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Residential Tenancies Act 1986

Tenancy agreements - Preliminary matters

12: Discrimination to be unlawful act

You could also call this:

“This law says people can't be unfairly treated when renting a home because of who they are.”

You can’t treat people unfairly when it comes to renting a place to live. This is called discrimination, and it’s against the law. Here’s what you need to know:

It’s illegal to discriminate against someone when you’re deciding to rent to them, continue their rental, change their rental agreement, end their rental, or renew their rental. This follows the rules in the Human Rights Act 1993.

If you’re a landlord, you can’t tell someone else to discriminate against a person who wants to rent from you. You also can’t say that you plan to discriminate, whether in an advertisement or any other way.

There’s one exception to these rules. If you’re renting a place as part of your job (called a service tenancy), and you stop working for your landlord, they can end your rental agreement. This is okay even if it might seem like discrimination based on your employment status.

These rules apply not just to actual rental agreements, but also to agreements that might happen in the future, even if you don’t end up renting the place.

This text is automatically generated. It might be out of date or be missing some parts. Find out more about how we do this.

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM95015.

Topics:
Housing and property > Renting
Rights and equality > Anti-discrimination
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Part 2 Tenancy agreements
Preliminary matters

12Discrimination to be unlawful act

  1. Each of the following is hereby declared to be an unlawful act:

  2. discrimination against any person in respect of the grant, continuance, extension, variation, termination, or renewal of a tenancy agreement in contravention of the Human Rights Act 1993; and
    1. the giving of an instruction or the stating of an intention in contravention of subsection (2).

      1. A landlord shall not, in respect of the grant, continuance, extension, variation, termination, or renewal of a tenancy agreement,—

      2. instruct any person to discriminate against any other person in contravention of the Human Rights Act 1993; or
        1. state an intention (whether by advertisement or otherwise) to discriminate against any person in contravention of that Act.

          1. Nothing in section 21(1)(k) of the Human Rights Act 1993 shall apply to the termination of a service tenancy on the ground that the tenant has ceased to be, or is about to cease to be, employed by the landlord or (where the landlord is a company) by an associated company (within the meaning of section 2(2)).

          2. In this section tenancy agreement includes a prospective tenancy agreement, regardless of whether or not a tenancy is granted.

          Notes
          • Section 12: replaced, on , by section 5(1) of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act 1996 (1996 No 7).