It's probably not something landlords will want to know, hear or tangle with.

It's a much overlooked, explicit and unambiguous bit of legislation buried in the statute books for nearly 80 years. And it could cost landlords lots of money.

Baywide Community Law Service legal intern Dr Friedrich Schlimbach, and Leanne and Daniel Sullivan. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

It's the Housing Improvement Regulations 1947, Clause 15. The minimum standard, is succinct and unequivocal.

'Every house shall be free from dampness.”

'It won't help landlords, but it could and should help a whole generation and a whole raft of tenants,” says Bev Edwards, managing solicitor at Baywide Community Law Centre.

'We say landlords have a legal duty and obligation to ensure the house they are letting is dry and habitable. And we've discovered that responsibility is already enshrined in law. Isn't that interesting?”

The obscure statute was dusted off by an academic team researching cases of housing quality before the Tenancy Tribunal. Bev plans to wave this big stick when she represents a Tauranga woman in the Tenancy Tribunal later this month.

'I suffered depression because it's always cold in a damp house,” says ex-tenant Leanne Sullivan. 'It didn't matter how many layers you put on, it was always warmer outside than inside.”

Her son's school complained he was absent a lot. 'He was just sick from the dampness,” she says. She claims there was mould and fungus on her son's bed and on her furniture, and the entire environment was unhealthy.

'My 12-year-old son had to sleep with me just for body warmth.”

And only when they moved out were they well again.

'The landlord still claims the house wasn't damp and he wasn't responsible,” says Bev.

'We don't agree. When you put a house up to be tenanted, it has to be of a minimum accepted standard and one of those minimum standards is that the house has to be free of dampness.”

Leanne is claiming $3000 for the landlord's alleged failure to meet health and safety requirements, $4640 because dampness prevented her from subletting a room and $700 for damage to a mattress.

Add to that exemplary damages of $200 for stress, loss of peace, harassment and breach of quiet enjoyment and $1000 compensation for what's claimed to be a retaliatory notice to vacate the house, at the total claim comes to $11,340.

'There was nowhere in the house to go to sleep,” says Leanne. 'Do we sleep in the lounge? Do we sleep in the spare room? There was nowhere because the whole place was damp and awful.”

Leanne says when dampness issues arose she would seek advice from plumbers and drainage experts.

Bev says her client was getting indications from these experts that there were underlying issues and that patching the problems wasn't going to work.

Leanne says there was flooding beneath the house, no functional soak holes and the storm water was connected to the sewer.

'This was not her imagination,” says Bev. 'Things were wrong.

'She has a photographic record of conditions and objective reports from tradesmen. Things must have been wrong because attempts were made to fix them. And all the time things were being patched, she had to live amongst it.”

Leanne applied and got a government subsidy on home insulation – an 80 per cent discount on $4000.

'The landlord financially benefited from Leanne's initiative,” says Bev.

But when they came to install the insulation, Leanne says she was told that because of the state of the house, the insulation would not last five years.

It didn't occur to her when she moved in that there was an 'enormous” issue with dampness. 'That is something you discover in time.”

Outside water ponded around the house, says Leanne. 'It just never dried.” And inside she says it was dripping with condensation. 'I had to take a small portable stove outside to cook or boil water.”

A few days after Leanne took a case to the Tenancy Tribunal, the landlord asked her to vacate the premises so it could be sold.

'He obviously had enough of me raising issues and wanted me gone,” says Leanne.

But Bev says there's no doubt the place was unsuitable and uninhabitable.

Every year there are stories of people living in cold, damp and mouldy housing, and this year the debate over dampness came to a head when a coroner ruled poor living standards contributed to the death of an Auckland toddler.

There were calls for a Warrant of Fitness for all rental houses, not just state houses, which would have meant a minimum standard of living including insulation and heating.

'We need our homes to be healthy homes,” said Labour leader Andrew Little.

'No New Zealand child should live through a winter in a cold, damp home,” says the Greens' Metiria Turei.

There was a resounding no from the government finance minister Bill English, who said costs would only force housing stock out of the market or people out of houses they could no longer afford.

'Landlords obviously don't want WOFs because they think they will be out of pocket. But if the properties are habitable in the first place and they are decent landlords, they have nothing to be scared of.”

But Bev says with the Housing Improvement Regulations 1947, we may not need a WOF. 'This is a WOF for houses act. It's already there and it's still on the books.”

And it says: 'Every house shall be free from dampness.”

When the 1986 Residential Tenancies Act came in, Bev says everyone would have assumed it replaced whatever law was there.

'We only ever refer to the RTA, which requires landlords to comply with all requirements of buildings, health and safety. Or the 2004 Building Act. Whereas the 1947 act refers specifically to dampness.”

Just because the Housing Improvement Regulations are old it doesn't mean they are neither applicable nor effective.

'So they might just have to dust it off and amend it to bring it into this century.”

The Baywide Community Law Office has had a German legal intern, Dr Friedrich Schlimbach, working on case law.

'Is the landlord responsible or liable for dampness in a tenanted property in terms of this legislation? Well there is case law, none of it recent and some of it works in our interest while some against it.”

But the issue is that while regulations exist, they're not being used to force a landlord to fulfil his obligations. 'I think that's because people aren't aware of them, including most Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators.”

What do people in tenanted houses want, asks Bev?

'They just want them to be healthy and safe, clean, dry and secure. That's not too much to ask. Just the basic amenities of life. And would a landlord live like Leanne had to? The answer has to be no.”