity grants through winter months to encourage them to turn on the heater.

Smith says the Greens proposal is "over the top nanny state" and "based on a flawed assumption that the costs won't end up being passed onto the tenants".

Because ultimately, as King explains, tenants are merely consumers.

"It's a business and renters are the customers. If the costs for a childcare centre go up, the costs for the parents go up. If the cost of baking bread goes up, the cost at the supermarket does too."