aug 27, 2018 - Reform of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986: Government discussion document

Description:

The Government released a discussion document on the reform of the Residential Tenancies Act 1986 (RTA). The purpose of reform was to ensure that the RTA remained suitable for the current renting environment. The proposed reform of the RTA had the following objectives:
• to improve security and stability for tenants, while maintaining adequate protection for landlords’ interests;
• to ensure the appropriate balancing of the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords to promote good faith tenancy relationships and help renters feel more at home;
• to modernise the legislation so it can respond to changing trends in the rental market; and
• to improve quality standards of boarding houses and accountability of boarding house operators.
The discussion document focused on four areas for reform and set out a number of key questions:
1. Modernising tenancy laws so tenants felt more at home:
Types of tenancy agreements, circumstances where a landlord could require a tenant to move, whether the responsibilities tenants and landlords have during a tenancy were appropriate, the types of modifications tenants should be able to make to a rental property, and how the law could better encourage landlords to allow tenants to keep pets?
2. Setting and increasing rents:
How rents are set and how and when they can be increased, options to address the practice of ‘rental bidding’, making it easier for tenants to understand how their rent might increase and how ‘market rent’ is challenged?
3. Boarding house tenancies:
Whether there should be new requirements to make it easier for authorities to monitor boarding houses?
4. Enforcing tenancy laws:
Powers available to government agencies to investigate alleged breaches of the RTA, whether the existing enforcement regime was accessible, efficient and proportionate to the modern renting environment and was structured in a way that ensured compliance?
Submissions were sought by 21 October 2018.

Source: https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/about-msd/history/social-assistance-chronology-programme-history.html

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