Auckland Needs a Boarding House Register (updated 28 July 2025)

Auckland Needs a Boarding House

The number of people experiencing homelessness in the city centre has almost doubled in nine months, the recent Homelessness Insights Report reveals. Fewer and fewer people are eligible for housing support, and are living in doorways, cars and minivans rather than live in boarding houses that they view as expensive, unsanitary, and unsafe.

Central government is turning a blind eye to appalling mismanagement by some boarding house owners, saying they can do nothing, but this is not true. Cities across Australia, Canada and the UK have regulations to protect residents and reduce impacts on neighbourhoods. There is little evidence that this leads to widespread closures. These are profitable businesses.

City Vision supports a boarding house register with a modest annual fee to cover costs of inspection and administration, and a range of penalities for non-compliance that councils could use. Government agencies could refuse to send people to non-compliant hostels, and so incentivise higher standards.

Currently, fines cost the ratepayer many thousands of dollars to collect and are set at a level so low they are treated by landlords as just another cost of business. There are limited powers to enter a building and enforce compliance, and without a register, councils are reliant on tip-offs to know there is even a problem.

But pretending an issue doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it goes away. A report in 2024 showed that of 44 buildings reported to council, 40 were non-compliant with regard sanitation, fire risk and/or healthy homes standards.  If a pub needs a license, why shouldn’t a boarding house? No one should have to live in a place where the building work is shoddy, rooms are overcrowded or not fit for purpose, or if they have to deal with ongoing threatening or criminal behaviour.

Regular police call outs should be a red flag.

The government has avoided addressing the issues saying they are low priority. Nor do they do any follow up with regard people who seek emergency housing and do not get it. If this government wanted to improve the lives of people at risk in their communities, they could take the first steps to make a register mandatory right now.  

MP Jenny Salesa’s bill to amend the Residential Tenancies Act (Boarding House Register) was drawn from the ballot last week. City Vision calls on the government to endorse the bill through the first reading to progress towards a solution. This is an approach supported in the past by New Zealand First, and advocated for by Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour while in opposition. 

Whether one’s interest is in reducing crime, managing taxpayer’s money better, or alleviating suffering, this bill should be supported.