In December 2019, Tūwharetoa Settlement Trust announced at its Annual General Meeting that it had commissioned the development of a Tūwharetoa-specific kāinga strategy.
Lack of access to affordable, healthy and accessibly housing is affecting many of our Tūwharetoa people, and whānau across Aotearoa.
TST believes it is time for real change. Our strategy aims to enable collaboration as a collective with other Tūwharetoa entities and agencies across Aotearoa to investigate and design housing solutions for current and future generations that will help address these problems. We’ve had a busy few months, as we work to develop our Tūwharetoa Kāinga Strategy. We were pleased to bring on board Blandina Te Wikitoria Diamond as Project Manager to assist with this kaupapa.
What are the focus points of our Tūwharetoa Kāinga Strategy?
- Afforable Housing
- Assured Housing
- Healthy and Accessible Homes
The Tūwharetoa Kāinga Strategy will encompass five parts, including a history of the evolving housing crisis in Aotearoa, the statistics within our rohe, the current resources and solutions being implement by Government, councils, non-governmental organisations and Māori.
The strategy will include a description of the solutions that are best-suited to our own situation within the rohe of Tūwharetoa and how initial projects will progress, including timeframes for these, resources needed and potential partnerships to enable the success of our strategy.
The strategy is due for completion at the end of June 2020.
A collaborative approach
The strategy has been developed through engagement with many other agencies, resources, examples and stories from whānau. The housing survey that we sent to members in November 2019 to better understand our members’ housing needs, has provided valuable information to enable this strategy to be very specific and focused on solving real issues impacting our people. Click here to view the results from the survey.
Blandina has been actively engaging with many parties and organisations to understand not only the specific issues and challenges for whānau, but also to build relationships with organisations that are already delivering affordable housing, supporting healthy and accessible homes, and providing advice and advocacy for rental tenants and landlords.
There are many NGOs (non-governmental organisations), iwi and hapū who are already successfully delivering housing solutions – from rent-to-buy solutions, kaumātua complexes, to papakāinga and home renovations. Of particular interest is the shared equity models for home ownership, communal living on papakāinga and co-living for specific age groups. We will be looking at all these areas in our strategy.
Blandina is now keen to hear from supporters and organisations working in our Tūwharetoa community who are interested in being a part of this kaupapa.
For more information and to get involved, please contact blandina.diamond@gmail.com.
Ngā mihi,
Greg Stebbing
General Manager
Tūwharetoa Settlement Trust
28 February 2020