■ I am one of the fortunate ones in our district. My partner and I own and live in a warm and mostly dry home. Besides a little damp from a somewhat leaky roof, it is very functional and enables us to enjoy a good life and stay mostly healthy, writes Whakatāne Housing Action Reform Enthusiast (WHARE), Ruth Gerzon, in this first of a series of articles.

How did we manage to be so lucky at our advanced, well mid-70s, age? We were fortunate as young people. I achieved a degree or two without ever having to pay fees or end up with a loan. Both our parents chipped in to support us to buy land and build, with my partner’s mother contributing money from the sale of her home in the UK.

Living with us for 25 years, she saved her pension and occasionally travelled home to see her family there. After several strokes, she died peacefully in her bed at our place at age 93.

Housing ourselves wasn’t always easy, though. Interest rates rose to over 20 percent in those 1980s inflationary times. We were saved from penury by our builder friend offering to let us pay him a couple of years late. Good health enabled us to keep working until the mortgage was paid.

With so many people in our district less fortunate than us, I’ve been thinking about housing recently. Friends live in precarious rental accommodation that is not warm and dry. Some, with large families, spend years living in sheds.

There’s also an increasing number of vulnerable homeless people subject to “move on” orders.

When I told my partner about the police being asked to implement “move on” orders for homeless people, he wondered out loud whether in Whakatāne they would be asked to move from one side of the toilet block to the other, and whether that would be a good use of police time.

Homeless people, by definition, have no home to go to and that seems the underlying issue we need to act on.

I have seen the toll cold and damp housing has on the health of children and adults, and the disruption to their lives when they have to move from one rental home to another, sometimes moving town to find a place to live.

I am confident that warm and dry homes would mean children attend school more often and the waiting times in emergency at our hospital would reduce. It makes good sense to ensure everyone has the right to a healthy warm home.

Back in 2022 and 2023, I felt some hope for our district when social housing was being built apace. But all was not well in the “hood as there were obstacles for those of modest means willing to help themselves.

In 2023, my friends and I initiated a public meeting about the difficulties Whakatāne District Council regulations caused for people trying to build tiny homes.

Our work with council over the following year came to naught. To be fair, their website became more user friendly but regulations remain unchanged. We need our council to remove obstacles to people building tiny homes.

While state and local changes came to a halt, the need for healthy homes continues to rise. What would it take to change this?

One answer lies with iwi. It has been heartening to see the housing built by Ngāti Awa.

Beyond this there is a role for our mayor and councillors. Given high rates throughout the country, councils do not have the resources to build themselves, but they can bring people together to collaborate and tackle the issues.

A while back, I think it was 2024, a Whakatāne District Council housing strategy was mooted but later, it was quietly dropped.

With the council’s new spatial plan looking at areas of growth from Awakeri to Matatā, it would be timely to have a strategy to ensure homes built fit the needs of people who are not flush with cash. Future planning must include affordable housing.

There’s one thing we can be sure of, farms in those areas designated for housing will find their land value rising sharply.

This brings an opportunity to make a positive difference to the housing crisis by following the example of Queenstown Lakes District Council.

Seeing the potential expansion of their town back in 2007, they created an Inclusionary Zoning Policy. That means for-profit developers who apply to rezone land for residential/increased density are required to give a percentage of that land or the equivalent dollar value of that land for affordable housing. The land or money goes to the Queenstown Community Housing Trust.

This trust creates affordable housing by using a tenure model that separates the land tenure from the housing tenure. The land is held in community stewardship in perpetuity while residents own their housing and lease the land it’s on.

This is in line with the land stewardship paradigm of Te Ao Māori.

As a charitable organisation, the trust can also receive donations of land and steward the land for other purposes.

The Queenstown Community Housing Trust has built hundreds of houses, many sold to families, others for rent. To find out more go to https://www.qlcht.org.nz.

There are no quick fixes to our housing deficits, but let’s start exploring good options other councils have chosen.

I am a member of WHARE: Whakatāne Housing Action Reform Enthusiasts, an advocacy group for warm and dry homes for all. We plan a public meeting to canvas the issues. This will be on Thursday, April 9, at 5pm in Knox Church, 83 Domain Road, Whakatāne.

Do come and bring others interested in ensuring everyone has a warm, dry home.

If you’d like to join our informal group and support our advocacy, then email us at [email protected]