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Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) September 15, 2015There is no discussion in the clip of the implications of minimum standards for rents. Nothing is done to ensure that low income people can afford the higher rents that will result of this regulation proposed by the Greens.
Minimum standards for rental housing is back in the news in New Zealand. After some deaths in some rather nasty fires in rental houses without fire alarms, there are demands that landlords must put fire alarms in place and maintain those fire alarms. About a dozen people or so die in fires in New Zealand every year.
The fact that in the proposed regulation, landlords are also required to maintain those fire alarms – ensure they have batteries in them – is a microcosm of the economics of rental housing habitability laws.
Even when landlords put in fire alarms, low income tenants prefer to spend their money on something other than replacement batteries for those alarms. These tenants are presumed to be competent to vote and drive cars, but not manage the risk of fires in the houses in which they live.
Maybe the reason for the lack of interest…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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