Plan to fine tenants for crowded flats

Tenants' groups are outraged about a plan to fine tenants up to $1000 if they get too many boarders or flatmates.

The plan, announced by Building Issues Minister Clayton Cosgrove, will create three "unlawful acts" making tenants liable for "exemplary damages" - effectively a fine on top of compensation for damage to a property. They are:

* Overpopulating the premises.

* Subletting or assigning a tenancy without consent.

* Harassing neighbours.

The maximum damages will be $1000 for overpopulating or subletting and $2000 for harassment.

Landlords had been seeking wider changes that would have criminalised offences such as not paying the rent, wilfully damaging property and gaining a tenancy through a false identity.

But the Auckland tenants' group Housing Lobby yesterday said the proposed damages for "overpopulating" were "outrageous".

"A lot of people can't afford to rent in the private sector," said the group's co-ordinator Sue Henry. "Punishing them and turning them into criminals because of their circumstances is absolutely reprehensible."

Auckland Tenants Protection Association (TPA) chairman Peter Klein said the provision should be used only in "extreme" cases after the landlord gave the tenant 10 days' notice in writing to reduce the number of tenants.

Christchurch TPA co-ordinator Helen Gatonyi asked whether the clause would be used to punish parents if their adult children returned home.

Mr Klein, a lawyer, said common law traditionally provided for tenants to sublet with their landlord's consent and that should not be withheld unreasonably.

The Residential Tenancies Act also allowed landlords to specify a maximum number of residents, but this was not common and tenants had been liable to pay damages only if the landlord could prove that overcrowding caused actual damage to the premises.

Auckland Property Investors Association vice-president John May said the Government had failed to give the Tenancy Tribunal real teeth.

"Ninety per cent of the applications to the Tenancy Tribunal are for rent arrears or damage to property," he said.

"That could have been very, very simply addressed by a little clause that rents can come from source - Work and Income could pay rents directly to landlords."

Mr Cosgrove said an officials committee would investigate "greater flexibility in the redirection of [welfare] benefits to landlords".

Work and Income spokeswoman Jane Mortlock said the agency did not discuss tenants' affairs with landlords but would pay benefits to landlords if requested by tenants "as a last resort".

Renters will have to pay for water

Longstanding confusion over whether landlords or tenants should pay water charges has finally ended - the tenants will pay.

Building Issues Minister Clayton Cosgrove says changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will make tenants pay water bills for all houses and flats where separate water meters exist.

Until now, they have only had to pay if their landlords inserted a clause saying so in their tenancy agreements.

Both landlords' and tenants' groups welcomed the change as clarifying an uncertain law.

"Tenancy agreements haven't always mentioned it. It's only the more modern ones that have allowed for that," said Auckland Property Investors vice-president John May.

Tenants Protection Association executive officer Angela Maynard said there had been confusion about the issue and it was good have it clarified. "It's user-pays, basically. It's been geared towards that for a long time," she said.

Where there is no mains supply, landlords will have to provide for collection and storage of water.