Letters: 'Deregulation not the answer to housing crisis' 16 Apr, 2021 05:00 PM 4 minutes to read Whanganui's housing market has exploded in recent years. Photo / File Whanganui Chronicle Rene de Jongh (Letters, April 13) has suggested that the housing crisis would be solved if the government got rid of its housing regulations. He was lucky he had his properly designed house in the central North Island built 40 years ago: three years later, deregulating the housing industry and leaving it to market forces was exactly what the government did do. Consequently, unskilled labourers replaced apprentices, juvenile pine sapwood was used for building and builders relied on no more than a coat of paint for weather-tightness.