Shivering through winter in homes that are too cold, too damp, or too expensive to heat

Friday, 20 June 2025

As electricity prices rise, many people are struggling to stay warm and dry this winter.

A visitor to a Dunedin home found she was losing feeling in her feet because it was so cold inside the house where an unwell elderly woman lived.

The elderly woman was just one of tens of thousands of people in households across the country struggling to keep their homes warm and dry this winter.

In Wellington, a university student wears a woolly hat to bed every night as the wind comes in through a crack between sliding windows in his bedroom.

Also in the capital, Wellington City Missioner Murray Edridge said the difficulties faced by disadvantaged people, which were accentuated by the arrival of winter, were “probably the worst it’s ever been”.

And Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA) welfare vice-president Josh Robinson said students were telling him they were “shocked and blindsided” by power bill increases this year.

That was making it even more difficult to pay for every daily necessities, Robinson said.

In the Deep South, a big snow dump in the central South Island earlier in June led to a dramatic increase in people contacting Invercargill-based Awarua Synergy, CEO Sumaria Beaton said.

Her team had found many people were struggling to pay all their bills.

“People are turning off heaters to just kind of survive,” Beaton said.

“The homes are cold, they become damp.”

The gap between windows in university student Jasper Putt's Wellington bedroom let in a 'noticeable airflow' during the cold capital city winter.

Feeling the breeze in Wellington

Massey University student Jasper Putt lives in a five-bedroom, two-storey house in the inner Wellington suburb of Newtown.

The house was being renovated when he moved in at the start of the year, and although the landlord had said the work would be completed some parts were unfinished, Putt said.

That included the windows in his bedroom, which he said had a gap up to 1cm wide that let in a “noticeable airflow”.

With the air coming in, the bedroom temperatures dropped to come very cold. “I sleep with a woolly hat on every night so I don’t get sick,” Putt said.

“In terms of a heater, I’m pretty power conscious, so only turn it on for a bit if it gets really cold.”

A dump of snow earlier in June led to a surge in Southland residents looking for help with cold and damp houses.

There was a heat pump in the lounge, and it did heat that room up, Putt said. The five tenants turned it on during the three hours of free power - 9pm to midnight - provided in their plan.

Their flat was “super cold”, Putt said. “Just having single-glazed windows, and a lot of them, your house is going to be cold.”

‘Lost feeling in her feet’

Green Party MP and energy spokesperson Scott Willis said he was aware of an adviser at the Dunedin-based Aukaha social service organisation who visited a “freezing cold” house.

“The person who went there said she lost feeling in her feet,” Willis said.

“The adviser said it was a nice enough house, but the older lady couldn’t afford to heat it … and she was ill.”

Aukaha general manager of Mana Takata Jade Saville said Aukaha had found an affordable method that worked for the occupant.

“With funding, we put 3M window fill on her bedroom windows that acts as double glazing, and provided her with an economical heater and an electric throw blanket that she could sit under to keep warm, as she couldn’t afford to heat her whole house.”

What about the Winter Energy Payment?

People on a main benefit, Superannuation, or a veteran’s pension can access help through the Winter Energy Payment. It is paid for the five months from May through September, at a rate of $20.46 a week for single people and $31.82 a week for couples and people with dependent children.

The payment is not available to tertiary students, something VUSWA wants changed.

Students were “often living in some of the coldest, dampest, and poorest housing, and surviving on deeply strained incomes”, VUSWA’s Robinson said.

Other help can come through the Warmer Kiwi Homes (WKH) programme, run through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA).

The grants are aimed at people on low incomes.

EECA said WKH had delivered more than 170,000 insulation and heating retrofits to homes since starting in 2018.

Condensation on a single-glazed window in a Nelson home during winter (file pic)

So far in 2025/26 nearly 22,400 retrofits were completed, following nearly 30,000 the year before.

Time nearly up for adopting Health Home Standards

Minimum healthy home standards (HHS) for heating, insulation, ventilation, moisture ingress and drainage, and draught stopping in rental properties became law in 2019, and have been phased in since then. All rental properties must comply by July 1, this year.

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment head of tenancy Kat Watson said a survey to be carried out this year would show how many landlords were meeting the HHS.

Larger-scale landlords who didn’t meet the HHS could face penalties of up to $50,000, while for smaller-scale landlords the penalties were up to $7200.