Measuring the Effect of Housing Quality Interventions: The Case of the New Zealand "Rental Warrant of Fitness".

Lucy Telfar-Barnard,David Ormandy,Nicholas Preval,Michael Baker,Matthew Cutler-Welsh,Julie Bennett,Michael Keall,Philippa Howden-Chapman,David Jacobs

doi:10.3390/ijerph14111352

Abstract

In New Zealand, as in many other countries, housing in the private-rental sector is in worse condition than in the owner-occupier housing sector. New Zealand residential buildings have no inspection regime after original construction signoff. Laws and regulations mandating standards for existing residential housing are outdated and spread over a range of instruments. Policies to improve standards in existing housing have been notoriously difficult to implement. In this methods paper, we describe the development and implementation of a rental Warrant of Fitness (WoF) intended to address these problems. Dwellings must pass each of 29 criteria for habitability, insulation, heating, ventilation, safety, amenities, and basic structural soundness to reach the WoF minimum standard. The WoF’s development was based on two decades of research on the impact of housing quality on health and wellbeing, and strongly influenced by the UK Housing Health and Safety Rating System and US federal government housing standards. Criteria were field-tested across a range of dwelling types and sizes, cities, and climate zones. The implementation stage of our WoF research consists of a non-random controlled quasi-experimental study in which we work with two city-level local government councils to implement the rental WoF, recruiting adjoining council areas as controls, and measuring changes in health, economic, and social outcomes.

Highlights

We have summarised the origins and development of the New Zealand (NZ) rental Warrant of Fitness (WoF), including knowledge gained from rental housing quality standards in the UK and the USA
We described the method to be used in a non-random-controlled quasi-experimental study of the introduction of the rental WoF at local body level in NZ as a rental housing quality intervention
This study is designed to test whether the rental WoF is practical to introduce on a broad scale and whether it can improve rental housing quality without adverse consequences for tenants

Summary

Introduction

Housing and the home are well-recognised as environmental and social determinants of health, with housing quality shown to be associated with mental, physical, and general health status [1].Improvements to cold indoor temperatures improve respiratory health in children [2,3] and prevent mortality among elderly with circulatory disease [4], and the removal of home safety hazards reduces injury rates [5,6].Rental housing is generally in worse condition than owner-occupied housing due to a combination of split incentives [7,8] and, presumably, insufficient or absent rental housing quality regulation and enforcement, though these latter topics are under-researched. Housing and the home are well-recognised as environmental and social determinants of health, with housing quality shown to be associated with mental, physical, and general health status [1]. Improvements to cold indoor temperatures improve respiratory health in children [2,3] and prevent mortality among elderly with circulatory disease [4], and the removal of home safety hazards reduces injury rates [5,6]. Rental housing is generally in worse condition than owner-occupied housing due to a combination of split incentives [7,8] and, presumably, insufficient or absent rental housing quality regulation and enforcement, though these latter topics are under-researched. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 1352; doi:10.3390/ijerph14111352 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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