Pet peeve

I’m a cat person. It would take a special dog to win me over - and that dog was never going to be Chris Bishop's. His dog appeared at today's policy announcement. It was fluffy and vacuous, like it was barking indiscriminately at anything and everything. The dog wasn't great either.

Let's talk about pet bonds, today's announcement billed as a ‘win/win’ for renters and landlords’ - as surely as tax concessions for landlords will trickle down in the form of lower rents. You'll see.

Apropos of nothing at all, this is my cat Atawhai. When my ex-partner and I split the relationship property, the cat went with him and our son went with me - and apparently it's too late to renegotiate.

What's the pet bonds policy?¹

Anyone who's trying to get by in this savage rental market knows exactly how hard it is to get affordable, stable and healthy housing - and how much harder if you've got a pet.

The pet bonds policy has three parts:

• Landlords will be able to require a pet bond the equivalent of two weeks’ rent.

• Landlords will be able to refuse tenants with pets.

• Tenants will have to pay for damage caused by pets.

And what's wrong with this?

As a cat from a broken home, Atawhai sometimes travels between his parents’ houses. Here he is on a custody weekend, being walked from his dad's place to mine by my son.

Well, today's pet bonds announcement is mostly just the status quo.

Landlords can already turn down pet owners, and pet owners can be made to pay for pet-related (and other) damage.² If that was all that's going on here - the current state dressed up a bit - then maybe I'd let it go.

One custody weekend, Atawhai broke loose from his harness and ran away, hiding under a nearby derelict building and refusing to come home. Here he is on the wrong side of the tracks, Straight Outta Trentham. It was a short-lived badassery, because he’s actually a sook.

But as any tenant who's had a garbage landlord will tell you, some see bonds as a kind of self-awarded monetary prize for already having a bunch of money. They find fatuous reasons to haggle over bonds, sometimes until tenants are so worn down they walk away.

Now there will be two bonds to haggle over, and more money for a tenant to lose.

But that’s not the worst of it.

My cat is a dick, but I love him. Pets and humans both just need stable lives with a little bit of love.

The government is selling this new policy as some kind of boon for people experiencing family violence. The problem they point to is very real: abusers use harm to pets, or the threat of it, as a means of power and control. But the idea that the shitty status quo will help abused partners is farcical - and the idea that fleecing them of a second bond when they exit a tenancy is downright cynical.

Pets and humans deserve better. And someone has to say it: this policy is a dog.

1. Pet bonds a win/win for renters and landlords | Beehive.govt.nz

2. Damage and repairs » Tenancy Services