The Far North social agency putting people into their own 'recycled' homes

Thursday, 15 August 2019

He Korowai Trust is helping people move from homelessness to home ownership. (Video first published August 2019 and featuring the late chief executive Ricky Houghton.)

Ex-state rentals from Auckland are being bussed in to provide much-needed housing in Northland. But bureaucracy is slowing the work down, says the man behind the plan. Is it time to declare a housing state of emergency in the Far North? Florence Kerr and Tony Wall report for 'No place to live/Kāore te kāinga, kāore te ora', a Stuff investigation.

Within days of moving to Kaitaia, the land of her people, Roberta Ngawhika was living rough.

Ngawhika, 39, who moved north from Tauranga, says waiting lists for rentals were long and she couldn't get a look-in.

Not that she could afford it anyway - rents in the country's most impoverished region have become exorbitant.

'They are really expensive, I saw a one bedroom in Kaitaia for $250 and a four-bedroom for $450. It's Kaitaia,' she says, throwing up her hands.

'We ended up sleeping rough because our whānau couldn't take us in because they would get in trouble from their landlords.

'A cousin told me about He Korowai Trust and since then I've never looked back.'

Ngawhika will be moving to a one-bedroom tiny home, under the trust's Whare Ora housing scheme aimed at getting whānau off the street and into home ownership.

'I can't wait to be in my own place. Somewhere to call home.'

Whare Ora is the brainchild of trust chief executive Ricky Houghton and makes use of 'recycled' homes shipped from Auckland.

He Korowai Trust has taken whānau like Roberta Ngawhika off the street and into home ownership.

They are refurbished by young students from one of the trust's training academies and placed on a 20ha block of land just down the road from the Northerner Hotel, Kaitaia's notorious 'dumping ground' for the homeless.

A little village has begun to sprout - there are 19 houses, three bedroom homes for families and one bedroom units for singles and kaumatua.

Currently, nine homes are occupied by 17 adults and 43 children, with more soon to be rolled out.

The scheme is one attempt to address a daunting housing crisis facing the Far North.

The waiting list for state housing here has tripled since 2014, with about 150 families or individuals on the waiting list.

Thousands of others, most of them Māori, are living in sub-standard homes, some of them without power or running water.

'Whare Ora is an attempt to move people from homelessness, from their cowsheds, from their buses, from their condemned houses, from their overcrowding and to move them onto the bottom rung of home-ownership and to an improved quality of life,' Houghton says.

'It was an idea that came from the people, who were living in emergency accommodation and who continually asked us to help lift them out of their impoverished living conditions.'

When he first started the programme, before financial backers came on board, Houghton re-mortgaged his home in Auckland to pay for the 20ha of land. He has since been reimbursed.

The trust paid $50,000 for the first nine homes, then a further $225,000 to have them transported from Auckland.

The initiative is now funded by Te Puni Kokiri, Foundation North, the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.

Families moving into the homes will have a three-year trial period.

They pay under market rent of $275 per week.

'It's a bit of a try before you buy because we want to know … how committed these families are to help themselves,' Houghton says.

'From the $275, for the first three years, $20 is taken out for their KiwiSaver.

'Then after three years, if they're happy and we're happy, it goes into a rent to buy and then out of the $275 a week, $130 goes towards their mortgage.

'So that means … they own their house within 12 years.'

There is also an incentive for those that move their Whare Ora home to Māori land.

'If whānau pick their house up within the 12 years and take it onto their land, we will pay them $50,000 to take it,' Houghton says. 'We reimburse them for the infrastructure that they leave behind.'

Houghton has big plans for the scheme.

Housing New Zealand is shipping 7000 houses out of Auckland over the next decade, and Houghton wants 700 of them for his patch.

Andrew Booker, Housing New Zealand's general manager, says the agency will help where it can.

'We have already provided houses from Auckland that would have otherwise been demolished, and have agreed to provide as many as we have available,' he says.

HNZ is working with iwi, social agencies and Government officials to address issues in the Far North.

'We have committed considerable time and resource into helping Ricky and his team with their work and will carry on doing so,' Booker says.

The agency currently has 2200 houses in Northland, with plans to add another 150 homes in Kaitaia, Kaikohe and Whangarei over the next three years.

The long term plan is to regenerate and retrofit 1600 existing homes in Northland to bring them up to healthy living standards.

'STATE OF EMERGENCY'

Houghton wants more to be done, and faster. Whare Ora is wasting millions on building consent fees, he says.

He calls it a 'code red' situation and wants the Government to call a housing state of emergency to help cut through the red tape.

Ricky Houghton is chief executive of He Korowai Trust, a social service provider in Kaitaia. He's calling on the Government to declare a housing state of emergency in Northland.

'You know Christchurch had it for their earthquake,' he says. 'Well guess what, the ground has moved for all the families up here too, they deserve better.

'So I'm hoping that a bit of common sense will come into this whole thing and they won't be able to ignore it for too much longer because what's around the corner … is civil disobedience and they won't be able to ignore that.'

Houghton has twice written to the Government demanding a state of emergency.

'That would allow Government and local government to relax the consenting laws that … stop any type of development that we are doing here.

'It doesn't mean that we are going to get an inferior job done - all the work is done up to the building code.

'What it does do in terms of the council consent process and the bureaucracy that goes with it, is set [that] aside so that people like me can get on with the job.'

Housing and Urban Development Minister Megan Woods says she's open to the idea of a state of emergency.

'I certainly agree with the intention. It's clear there is a housing crisis in New Zealand and especially for the Far North. That's not good enough,' she says.

'But for me what's absolutely key is, are we taking the right actions to address the crisis?

'We know this is one of the biggest long term challenges our country faces. That's why we're building record levels of new public homes and taking action to fix the broken housing market.'

She says the Government aims to provide 6400 additional homes across New Zealand by June 2022.

So far, 28 of these homes have been built in the Northland region and 180 will be added by 2022.

'As well as building new public homes, we're providing wrap around support to combat homelessness,' Woods says.

Kelvin Davis, the Te Tai Tokerau MP who grew up in the Far North and knows the struggles of its people all too well, says a lot of work is being done to drive economic growth in the area to lift people out of poverty.

A big part of that work will be funded from the $170m committed to Northland from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), he says.

He Korowai Trust has provided homes for nearly 50 children through their housing scheme Whare Ora.

'We face a range of complex challenges here in the Far North - high unemployment, an under-utilised labour force, lower GDP than other districts - but as a Government we are focused on turning around the fortunes of this region,' he says.

'None of the solutions are easy, and addressing long-term challenges takes time.'

Shane Jones, the NZ First MP who controls the PGF, is another who understands the complex issues of the area, having grown up in Awanui just north of Kaitaia.

Although he personally knows people living in run-down houses, he won't support Houghton's call for a housing state of emergency - saying he doesn't believe in slogans.

Jones believes the crisis can be fixed with a collective effort by Māori and the Crown.

'If you're asking me do I back Ricky Houghton and the mahi he's doing in the North? Absolutely, I do,' Jones says.

'I think, however, there's a simpler way to do rural housing and it's less red tape. We have over-complicated housing.'

Jones says Northland has been forgotten by successive governments because the poverty could not be seen.

'Out of sight out of mind,' he says.

Local rapper Tihei performing on the main street in Kaitaia.

'I think that since Rogernomics … the Crown has hoped that the market would deliver the solution for housing.

'But for rural Māori housing, there is no market solution. Because the market solution requires people with cash flow.

'It can be done, but you've got to treat it as public good function, not go looking for a classic return on capital.

'I think [Houghton's] challenge is a good one that we as Māori politicians need to do more to get rid of the trickle and the bureaucracy, frustrating his housing ambitions.'

Jones says the thousands of hectares of land available in Northland is the foundation of a resolution to the housing problem.

But the multi-part ownership of Māori land - and the politics that raises - get in the way. As does the lack of capital to build.

'Lots of families [in] Te Tai Tokerau do not have either the creditworthiness or they don't have access to the capital to do it.

'As the Government, obviously we do.'

He Korowai Trust volunteer Samuel Ngawhika and chief executive Ricky Houghton put on a free community sausage sizzle for the youth.

He hopes his 'one billion trees' economic plan underway in parts of Northland will bring about a turning of the tide.

Funding has also been allocated through the Provincial Growth Fund for Māori initiatives in the area to attract tourism dollars.

Houghton says one of the biggest contributing factors to the Far North's housing woes is the return of whānau from the cities.

'In the 50s and 60s, there was a huge urban drift from the tribal homelands into the city, now we are seeing a reversal of that.

'That's what makes these [Whare Ora] houses so beautiful, they were built during the 50s and the 60s and the families that lived in them and the tupuna that lived in them would be so happy that they've come back home to house their mokopuna.'

The return has seen mounting pressure on local services.

'Seventy-three percent of this community is Māori. Eighty-five percent, in some pockets of the community, are on some form of benefit, 37 percent are single parents and the average income is $21,000 a year,' Houghton says.

'So these are people grappling with their lives, their relationships and their children trying to do the very best that they can on $21,000 a year.'

He says the new level of poverty is not only hitting families in the stomach.

Family dysfunction, disruption, and disintegration comes with it.

'Unless it gets better, we are on the verge of civil disobedience, where people are scared, they are frightened for themselves and their futures.

'The Far North is a beautiful place to live but you can't ignore the sort of hurt, the hate and the harm that comes with it.'