By Luka Forman of RNZ
A single mother says her two-year-old daughter has contracted pneumonia and been repeatedly hospitalised, after growing up in a home full of mould which her landlord failed to maintain.
The woman was awarded $12,874 as part of a successful Tenancy Tribunal bid, but said her young daughter's health had been permanently affected and she was still in and out of hospital every few months.
She believed the Healthy Homes Standards, introduced in 2019, were inadequate and should require mould testing to stop more children getting sick.
A housing researcher said the tenant's situation was sad but not uncommon, as New Zealand had internationally high levels of mouldy housing, especially in rental properties.
After living at her Hamilton rental for about a year, Samantha Moore said her infant daughter - who lived there since she was a newborn - developed pneumonia and asthma because of the mould.
The landlord hired contractors to get rid of the mould but the work was inadequate, Moore said.
"I think it's absolutely disgusting that they just let her get worse and worse knowing that she was a newborn baby, and knowing that I was a solo mum trying to do like, everything... they were just like, 'You know what? Let's throw you in a mouldy house and we'll just let it get worse.'"
After becoming increasingly desperate, Moore went to the Tenancy Tribunal. An adjudicator found the landlord failed to properly repair or remove damp and mouldy materials in the house, which were caused by leaks.
"So all of the wood had split apart from each other, leaving massive, massive gaps in coverage to the ground, coverage to the walls. The walls were so drenched you could literally place your hand on it and your hand would go through."
A mould report - which cost Moore $6503 - found very high levels of mould spores in her daughter's bedroom, noting in bold the bedroom should not be used until the issue was addressed.
At this point, her daughter had already been hospitalised five times.
"She was at that point needing to be in the hospital quite a lot, and she was getting oxygen masks put on her and steroid injections getting put into her to help her breathing. It was very bad."
The Tenancy Tribunal order noted the landlord's failure to repair mouldy and damaged materials in adjacent rooms was most probably what made the room uninhabitable.
Even now, nearly a year after moving out of the property, Moore said her daughter was still in and out of hospital every three or four months with respiratory problems.
The tribunal order noted that her persistence in bringing the mould issue to the tribunal had quite possibly saved her daughter's life.
Philippa Howden-Chapman, co-director of the He Kāinga Oranga research programme into health and housing in New Zealand, said Moore's story was sad but not surprising.
"This is one of a number of cases that has come forward. So it doesn't surprise me sadly that someone who doesn't have many options has to put up with those kind of conditions."
A Stats NZ survey in 2018 found nearly 50% of renters had mould in their home, while for owner-occupiers it was just under 30%.
This was high by international standards, Howden-Chapman said, for a couple of reasons.
"One is to do with the climate. We have very high rainfall in New Zealand so we can get quite high humidity. And in the case of rental property they're usually older stock, so they're not as well-maintained."
The Healthy Homes Standards introduced in 2019 had made a difference, she said, but there was still a long way to go.
In Moore's Tenancy Tribunal case, it was noted that a third-party healthy homes inspector found the house complied with draught-proofing and drainage requirements.
But Moore believed those inspections needed to go further - and include mould testing. If they had in her case, she believed it could have stopped her daughter getting sick.
RNZ's Checkpoint programme approached Moore's former landlord Shivam Verma. He said he disagreed with the Tenancy Tribunal's ruling, but respected it and did not wish to comment further.
Waikato Real Estate, which acted as the agent for Verma, did not respond to requests for comment.
