Telfar-Barnard Lucy, Bennett Julie, Howden-Chapman Philippa, Jacobs David E, Ormandy David, Cutler-Welsh Matthew, Preval Nicholas, Baker Michael G, Keall Michael
Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington 6021, New Zealand.
School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2017 Nov 7;14(11):1352. doi: 10.3390/ijerph14111352.
In New Zealand, as in many other countries, housing in the private-rental sector is in worse condition than in the owner-occupier housing sector. New Zealand residential buildings have no inspection regime after original construction signoff. Laws and regulations mandating standards for existing residential housing are outdated and spread over a range of instruments. Policies to improve standards in existing housing have been notoriously difficult to implement. In this methods paper, we describe the development and implementation of a rental Warrant of Fitness (WoF) intended to address these problems. Dwellings must pass each of 29 criteria for habitability, insulation, heating, ventilation, safety, amenities, and basic structural soundness to reach the WoF minimum standard. The WoF's development was based on two decades of research on the impact of housing quality on health and wellbeing, and strongly influenced by the UK Housing Health and Safety Rating System and US federal government housing standards. Criteria were field-tested across a range of dwelling types and sizes, cities, and climate zones. The implementation stage of our WoF research consists of a non-random controlled quasi-experimental study in which we work with two city-level local government councils to implement the rental WoF, recruiting adjoining council areas as controls, and measuring changes in health, economic, and social outcomes.
在新西兰，和许多其他国家一样，私人租赁部门的住房状况比自有住房部门更差。新西兰的住宅建筑在原始建设验收后没有检查制度。规定现有住宅住房标准的法律法规已经过时，且分散在一系列文件中。提高现有住房标准的政策一直以来都很难实施。在这篇方法论文中，我们描述了一种旨在解决这些问题的租赁健康合格证书（WoF）的制定和实施情况。住宅必须通过关于适居性、隔热、供暖、通风、安全、设施和基本结构稳固性的29项标准中的每一项，才能达到WoF最低标准。WoF的制定基于对住房质量对健康和幸福影响的二十年研究，并受到英国住房健康与安全评级系统和美国联邦政府住房标准的强烈影响。这些标准在一系列不同类型、规模的住宅、城市和气候区进行了实地测试。我们的WoF研究的实施阶段包括一项非随机对照准实验研究，在该研究中，我们与两个市级地方政府委员会合作实施租赁WoF，招募相邻的委员会区域作为对照，并衡量健康、经济和社会结果的变化。
