About 290,000 voting residential landlords would welcome National leader Judith Collins’ confirmation that she would tear up the new tenancy standards and law, Tenancies War spokesman Mike Butler said today.

National has labelled the new measures "landlord bashing" and promised a regulation bonfire in which, if elected, they would roll back all the Coalition Government's measures except for rules around insulation standards

The changes to tenancy law and standards were sold as caring, but few were aware that some politicians want to drive private landlords out of the market, Mr Butler said.

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said during the second reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill: “We absolutely do need to and have been ramping up the provision of public housing. In this not even three years yet, in this term alone of Government, we have built more public and State homes than any term of Government has since the 1970s, and that is what will help to mitigate the availability and the incentive for property owners to move on and to get out of owning property for rental purposes”.

Davidson confirmed that the Green Party does not want private landlords to help ease a current rental property shortage and prefers vastly extending government-owned housing ghettoes, Mr Butler said.

With a Green MP chairing the select committee considering the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, and a Labour-Green majority in Parliament, we were only ever going to get policy in which agenda and politics trump evidence, Mr Butler said.

You don’t need a $3000 heat pump to heat a small lounge to above 18C, and the Residential Tenancies (Smoke Alarms and Insulation) Regulations 2016 already provides for the optimum level of insulation (see attached), he said.

And most people know that you do have to open the windows to air out your home so that it doesn’t get damp and mouldy, he said.

The Labour-Green mantra invoking cold, damp homes diverts attention from the reality that for nine months of the year the New Zealand climate is warm or hot and it is only for the three months of winter that we have to turn a heater on or light the fire.

Alleged advice by Andrew King of the NZ Property Investors Federation to wait for the election result before spending thousands on heating and insulation that may not be required is just common sense even though King claims he was misquoted, he said.

This political war on landlords has reduced the availability of housing and hiked rents, hurting the people that the Labour/Green parties pretend to protect -- those who rent their homes, Mr Butler said.

Stop the War on Tenancies is a group that since October 2018 has been highlighting the failure by the Government to create sound policy and law for residential rental property.

See https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12361468 and https://www.landlords.co.nz/article/976517305/greens-propose-more-landlord-regulations and https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20200804_20200805_48

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