INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING HEALTHY LOW-COST HOUSING FOR ALL: LEARNING FROM PAST POLICY Sarah Bierre 1 Philippa Howden-Chapman 2 Louise Signal 3 Chris Cunningham 4 Abstract There is increasing interest in how New Zealand might address the policy issue of providing good-quality affordable housing in the future. A crucial part of this is dealing with the quality of existing dwellings, particularly residential housing built prior to the Building Code 1991, which makes up the bulk of the housing stock. Present housing standards for existing dwellings have origins in the policy discussions of the 1930s and 1940s. This article examines the institutional inluences on the development of policy for housing regulation in the 1930s and 1940s and discusses the way that institutions can affect how housing quality, particularly in the private rental sector, is framed as an issue today. This paper uses primary documents sourced from government iles at Archives New Zealand, giving a fresh perspective on housing history, including the inluence of organisational relationships, the redeinition of the housing role of the Department of Health, and the way that morality was embedded in policy – exempliied in the exclusion of Mäori from mainstream government administration. We conclude that while the socioeconomic and political contexts of policy may change, the institutions and ideas of the past can linger and shape how policy issues are framed today. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Associate Professor Ralph Chapman at Victoria University of Wellington, Mark Bennett, Victoria University of Wellington, Anna Matheson, Wellington School of Medicine, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. Correspondence Correspondence to Sarah Bierre, PhD candidate, He Kainga Oranga/Housing and Health Research Programme, Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Otago University. Phone + 64 4 385 5999, email sarah.bierre@otago.ac.nz Philippa Howden-Chapman is Professor of Public Health and the Director of the Housing and Health Research Programme at the Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Otago University. Louise Signal is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Otago University. Chris Cunningham is Professor of Mäori Health and the Director of the Research Centre for Mäori Health and Development, Massey University, Wellington. 1 2 3 4 Social Policy Journal of New Zealand • Issue 30 • March 2007 42