Healthy homes

There are a number of homes in the Taupō District, particularly rental properties, that do not meet healthy homes standards.

The cost of renovating these properties, such as insulation, double glazing, and a heat pump, is substantial. Financial assistance is likely to be required to enable low-median income homeowners to bring their home up to standard.

New constructions and rental properties are required by law to meet the minimum building code requirements, which is aligned with the current healthy home standards. However, meeting these requirements involve more construction material and labour, which increases house prices and reduces affordability.

Census 2018 data showed that 4 percent of the district’s households were overcrowded. This is lower than the New Zealand average of 5.7 percent, but it still places the Taupō District mid-range compared with other districts.

Crowding is caused when the homes that people live in are too small to accommodate the number of people in a household.

The Stats NZ measure calculates the number of bedrooms needed based on the demographic composition of the household. It presumes that there should be no more than two people to a bedroom, but that couples and children of certain ages can share a bedroom. Nationally, about a quarter of tamariki and rangatahi (children and young people) lived in a crowded home.

The data showed that larger and more complex households, particularly multi-family households, were the most likely to be crowded. Crowding is stressful to health and well-being and causes adverse health outcomes such as infectious disease, respiratory illnesses, and mental health problems.

Emissions reduction targets set by Government are essential to work towards.

Making better decisions locally about how we build and live in our homes is critical and the ways that homes are built and remodelled, and how they are heated, are all areas in which both collective and direct individual action can make a difference. Creating efficient, sustainably built homes to last makes environmental, health, and economic sense.

The ability for households to heat their homes is variable, and the biggest driver is affordability of heating.

The 2018 Stocktake of New Zealand’s Housing report found that:

• Only about two-thirds of New Zealand houses are even partially insulated, which makes the remainder cold, less energy efficient and more costly to heat in winter.
• 5 percent of New Zealand households did not usually heat living areas at all and almost half did not usually heat any occupied bedrooms.
• Owner-occupied households had access to more cost-effective heating compared to renting households.

A Statistics NZ report on energy hardship showed that up to a third of New Zealand households struggled to afford their power bills, spent a large part of their income on power, or often felt cold. Again, renters were more likely to experience hardship, with 44 percent of renting households reporting at least one energy hardship indicator compared with 22 percent of households who owned their own home.