Fifteen new homes in Whakatāne will help low-income workers save towards buying their own home while also bringing to life a dream of local iwi.
Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa will cut the ribbon on the new homes on Friday.
The new homes will be available at below-market rent, allowing tenants to save for a deposit on their first home.
Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa (also known as Ngāti Awa Social and Health Services Trust) has built more than just a papakāinga on its Golf Links Road site, it has built a Kāinga Māori, says Chief Executive Enid Ratahi-Pryor.
She said Sir Hirini Mead defined the difference between a papakāinga and a kāinga Māori.
“A kāinga Māori is connected to the history of the place. It is connected to whakapapa, and it is connected to the things that make or give life to the village.”
The eight one-bedroom units, five two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom houses share the site with health and social services, early childhood education centre Te Waipuna Ariki o Mātangireia Te Wai and teen parent education unit Rangiātea.
The homes come complete with fruit trees and vines, and vegetable gardens for residents to grow their own food.
“When you put all these services together, with our kaumātua, our babies and bring our housing into the mix, you have a kāinga Māori.”
The new housing project marks a major change in focus for Ngāti Awa, from being a government-contracted provider of emergency and transitional housing for the past 35 years.
“We handed all of our contracts back to the Ministry of Social Development about two to three years ago, because we felt all we were doing was allowing people to live comfortably in conditions that were unhealthy.
“We were not satisfied that we were actually coming up with sustainable housing solutions for families that needed to get out of poverty.”
It became clear that to achieve this, they needed to add to the housing stock.
“We’re not developers by any means, but when you are trying to improve the situation for people here in Whakatāne, the only solution was to build,” Ratahi-Pryor said.
“We are experiencing more and more poverty in our community, in areas where you would never ever have dreamed.
“So we have pivoted. We have left public social housing to the Government and we’re now targeting working families who just need that little bit of a hand.”
The new tenancy management company, He Tohu Kāinga, has been set up for people to apply to rent the properties.
The new homes would be rented to low-income workers who were actively trying to save toward their own homes and willing to work with multiple agencies to help them achieve that goal.
“Through government contracts, we are able to reduce market rents,” Ratahi-Pryor said.
“We’re looking between 20 and 30 percent market rent reduction, which will enable families who are low income working, to actually get a hand up. They can save the difference between what they usually pay in market rent and use that money to contribute toward their deposit.”
There are plans for more homes in the future, and another 15 are already in the pipeline on land owned by Kawarehe Trust on Huna Road, which Whakatāne District Council is in the process of rezoning as residential.
Ratahi-Pryor said the rentals were not only for Ngāti Awa people but anyone meeting the criteria and willing to live and engage in the kāinga environment.
“We would hope that families would be moving on from here in about three years time - some earlier, some a bit later – into home ownership, whether that is with our home ownership programme in the future or just buying a home.”
Along with the opening on Friday, the trust will also officially launch its industry training and employment platform, Rukuhia te Mahi.
There are already seven students on site, helping with the housing project while also undergoing a seven-week training programme through industry training provider BCITNZ.
Through social procurement processes built into its contracts with companies such as Waiotahi Contractors and Generation Homes, the trust hopes to see these students move into employment once their training is complete.
“They’re not necessarily youth,” Ratahi-Pryor said. “A lot of the programmes at the moment are targeting young people from school. We are actually targeting people who have been unemployed and on a benefit for many years.
“They haven’t fitted the government target group, so we have targeted them. We bring them in, give them work skills, and within seven weeks, they are on the worksite. It’s not like a normal training programme that operates for 48 weeks. These are short, sharp, hard industry skills.”
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
