By Alex Tarrant

Every so often it's fun to play a game of State-the-Obvious:

Home ownership matters for well-being.

Nearly half our rental stock is so shoddy that it has dampness and mould problems, leading to renters having poorer health outcomes than owner-occupiers.

And those renting are less likely to have a sense of belonging to their neighbourhood, region, the company they work for, and even New Zealand as a whole than those who own their own homes.

Stats NZ yesterday released its latest General Social Survey (GSS) of well-being. Almost 9,000 Kiwis were asked how comfortable they were with their lives, and for views on issues like the importance of farming to the country, the natural landscape, and sense of belonging to family, religious groups and neighbourhoods.

You can read the full results here, and they show Kiwis are generally satisfied with their lot. But one section particularly fits with one of the central themes this election year: Home ownership and the (poor) state of the nation’s rental housing stock.

What isn’t answered by the GSS is whether home ownership is causal regarding well-being. That’s likely to be dealt with more by Stats NZ’s next survey focusing on home ownership specifically, although the results are due in two years’ time.

But just Google “causation home ownership well-being” and you’ll get the idea. A recent local study by Motu included this line in its intro: “The results confirm that home ownership exerts considerable positive impact in the formation of social capital in New Zealand communities.”

Stats NZ’s experts did point out there is a ‘life curve’ that shows through in the results. Older people are generally more satisfied with life, and the older you are, the more likely you are to own a home. But as the debate about home affordability heats up, the divergence in well-being readings between owner-occupiers and renters are important to keep in mind.

Even more so with the near-daily stories now about our hospitals being clogged up with people being admitted with preventable respiratory diseases – people who generally rent their accommodation or who are in social housing.

Face-to-face interviewers asked respondents to rank some answers on a scale of one to ten (ten being most satisfied) for a series of statements. Other questions were along multi-choice lines. When divided down home ownership lines, two-thirds of those interviewed owned their own home, and a third did not (for ease, I’m call these people ‘renters’).

The results

The highest-level question – how would you rate overall life satisfaction – was dominated at the top end by owner-occupiers. Just under 70% of owner-occupiers responded with scores of eight, nine or ten, versus 56% of renters. ‘Is your life worthwhile’ came in at 75% to 65%.

On financial well-being, just 7.4% of owner-occupiers said they did not have enough income to meet everyday needs, against 17.9% of renters. Renters also outweighed owners in ‘only just enough money’. Then it switched – 50.5% of owners had ‘enough money’ (versus 38.7%), and 22% had ‘more than enough money’ (versus 11.3%).

Now to the state of our housing stock. It makes you wonder why the government dropped its home insulation scheme. (As an aside, this was a policy developed by National with the Green Party, and showed that they could work together. It may even have been the most successful single policy in terms of health outcomes under the Fifth National Government).

Regarding the general condition of a respondent’s housing or flat, the results were surprisingly even between owners and renters. ‘No repairs or maintenance needed’ came in at 36% (owners) to 35% (renters) of respective respondents. ‘Minor/some repairs and maintenance needed’ at 57.6% to 58%, and ‘Immediate/extensive repairs and maintenance needed’ at 6.5% to 7%.

Answers to the next question were more telling though. ‘No problem’ with dampness or mould drew 75.3% of owners versus 54.8% of renters. ‘Minor problem’ drew 22.2% versus 34.3% and ‘major problem’ 2.5% to 10.9%.

How about warmth? A good 59.3% of owners said their house or flat was fine in terms of how warm they would like it against 36.4% of renters. ‘Sometimes’ colder than you’d like was 27% to 28.7%. But ‘always or often’ colder came in at 13.7% to 35.9%.

That means 45% of renters had some sort of dampness or mould problem in their house/flat versus 24.7% of owner-occupiers (that seems like a bad result too). And 65% of renters live in a place that is either sometimes or always colder than they’d like (vs 31% of owners).

What does that mean? Health problems. Giving self-rated health statuses, 13% of owners said they had fair or poor health, against 17.2% of renters. Perhaps not as large a gap as expected, but it certainly fits the trend.

Some other results divided by way of housing tenure:

Sense of belonging to family: An average score of 9.2 out of 10 for owner-occupiers versus 9/10 for renters

Sense of belonging to neighbourhood: 6.7 vs 6.0

Sense of belonging to company/organisation: 8.1 vs 7.8

Sense of belonging to religious/spiritual group: 8.5 vs 8.7

Sense of belonging to region: 7.7 vs 7.2

Sense of belonging to New Zealand: 8.7 vs 8.4

Sense of belonging to another country: 6.9 vs 7.7

Importance of natural scenery and environment in defining New Zealand: 9.2 vs 9.1

Importance of agriculture and farming in defining New Zealand: 8.2 vs 8.3

Importance of New Zealand's history in defining New Zealand: 8.0 vs 8.2

Importance of New Zealand symbols and icons in defining New Zealand: 7.6 vs 7.8

Importance of sports and sporting achievements in defining New Zealand: 7.8 vs 7.9

Importance of art and artistic achievements in defining New Zealand: 6.8 vs 7.0

Importance of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in defining New Zealand: 7.4 vs 7.4

Importance of the people in New Zealand in defining New Zealand: 8.4 vs 8.6

Importance of freedom, rights and peace in defining New Zealand: 9.1 vs 9.1

These results are obviously just one aspect of the well-being survey - by way of housing tenure. You can see different outcomes by way of age group, ethnicity, household income, and more in the full results.