OPINION: This week I met Amelia Tovo. She lives in a cold, damp state house with her six children.

It's so cold they all sleep in the lounge, huddled together in the only carpeted room in the house.

The curtains are hopelessly thin, the floors in the hallway and bedrooms are vinyl. It's no place to call home – let alone raise a family.

Amelia's husband Soesa, a security guard, died of pneumonia and lung complications last year aged just 37. The district health board, local doctors and the family's school principal all wrote letters urging Housing NZ to move the family.

Their pleas were ignored. It was so cold the family would take Soesa to his father's house at night to keep him warm. Even after he died – and after more requests to move the family were made – Housing NZ still continued to do nothing.

Housing NZ was negligent as a landlord. Chief executive Glen Sowry has apologised – and has promised to find the family a new, warmer home, but only after media attention this week forced the agency to get its act together.

If anyone needed proof of how bad this house is, it is to undergo renovations, including new drapes and carpet and other significant maintenance, before the next family moves in.

Housing NZ is embarrassed. They should be.

The problem is no-one sent the memo to Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith. His reaction to another death in a state house was colder than the house itself. Smith has demonstrated what a callous man he is, by claiming: "People dying in winter of pneumonia and other illnesses is not new."

Poor form indeed from a mean, indifferent Cabinet minister. It reminds me of the nasty, penny-pinching 1990s, when Jim Bolger linked the health system with dying.

Last week I wrote about another death in a cold state house, the case of toddler Emma-Lita Bourne. A coroner linked the living conditions in her home to her death from pneumonia-like symptoms.

That case certainly sparked a lot of debate about personal responsibility – and whether it's a family's job to provide a safe, warm home versus how much responsibility Housing NZ should take as landlords.

Well, the Tovo family met their side of the bargain. The house I visited was neat and tidy. I could see small traces of mould that the family had regularly wiped away.

Soesa Tovo worked fulltime. He was not on a benefit. The children went to school.

The reality is landlords have responsibilities too, including Housing NZ and we simply have too many leaky, cold and damp houses. It's a national shame.

Speaking more generally, I also can't help thinking about the role of a third player in all this – the church. It's not for me to mock people's religion, but it's an unarguable fact that poor people are more likely to be regular churchgoers.

They respect their religious leaders and God plays a big part in many households. This concept of tithing – churches hitting up parishioners regularly for money – is a disgrace and contributes to trapping people in poverty.

If it's a choice between turning a heater on, or risking the shame of not contributing a fat enough envelope of cash each Sunday, I fear the church wins out in some households.

Meanwhile, the Government has insulated 200,000 houses with its excellent scheme, but housing researcher Professor Philippa Howden-Chapman says about 75 per cent of our housing stock is still untouched.

She has been pushing for a nationwide warrant of fitness scheme and the Government may be about to act, but perhaps not quite as she would like.

John Key and Bill English are suggesting that a WOF scheme for houses will push up rents.

Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett told me this week that too many children are living in damp, cold houses and it's unacceptable. She supports a WOF scheme – is there a Cabinet split forming here?

Bennett was brave and honest in her public comments – now she needs to push for proper action.

As The Dominion Post's editorial said on Tuesday, we have standards for cars, restaurants and for proper building work – so why on earth is it so hard to insist on some form of standard for where we spend most of our time: our house?

Nick Smith's public position on all this was woeful and arrogantly dismissive. Saying that people die in winter is like accepting it's normal to die in forests, mines and quarries. We've acted to make this work safer.

So why not start at home, and refuse to settle for squalor. It shouldn't take a death – let alone two – to force change.