Framing home injury: opportunities and barriers to regulating for safer rental housing in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

Like many countries in the OECD, Aotearoa NZ does not comprehensively regulate or enforce the safety of rental housing, despite evidence that the significant scale of home injury can be reduced through cost-effective home modifications. We examine the framing of home injury in media, political, and organisational discourse to identify barriers to creating and enforcing laws for safer rental homes. We find progress in addressing safety via rental housing regulations is stymied, in part, by institutional arrangements that favour the framing of home injury as a product of individual behaviour and culpability rather than environmental risk, and the prioritisation of education and awareness-raising over regulatory and systemic interventions framed politically, as overreaching ‘nanny state’ policies. We propose opportunities to address the incidence of injury and inequities in outcomes and argue that effective regulation and enforcement will address the inherent power inequities in the rental sector between owner and occupier, which can influence the presence of injury hazards.