1. Question No. 1—Housing (Public Housing)CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)ORAL QUESTIONSQUESTIONS TO MINISTERSQuestion No. 1—Housing (Public Housing)1. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Are there effective rules in place to ensure people who rent can find an affordable home; if not what advice has the Government requested on potential new rules to ensure affordable rentals?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Yes although I acknowledge that there are some people who are having difficulty finding an affordable rental property to call home during the housing crisis that has built up over the last decade. This Government has made a number of changes to support renters to find affordable accommodation and to improve their security and rights in their homes. These changes include limiting rent increases to once a year banning rental bidding banning letting fees the introduction of the healthy homes standard the removal of no-cause termination increasing accommodation supplement rates for the first time since 2005 and allowing renters to request rent reduction through the Tenancy Tribunal if they think their rents are too high. We will continue to monitor the rental market closely.Chlöe Swarbrick: Is that system working however to make renting affordable for people with rents rising by 50 percent since 2010 but wages only rising by 20 percent?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister as I said in my answer to the primary Ministers will continue to monitor the rental market. We have looked closely at the empirical evidence of what we've seen over the last 12 months. So for the year to March 2021 we saw a 1.6 percent increase in rents across the country although we do acknowledge that some of that time was the period of time when rents couldn't be put up. So adjusted it's probably more like a 2 to 5 percent increase across the country. We are monitoring that situation.Chlöe Swarbrick: Does she accept that the current system simply allows rents to continue increasing to whatever landlords want to charge?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister one of the reasons we do monitor rents closely is to build that empirical base—for example when we made a number of the changes that I outlined in my primary answer such as limiting rent increases to once a year and banning letting fees there was a lot of narrative from a number of interest groups that rents were going to go sky-high. We have monitored that and we have seen that that has not been the case. We saw a 1.6 percent increase in rents last year adjusted as I said around 2 to 5 percent.Brooke van Velden: Has the Government also received advice that introducing rent controls could reduce supply quality of housing and lead to discrimination of tenants?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister the member would have seen the advice that we proactively released last year that showed that there was advice that did look at rent controls. One of the things that I do note is that even between our own agencies—for example the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Treasury—there is a difference of opinion around degrees of impact as well.Chlöe Swarbrick: Is it fair that tenants have to prove rent is unreasonable through the Tenancy Tribunal or should we just have better rules to set affordable rents in the first place?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister as I've told the member we are continuing to monitor those rents closely. We have looked at the most appropriate datasets whether that be the Tenancy Tribunal rent/bond data or whether that be the Stats New Zealand dataset that we look at and we will continue to keep a watch on those numbers.Chlöe Swarbrick: Would the Labour Government follow the example set by for example the Labour Party mayor of London and work to introduce fair rules to ensure reasonable rents?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister I went through in the answer to the primary question a range of measures that we have already taken as a Government to ensure that we do have the ability for those New Zealanders who rent their homes to have a warm dry place that they can feel secure in and part of that is ensuring that rents don't spiral out of control. We have no plans for rent controls or indexation. We are continuing to monitor the situation.Chlöe Swarbrick: Then how much more unaffordable would rents have to get for the 1.4 million New Zealanders in rental properties before the Government takes action?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister as we said one of the reasons we are monitoring so carefully what is happening to rents across the country but also in particular geographic locations is because there was a lot of speculation from a range of interest groups around how sky-high rents would go when we did things like introduce the banning of letting fees when we did things like limiting the number of rent increases to once a year. But what we have seen is that that has not come to pass—1.6 increase for the year to March 2021 and I think that that is a dataset we will continue to monitor.