Editorial: Bad-tenants register needs more thought

It is difficult, in principle, to condemn the national rental database that has been set up to record good and bad tenants.

After all, if tenants pay their rent and take care of a property, they have nothing to worry about. Equally, it is a major plus for property managers, who seem to face an uphill task weeding out potential problem tenants.

Every year, about 35,000 applications are made to the Tenancy Tribunal over non-payment of rent, and every year there are countless cases of houses being left damaged or unclean. Why not establish what amounts to a tenants' blacklist?

The answer lies not in the principle but in the practice. Such registers always present substantial problems, not least in the need to ensure the information in them is accurate and that they are secure against unauthorised change or access. The Real Estate Institute, which is driving this initiative, has done nothing to offer reassurance that these conditions are being met.

In fact, it has made no attempt to place the database, which was started in August, in the public arena.

The institute's intention is for property managers to progressively enter thousands of tenants' name on the register, which, it says, will be accessed only by its own members. But it has not spelled out the way in which the database will be policed.

How, for example, there will be consistency when property managers may have different expectations or be motivated by a particular prejudice. Or what will happen if a dispute with a tenant does not go to the tribunal for adjudication. Will the property manager's version of events be accepted as gospel?

Worryingly, from a privacy perspective, the institute has not even indicated that tenants will be notified their details might be referred to the database. It says merely that those who want details of their listing can write to its national office. There appears no guarantee that incorrect or outdated information will be corrected.

A lack of recourse for unjustified listing has proved a major shortcoming of many such registers.

Britain's register of sex offenders, established in 1997, illustrates the potential perils. In one case, a schoolboy found himself blacklisted after admitting to smacking girls' bottoms and pinching bra straps. His plans for a military career were ruined.

It seems unlikely that the Real Estate Institute, however worthy its intentions, will be able to avoid lapses that have unfortunate repercussions for individual tenants.

The ultimate consequence, of course, will be that a large number of people will have great difficulty putting a roof over their heads. They will be run out of the institute's rental world, just as a similar register drawn up by the Kawerau police aims to drive criminals out of town.

Doubtless that is why Housing New Zealand is keen to distance itself from the database. It, after all, has a social responsibility in this area.

Clearly, many landlords feel exposed at the moment. The major recourse for most is a check of a prospective tenant's credit file.

Sometimes that does not reveal the full picture. Landlords do not even have ready access to Tenancy Tribunal decisions; a database has yet to be established.

Perhaps, therefore, it is little wonder that the idea of a register to match Australia's national tenancy database is being pursued.

But there is much to suggest that the ramifications of the concept have not been explored sufficiently. And that inadequate care is being taken with the privacy and monitoring concerns implicit in the development and maintenance of the register. This should be rectified before the database goes any further.