The Rental Reality Hamilton Needs To Face

Housing will be talked about a lot over the next month or so, and much of that debate will focus on reducing the barriers to home ownership. That matters, but too often, we still frame renting as a problem to be solved rather than a legitimate, long-term part of how many people choose - or need - to live.

Right now, 45% of Hamilton households rent. Many of those renters may still aspire to buy a home one day, but a growing number are making a different choice. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve given up, or that they’re waiting on the sidelines of the housing market. For many people, renting is a practical, deliberate and entirely valid way to live.

Imagine a Hamilton renter who’s 38, likes their neighbourhood, has children established at their local school, invests their savings elsewhere and has no particular desire to take on a $600,000 mortgage. Why should our housing discourse regard that person as somehow waiting to become a ‘real’ participant in the housing market?

The same is true for the family newly arrived in Hamilton, the retiree who’s sold their home, the young professional who values mobility, and the person who simply doesn’t want a mortgage. Their housing needs aren’t less real because they aren’t expressed through ownership.

My team manages more than 4,000 properties in Hamilton, and that means we see, every day, how much the rental experience has changed. Homes are warmer, drier and more tightly regulated than they’ve ever been. Many tenants can now have pets. It’s also easier for renters to hold landlords to account. As standards have lifted, more tenants are staying longer, putting down roots in their communities and taking real pride in the property they call home.

As a country, we’ve created an environment in which long-term renting can be a more attractive and secure option than it once was. That progress hasn’t been easy, but expectations are shifting in a positive direction.

I don’t want to dismiss the importance of home ownership, but our housing system can’t be built around the assumption that every successful adult aspires to, or should eventually, own a house.

Some younger renters are also building their financial futures around investments that aren’t bricks and mortar, and that can be a perfectly sound strategy. They’re among about 1.5 million New Zealanders who currently rent - a number that’s growing year on year.

Retirees who rent are also one of the fastest-growing groups. As the population ages, more older New Zealanders are choosing to sell the family home and rent instead.

The dominant narrative is that this is sad and driven by a protracted cost-of-living crisis. Times have been tough for many people, and the prospect of older New Zealanders being pushed into hardship is deeply troubling. But there’s another narrative worth considering: that, for some people, holding onto a large asset isn’t always the best or most practical choice.

Perhaps we should put more energy into figuring out how to provide safe and stable renting conditions for our ageing population. These tenants, especially, deserve healthy homes, strong rights, professional management and security. I also wish there was more conversation about who their landlords will be - after all, they’ll need great ones.

We should also talk more specifically about Hamilton’s rental needs. A deep, diverse and professionally managed rental market is part of the infrastructure a growing city needs. We’re deliberately positioning ourselves as a city to attract new workers, and we know a greater proportion than ever before will want to rent, many for the long term.

That’s the conundrum: Hamilton will need more rental homes, and we need the right conditions to encourage people to provide them. Private investors remain an important part of the rental housing mix, but the environment has become more complex and many are weighing their options carefully. If we want a healthy, stable and professionally managed rental market, we need to make sure good investors can see a future in it.

Community housing providers and the state will continue to provide homes for people who need additional support, but none of those sectors is currently in a position to simply replace the small private investors who provide much of New Zealand’s rental stock.

That’s why the housing conversation needs to mature, particularly here in Hamilton. We’ll always need to create affordable pathways into home ownership, but we also need to build and maintain a rental system worthy of the people who live in it.

We expect rental homes to be healthy, and tenancies to be fair, secure and professional, but we also need to acknowledge that someone has to finance, own, maintain and manage these homes. If more Hamiltonians are going to rent, and tenancies are going to lengthen,

the question can’t be whether renting is second-best. The question is who’ll provide the healthy, stable and professionally managed homes those people deserve, and whether we’re prepared to build a housing conversation mature enough to answer it.