Threat of blacklist reportedly stopping tenants from using Tenancy Tribunal

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Housing Minister Phil Twyford says he's troubled by databases which tenant advocates fear are blacklisting tenants and making it hard to approach the Tenancy Tribunal.

Landlords bring an estimated 90 per cent of Tenancy Tribunal cases, prompting tenancy advocacy group Renters United to call for moves to anonymise tribunal cases.

Kate Day of tenant advocacy group Renters United said the vast number of cases brought by landlords suggested some renters were afraid to complain in case they lost their home or got blacklisted in the future.

With the increasing number of people who would be 'renters for life', reputation was becoming increasingly important to tenants, she said.

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.'People are reluctant to take a case to the tribunal for fear of retribution, rent increases, and having their lease ended.'.

Renter advocacy groups say the tenancy tribunal is part of a larger systemic power imbalance between renters and landlords.

But Twyford said, 'I don't think the tribunal itself is the crux of the problem here, it's more what's going on in the market.'

The lack of housing supply and outdated tenancy laws were the 'main causes' of a power imbalance between tenants and landlords, he said.

Tenancy consultant Scotney Williams, of tenancy.co.nz, said most of the cases landlords took to the tribunal were about recovering unpaid rent or ending leases.

If tenants felt they were being tossed out of their rental for complaining, they had the right to object to the tribunal, claiming 'retaliatory notice,' he said.

Twyford said he plans to take proposals to 'modernise' the Residential Tenancies Act to Cabinet shortly and a discussion paper would likely follow.

Tenants have told advocates they fear a tenancy tribunal case could end with them being evicted, even if they win the case.

He said he was looking at reforms in Scotland, Ireland and the Victoria, Australia for inspiration, especially when it came to more protection for longer-term tenants.

'More security of tender is the thing we are driving towards, because the insecurity and transience that one third of the population live with, as a result of our outdated tenancy laws, has a terrible and corrosive effect on people's quality of life, especially those with young children.'

Day said another reason why tenants did not use the Tenancy Tribunal much was that the amount of compensation awarded to successful tenants was also often not worth the effort.

Housing Minister Phil Twyford said the fact that 90 per cent of Tenancy Tribunal cases were brought by landlords suggested an imbalance in the system.

'It's a real challenge to get all of the materials necessary and the mental space to consider bringing the case to the tribunal, and added to that is the fear that it won't be worth the effort even if you win, because the compensation amounts are quite low.'

Another worry were tenancy databases, which allowed landlords to check if a tenant had previously been involved with the tribunal.

Some databases were publicly available and there were also a number of subscription-based services.

'They keep information about renters for a number of years and it's very difficult to know what they have stored, we've tried to get access over a number of years,' Day said.

Twyford said it was troubling the information on these databases was not readily available to tenants and could not be 'tested or challenged'.

'The risk is that [the databases] could exacerbate what is already a power imbalance between renters and landlords in the current rental market.'

But Williams said tenancy databases generally recorded 'straight-out default and mostly it's money'.