Cold, damp homes contributing to spike in winter sickness

The number of cold, damp homes people are living in is contributing to the spike in winter health conditions, a community housing provider and social service charity says.Habitat for Humanity northern region chief executive Conrad LaPointe told Morning Report doctors are making around 3500 referrals a year to his organisation - and others - because of housing-related health conditions, including bronchitis, pneumonia, and strep throat, which is a precursor to rheumatic fever.A fifth of homes did not meet healthy home standards, and where there was a heat pump in the home, people were not switching it on because of the cost of electricity, LaPointe said."When we're walking into homes, what we do find is these homes are still very cold in winter. The heat pumps are not on."It's either food, clothing or electricity ... one or two of those."He said there was no quick fix to the problem but in the short term, it was important that people could use a heat pump without worrying about the cost.Increasing fuel payments to those who need it most would solve some of the other problems such as the demand on hospitals, he said."So there's going to be savings down the road, if just from May, June onwards, people can get some decent payments in."New Zealand needed to build its way out of the poor housing situation, he said."Some of these older homes, they need tens and tens of thousands of dollars of work to actually make them really lovely places to live in."Hopefully we can build our way out across a range of tenure types that meets people at their point of need."He said that included home ownership, affordable rentals, public housing, and build to rent options: "...all across the board so we can have a range of housing that in a generation we can build this out".