This article is great. The author actually gets the obvious limitations built into this government act. Even if NZ chose the top option of all those offered we wouldn’t have guaranteed warm healthy homes. They would be better but not much better … unless someone pays the tenants (large) heating bill. One issue I think is missing is that new homes being built right now are in many cases not warm healthy homes either. They are better but still deficient.
“The bigger point is: How much can you do with a house that was not designed, fit-for-purpose, for cold weather? It doesn’t do the job. That’s the reality of a lot of New Zealand’s older housing stock. It doesn’t do what it should in terms of keeping people warm – because it wasn’t designed to.”
“The Healthy Homes initiative in many respects looks like a bit of a band aid solution to me. It’s a kind of short term alleviation of the discomfort, while the underlying condition is allowed to continue.
Longer term, I think there needs to be the whole question of how we, as a country, replace and modernise large parts of the housing stock that just is not fit for purpose and wouldn’t be unless you virtually rebuilt it.”“Sticking insulation on and installing super-powered heating into these inadequate homes is not a long term solution.
Long term, surely if we are talking about sustainability, we need to be looking at the construction of ‘passive’ houses that require very little heating at all. “
Read more on this link.