Renting, landlordism, and the housing crisis
Tags: Housing, Aotearoa, New Zealand, Renting

From the 100% housing series: Ten things we should know about the housing crisis

The 100% Housing crew are looking for answers to the housing crisis. In this post the crew finds out all about renting, and this thing called ‘landlordism’.

A supporter of Renters United campaign ‘Fix renting’ with a list of reasons of what needs fixing in their flat.

So our first question is, what’s up with renting?

Renting: it’s a great, affordable option for living and lots of people choose it instead of owning a house. You can stay in a well-designed, well looked-after flat, apartment or house long-term, make it a home, and feel like you belong in the neighbourhood without being moved on anytime.

Renters have a lot of rights and landlords really care about keeping their tenants long term. Yeah, renting in countries like Germany and Canada is great.

Um, I meant renting here, in Aotearoa.

Oh right. Unfortunately, here in Aotearoa, renting is expensive, unhealthy, and insecure. The quality of houses is low, they’re largely inaccessible for people with disabilities or the elderly, and they’re not designed for the good of the environment or for our good health.

That doesn’t sound so great. How expensive are they?

Rental prices in New Zealand are among the highest in the world. And the prices keep going up.

Hey, well that’s great for the economy, isn’t it?

Not so great for those of us paying 40% or more of our incomes on rent. Out of control housing prices keep going up and are then passed on to people who rent. We now expect our rent costs to go up every year as if it’s just a normal part of life. This isn’t the case in many other countries.

The cost of housing is pushing people into poverty. And it’s not great for anyone wanting a safe and long-term home in the neighbourhood of their choosing.

Renting for some people is a choice, but fewer people are able to choose to own a house these days. Ever increasing house prices are leading more people renting than owning. This week, in the latest news from the housing crisis, we learned that the number of people who own their own home in Aotearoa has reached its lowest number since the 1950s.

We are Generation Rent. We don’t feel at home in our rental houses and tend to move a lot because of this. The average time living in a rental is 10–15 months.

The insecurity of renting in New Zealand can have negative effects on our lives. We’re less connected to neighbours and our community and don’t put down roots where we live. People who move often are less likely to be linked to a GP, which means health issues can be missed.

Moving schools is hugely disruptive to children’s education and affects children’s ability to form relationships with peers and teachers. Children who are constantly moving are 6 times more likely to get caught in the justice system later in life, and over 13 times more likely to end up with a youth justice referral.

People who have experienced eviction can end up in emergency housing simply because there’s nothing they can rent in their price range.

The unequal demand for rentals and a low supply of rental properties, is what allows landlords to set the prices so high, and lets them get away with low-quality housing. It’s causing people to fit themselves and their families into a house designed for fewer people, because there’s just nowhere else for them to go.

This is creating a feedback loop which encourages inequality that affects all our lives. It also creates a separation between people who are landlords and people who rent, and causes a polarised environment.

On the side of renters, we like to call this Landlordism.

The original Monopoly board ‘The Landlord’s Game’

Landlordism? … Is that like feudalism?

As those of us who rent like to say when we come together over a pint at the corner pub, landlordism is:

a system where a group of people own land and make wealth by taking a proportion of people’s income and wages in the form of rent.

From here on, let’s use capital ‘L’ to refer to Landlords and Landlordism. Everyone should use the word ‘Landlordism’ more, to point out the obvious: that people who choose to be Landlords, and that thing we call ‘the housing market’, are doing well because everyone needs a home.

People who choose to be Landlords have a lot of power right now because there are a lot more people looking for houses to rent than there are houses used for renting.

An old illustration with an octopus lying over a map of London. The title says ‘Landlordism causes unemployment’. The list says: ‘It paralyses the BUILDING TRADE; It Pauperises the Peasantry … The Land Octopus Sucks the Lifeblood of the People’.

With abundant housing, the story would be different. In theory, people who choose to be Landlords would compete against each other for tenants, rents would go down and Landlords would look after tenants better because it’s in their interest to keep them. They aren’t incentivised to do this right now.

Landlordism is an ‘ism’ we take for granted. It assumes making profits from an essential need such as a home is a good system for organising society, resources, houses and finances.

We can call it Landlordism to make clear that this is a system that we’ve created and we can change it anytime we like.

We don’t have to choose to be Landlords. If we started all over again we would probably organise it another way.

If we think of those other ways, it could be that we build more shared resources rather than separating more things into private ownership. It could be that the government provides Universal Public Housing, where everyone is guaranteed shelter. It could be a ‘million homes’ programme which provides an abundance of houses and encourages people to invest their savings in more productive parts of the economy.

It’s about changing our ideas about what the priorities of the Government should be.

The NZ Property Investors Federation (the NZPIF to you) says that some Landlords are renters too.

The NZPIF said a lot this election year. They’ve also said “Landlords are people too” and “housing should be considered an essential service”. Both of which I agree with completely.

They’re worried, for example, that new rules for healthier, warmer homes “could be the final straw that actually sees them [people who choose to be Landlords] exit the market”.

It’s good to know someone’s out there speaking up for the poor people who choose to be Landlords. Luckily for them though, most politicians own at least one house, and many have several properties and seem to be pretty good at looking out for their interests. At last count, in August, only eight out of 120 MPs did not own a property.

People who have chosen to use their savings to invest in lots of properties have made a good financial decision for themselves. But I’d say many haven’t come into this thinking “I’m choosing to be a professional Landlord and be the best Landlord I can be.” They haven’t thought much about the welfare of people who need a home. They will make good financial decisions as they evict the tenants, increase the rent, and provide houses without heating or insulation.

While making money from being a Landlord is profitable for a few, it is causing extensive harm in the real world for others, and for society.

What does Landlordism mean if we are living on stolen Māori land?

Big question. We don’t often talk about the fact that Landlordism was enforced on Aotearoa as a part of colonisation. A big reason why British settlers moved to Aotearoa was the freedom to own their own home and have a ‘quarter acre dream’ that was not possible in their homeland.

But to achieve that dream, it meant sourcing land from Māori in many different ways. The Government removed land violently or confiscated it from hapū, churches played a role in attaining land, Pākehā war veterans were gifted confiscated land and countless dishonest acts played a role in shifting land ownership to Pākehā.

A diagram with four images of the North Island, in the years 1860, 1890, 1910 and 1939 showing the huge loss of Māori held land over that time.

Nowadays Māori retain just five percent of the land they once held. There are no words to fully describe the effect that a land grab like this can have on a group of people. It essentially steals the base that provides people with homes, food, an economy, culture, sacred places, belonging, identity, history and much more. Māori never signed up to ‘give away’ their land, sovereignty or mana motuhake so, for many, the loss of land was multiple acts of deliberate theft and deceit by incoming Pākehā who had their own interests at heart.

Is it ethical to make a profit off land that was deliberately taken from a group of people? No. Is it ethical to then charge those same people (and many more) to rent a home on that stolen land? No. Is it possible to have a fair, equitable housing system based on theft and deceit?

Hell no.

These are the questions we need to be asking and the conversations we need to be leading for a flourishing Te Tiriti based country.

Well, the whole housing system looks pretty injust when you put it like that.

Yes, it is. It was built on injustice, and yet we expect it to give us fair outcomes.

It’s important to say that while colonisation was the original crime, renting disadvantages many different groups. Young people, LGBTIQ communities, people with disabilities, beneficiaries, low paid workers and people of colour face greater difficulty accessing rental properties in our current housing market.

Is the government doing anything about all this? I mean the renting part of it.

Well, there have been some updates to renting laws. The Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill was updated in August 2020 to end no-cause evictions of tenants (there must be a good reason, for example, selling the property); limit rent rises to once a year (instead of 6 months); allow minor alterations (such as hanging pictures on the wall); and ban rental bidding (the practice of raising a price already advertised).

In response to Covid there were also good measures put in place, which have since lapsed. Rents were frozen so they couldn’t go up (which ended on 25 Sep 2020) and there was a ban on evictions (which ended on 25 June 2020).

A law passed in 2017 requires Landlords to insulate and ventilate their rental properties, and ensure tenants can heat their living rooms to 18℃, by July 2021 (this deadline was extended because of Covid).

It doesn’t seem like much.

In this situation, where there are a lot more people looking for houses to rent than there are available houses, we can make some simple policy fixes that would have more transformative results.

The government could:

To help disconnect homes from measures of economic growth, rents could be tied to income. For example, there could be a guarantee that no one has to pay more than a quarter of their income on housing, like income-related rents for public housing.

Put in place rent controls to stop unreasonable increases in rents. For example, there should be controls that limit rent increases to no more than inflation.

New rents could be set within a reasonable range of the median rent of comparable houses in the area. All previous rents for the house could be accessible, to ensure transparency.

The temporary measures introduced during Covid-19, such as banning evictions, could be made permanent.

There are a whole range of other settings that could be updated to improve life in rental houses, if the government wanted to. Other examples are: setting default longer-term tenancies, increasing the health quality of housing expected in the building code, reforming the Tenancy Tribunal so it is more efficient and accessible, and licensing and regulating property managers.

Any steps the government takes to create an abundance and security of housing will shift power so that Landlords are really just landlords.

There’s a lot that could be done then.

And renting can be great. Places like Germany and other countries have shown that it’s possible to have a great renting culture. We can choose to do this too so that renting becomes a sensible option for stable, long-term, healthy living that we will choose first, instead of owning.

Rental housing can be affordable, safe and warm. Tenants can stay in properties long enough to put down roots in their community and know they won’t have to move their children to a new school every year. People can afford to heat their homes and pay the rent (or homes are insulated and airtight so less heating is needed!). Landlords are incentivised to treat their tenants well and invest in the upkeep of their property.

Makes sense! So if you were Prime Minister what is the one thing you would do to fix renting and the whole housing crisis?

Honestly, if I was Prime Minister, or Overlord, I’d just throw out Landlordism completely. Aotearoa has its own incredible traditions around how to live with respect for people, place and the planet and perhaps it’s time to start again.

Let’s change things up so everyone has a place they can call home.

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