At the Enough For All election forum last Friday, politicians were asked whether they would introduce rent caps.
Renter Zoe who made the request said "It’s widely known that New Zealand needs to build more houses, but that will take time…Until rental housing supply catches up with demand, does your party support introducing rent caps to limit the amount by which landlords can raise rent?"
Renters United spokesperson Anna Mooney has also spoken out about rent caps in an open letter saying “Renters United wants to see rent caps in which landlords cannot raise rent by more than inflation. This is the only way to stop rents from becoming more unaffordable"
How Each Party Responded
Green Party representative said Ricardo Menendez March, “Yes, the Green Party supports to legislate to ensure secure and affordable longer term rental accommodation… We need to make sure landlords are not ripping us off in the middle of a housing crisis.”
Geoff Simmons from TOP said, “Yes. … to solve this problem we need to hold house prices and rents stable for another generation to allow our incomes to catch up… It is going to take lots of different actions to do that.”
Nicola Willis from the National Party, Andrew Little from Labour and Taylor Arneil from NZ First all answered ‘no’ to rent caps, with Nicola Willis saying, “We have to increase the supply of housing, that’s why we’re committing to repealing and replacing the Resource Management Act… We believe that that kind of systemic reform gets to the nub of our housing issue, which comes down to ‘not enough houses to keep up with demand’.”
So all in all, with National, Labour and NZ First against rent caps, it's looking like rents won't be affected by the suggestion.
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Published August 2020