We need one for our car and now we need one for our house - if it's rented out, that is. The government is developing a warrant of fitness scheme requiring rental housing to be warm, dry and safe. Such a scheme is not a moment too soon in my opinion.
Late last year, I started receiving a flurry of phone calls from the public regarding the relocation of a building into a nearby neighbourhood. I didn't need such phone calls in order to be informed, however, as I had already been made well aware.
The moment I had turned the corner, the monstrosity jutted out into the skyline. What appeared like two storeys initially, upon closer inspection seemed instead to be a high internal ceiling. It looked like an old shearing shed pulled from a paddock. The tin shack building was old, rusty, dilapidated and surely not fit for human habitation - or so I thought.
I phoned council to make inquiries. I found out that though the building was squeezed and crammed right up to another house on the property, apparently this was permitted by district plan rules and regulations.
This surprised me, but what surprised me further was the information that followed. It's one thing to have a house seemingly hard pressed against an earlier dwelling, thus compressing all activities on that single property, however quite another to then allow people to live in the structure that seemed little more than that - an old rundown empty shed of an unhealthy and unsafe structure. I inquired about the minimum internal building or health and safety standards that a dwelling must achieve.
