Institutional challenges in addressing healthy low-cost housing for all: learning from past policy.

• Author: Bierre, Sarah

Abstract

There is increasing interest in how New Zealand might address the policy issue of providing good-quality affordable housing in the future. A crucial part of this is dealing with the quality of existing dwellings, particularly residential housing built prior to the Building Code 1991, which makes up the bulk of the housing stock. Present housing standards for existing dwellings have origins in the policy discussions of the 1930s and 1940s. This article examines the institutional influences on the development of policy for housing regulation in the 1930s and 1940s and discusses the way that institutions can affect how housing quality, particularly in the private rental sector, is framed as an issue today. This paper uses primary documents sourced from government files at Archives New Zealand, giving a fresh perspective on housing history, including the influence of organisational relationships, the redefinition of the housing role of the Department of Health, and the way that morality was embedded in policy--exemplified in the exclusion of Maori from mainstream government administration. We conclude that while the socioeconomic and political contexts of policy may change, the institutions and ideas of the past can linger and shape how policy issues are framed today.

INTRODUCTION

The shape of the housing market and the quality of housing--whether public or private, old or new--can have an influence on the health of the occupants (Howden-Chapman 2004). Housing is an important determinant of health, a "commodity, purchased by a household, but also an investment in health" (Fass 1987). Therefore, the state can be seen to have a legitimate policy role in addressing the externalities of housing.

In effect, the state--and those who are able to impose their views through it--contributes very substantially to producing the state of the housing market, doing this largely through all the forms of regulation and financial assistance aimed at promoting particular ways of bringing tastes to fruition in terms of housing, through assistance to builders or private individuals, such as loans, tax exemptions, cheap credit etc. And it does this, particularly, by directly or indirectly guiding the financial--and also emotional--investments of the various social categories in respect of housing. (Bourdieu 2005:16) The current Labour Coalition Government has recently stated its vision for housing in New Zealand as one where "all New Zealanders have access to affordable, sustainable, good quality housing appropriate to their needs" (Housing New Zealand Corporation 2005:7). The launch of The Housing Strategy for New Zealand (Housing New Zealand Corporation 2005) brings together the range of work currently undertaken in housing, including plans to review policy regulating existing dwellings. It is both timely and important to look at the institutional barriers policymakers have faced in the past in attempting to achieve a better quality of housing, particularly for people with a low income, in order to more closely understand what issues might be faced in strategies today. This paper takes a comparative historical perspective, drawing on the content of government files between 1935 and 1950, with a focus on private rental housing. With the benefit of hindsight, the current political and policy interest in housing, demonstrated by the creation of the Department of Building and Housing in 2004 and its expansive work programme reviewing housing policy in New Zealand, can be set in the context of past construction of the policy issues.

A rich collection of histories is available on housing in New Zealand (Davidson 1994, Ferguson 1994, Schrader 2005). These authors outline the rise of social housing under the first Labour Government, documenting the transition from a state housing scheme to a welfare model, influenced by the popularity of home ownership. This paper draws on these histories, focusing on the organisational relationships and ideas that shaped policy regulating housing quality standards in existing housing in the private rental sector.

The private rental sector is growing in proportion to the decline of home ownership and the low base of state housing. While new housing must meet the health and wellbeing requirements of the Building Code, no such requirements apply to existing dwellings, despite the majority of housing being built before the Building Act 1991. The quality outcomes for existing housing have not changed substantially since the nuisance and sanitation requirements of the Health Act 1920, or the Housing Improvement Regulations 1947. This paper explores the ideas and institutions that framed this policy issue, presenting evidence that suggests that the way housing quality in existing dwellings is framed today is contingent on institutions that linger on from the past.

The period during and immediately after World War Two was a critical juncture in housing history. It was a period of major economic change and political uncertainty, features that were catalysts to the rise of a welfare state. "Critical junctures" such as these are moments when change is possible, where political, economic and social conditions collide to create opportunity for institutional change that can then have unintended consequences and outcomes in the future: "political development is often punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life" (Pierson 2000:251).

The effectiveness of policy decisions on housing quality in the 1930s and 1940s was constrained by cultural norms and institutions. The incorporation of morality into housing policy restricted the benefits of state housing by defining who was deserving and who was not. Maori were excluded from mainstream housing assistance on the basis that their needs would be met by the under-funded Department of Native Affairs. Additionally, poor inter-agency communication resulted in unclear problem definition and conflict between government administrations. The crisis in housing quality for those in hardship was eventually diminished in part by a concerted post-war effort to build state housing, and policies supporting home ownership, a form of tenure increasingly embedded in the national psyche after World War One (Davidson 1994, Ferguson 1994).

We begin with a brief discussion of the historical institutional methodology the paper uses and the methods employed to review documents from Archives New Zealand. We then consider the legislative meanings of housing quality, and argue that the legal system has changed very little since the 1940s. Next we examine the institutional influences on how the policy issue of housing quality was defined and addressed, followed by a discussion of the cultural norms that influenced the policy and its implementation, focusing on the morality of housing quality and tenants. Finally, we discuss the contemporary face of these institutional and cultural factors in the context of housing policy in the private rental market today.

METHOD AND DATA COLLECTION--THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY

This paper adopts an institutional theoretical framework. Institutionalism is an approach that explains political, social and economic outcomes through the study of institutions. We acknowledge that "institutions are not a substitute for interests and ideas as the ultimate motors of political action" (Hall 1992:109), but they are a useful and important means for examining political change. Institutions can be described as "formal organisations, informal rules and procedures that structure conduct" (Thelen and Steinmo 1992), or "formal rules, policy structures, or norms" (Pierson 2000:265).

A historical perspective helps to illuminate the assumptions that influenced the process of making the rules, and also sheds light on how things work today: "at a general level the historical context shapes current circumstances in important ways" (Malpass 2000: 210). Decisions made in the past tend to have implications for the future through a process of "path dependence". This term refers to the idea that once a path is chosen, or an institution established, it is likely to persist or is increasingly unlikely to be strayed from (Pierson 2000). We use these insights to critically examine the policy decisions and processes of the past, which have created legislation still used in housing quality regulation today.

Data Source and Analysis

A substantial review of government files relating to housing between 1930 and 1945 was used to inform the arguments in this paper. Relevant papers were sourced from the archives of the then Departments of Health, Housing Construction, Native Affairs, Justice and Labour held at Archives New Zealand. Responsibility for housing was dispersed across government departments, which meant locating relevant documents was a process of following trails of correspondence across files and ministries. During this period, considerable criticism was directed towards local authorities for their management of housing quality at the regional level. For this reason, the data source was widened to include archives from the Wellington City Council, in order to better understand the position of local authorities.

The selection of information was important, given that "writing history requires hard choices, about what to put in and what to leave out, and about what is important and what is not" (Malpass 2000:196). We attempted to include all material, and where selection was needed it was chosen to "reveal both contrary and supporting indicators" (Tosh 2000:137). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the information, facilitated by the qualitative software programme NVivo. Coding data into key themes is a useful place to begin qualitative analysis as it can show relationships between events that emerge from the chronological narrative of history. We then evaluated the material with the goal of exploring the institutional barriers and...