National Maori Housing Hui
te-pati-maori
Tue Mar 23 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
National Maori Housing Hui
Tuesday, 23 March 2010, 9:18 am
Speech: The Maori Party
National Maori Housing Hui
Monday 22 March 2010
Te Ururoa Flavell, MP for Waiariki
Tena koutou katoa. I endorse the welcome to you all today from our pakeke. I am really pleased that you are having your National Maori Housing Hui in my home town. For me it is always great being home in familiar territory where one feels safe and connected. So welcome.
The housing kaupapa is one which many of us have been concerned about in all its various guises, for many years now.
Uppermost in our minds has been the knowledge that the right to adequate housing is not simply about a roof over one’s head; it is also about the right to live somewhere in security, in peace and in dignity.
And so I am delighted to come home to this National Maori Housing Hui to take part in some of the dialogue we need to have together about the range of issues that might make up Maori housing solutions.
This is a key issue for us in the Maori Party. In our policy manifesto, He Aha te Mea nui, we made an explicit commitment to
to ensure decent housing is available, as essential to good health and wellbeing. The opportunity to address the desire of our people to live on their own papakainga was recognised as well as need to address over-crowding and homelessness.
Ultimately, Maori Housing Solutions will be all encompassing to address the great range of needs determined; as well as all inclusive to take into account the unique circumstances, from rohe to rohe.
A couple of years ago Bruce Stewart shared some of his ideas around Maori housing policy with the Maori Party, beginning with the premise, ‘Kei a ratou i hanga te whare….kei te whare i hanga nga tangata’.
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It was a philosophy that Bruce himself had been immersed in for over thirty years – they who build the house are also built by the house.  It started with a dream in 1974, when Bruce mobilised around him a group of young, unemployed Maori, many of them homeless, to make a place to stand.  They built the Tupuna Whare Pare Hinetai no Waitaha out of recycled timber from doors, windows, cast off car cases from Todd Motors, and any other materials they could lay their hands on, much of it from the tip.
Over the years, they have also established a rich native planting regime, on land gifted to them from the Sisters of Compassion.  Along with thousands of volunteers they have created the Manawa Karioi Whenua Society in their dedication to urban native reforestration.
What Tapu Te Ranga marae has been able to achieve, in their journey of establishing a unique urban marae environment, has also been to create employment, to restore the land, to develop plants for rongoa and for weaving, to cultivate maara kai and to inspire hope. Here was a man who left prison with $25 and a dream, able to establish cooperative housing, social housing, with the support of some influential backers including Sir Michael Fowler and the late Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon.Â
Tapu Te Ranga indeed shows us that they who build the house are also built by the house. Â
This National Maori Housing Hui will be an excellent opportunity to share many such dreams and aspirations that our people have had in restoring hope and a sense of future for their own.
Not far from here, many of you will be familiar with the initiative led out of Torere by the Ngai Tai Iwi Authority. Ngai Tai, in association with Habitat for Humanity, and the Torere Credit Union, were able to establish 21 homes for their people, and along the way developing sustainable employment pathways and opportunities for further education.
In another part of this electorate, I have seen the fantastic initiative taken by Te Puke based iwi, Tapuika, in conjunction with Ngati Tuheke, Makahae Marae, and Rangiuru 2G Trust, to be able to utilise their own ancestral land for papakainga housing.
The possibility of building papakainga housing on multiply owned Maori land has been something that our people have been calling for, it seems, for ever.
And so it has been extremely important to us in the Maori Party, that we have been able to work so constructively with the National Party in developing Kainga Whenua.
In essence, it establishes an opportunity for Maori to build, purchase or relocate a house on multiple-owned Maori land. In effect, the Crown steps in to back the application, Kiwibank will lend the finance, and as long as you can demonstrate your whakapapa rights to occupy the land, whanau can borrow up to $200,000 towards the house building costs or the purchase price of the house. There is also support along the way from both Housing New Zealand and the Maori Land Court.
Kainga Whenua is one of the really positive results that has come from a commitment to building relationships – not just the Coalition relationship we have with National; but also the willingness of Housing NZ to enter into joint venture arrangements with iwi.
I remember sitting in the House a couple of years back, listening to politicians rise with great passion to debate the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service – the crisis of the leaky homes debarcle. Â
And although having had my own personal experience of buying a home in Wellington that has fulfilled everyone of the criteria of the leaky home syndrome, I have always recognised that for our people, many of them have been living with leaky, substandard, inadequate housing for decades without receiving a similar amount of policy passion.
I remember a visit to Ruatoki, where I observed at first hand houses in poor condition, reflecting low quality workmanship, many of them rotten, and leaking. In some cases, when houses were removed it was evident that raw sewage remained. The houses were in a state of dis-repair; we might describe them as as “polyurethrene weetbixâ€.
The report into Maori Housing Experiences, by Charles Waldegrave, Peter King, Tangihaere Walker and Eljon Fitzgerald, concluded that the issues of overcrowding, inadequate heating, and substandard housing, were critical factors in any discussion on the status of Maori health.Â
We know that at the level of whanau, housing generally represents the most significant single budget item for many New Zealanders; and that for most Maori, home ownership is out of the question.
Our challenge to Housing New Zealand has been that the state landlord must also lift its game in addressing the deteriorating condition of some of its housing stock.  We have all seen more than enough evidence of wet, damp, mouldy HNZ homes and know the immediate impact this has on the lives of tenants.  So the extra $104 million that was invested into state Housing upgrades last year, has been something we have also supported.
And of course we are huge supporters of the work that has gone into retrotting through the home insulation scheme.
This was a major priority for us during the work around the Emissions Trading Scheme where we were able to negotiate specific energy efficiency assistance (including home heating and insulation) for low income households.
This was an extra $24 million of new money translating into an extra 2000 houses of Community Service Card holders insulated every year from now up to 2013.
I note that the theme of your conference is ‘nou te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi’ – a most appropriate theme I would suggest for housing solutions.
I want to congratulate all involved on the launching of the new Maori Housing Portal, www.maorihousing.com, which is going to be an invaluable tool in bringing together key issues across Maori land and housing in a impressive networking site/
Can I particularly acknowledge Kay-Maree Dunn, for her dedication as Kaituitui of Community Housing Aotearoa to ensuring that connections are made, great ideas are supported and showcased, and challenges put to those that should be accountable.
This conference is all about creating the space to share ideas, to learn from each other, to build connections. Â
One of the most distinctive aspects of the Maori housing terrain that we are currently experiencing is the enormous scope of initiatives built from strong relationships.Â
In Northland the Far North, Whangarei and Kaipara District Councils, are working with Te Puni Kokiri and Te Hauora o Kaikohe to enable housing sub-divisions and residential unit construction on multiply-owned Maori land.
In Poneke, the Wellington Housing Trust are working with Housing NZ, Wellington City Council, the Refugee and Migrant Service and other social service agencies, and recently opened six new rental units in Newtown; two of them designed particularly to address overcrowding.
And right throughout Aotearoa, iwi are coming to the table in partnering with Housing New Zealand in the context of Maori demonstration partnerships.  These are projects which build on the initiative of iwi, to know best what will work for their own.
As an example over in Ikaroa Rawhiti, Te Aranga marae and Housing New Zealand are working together to provide housing which the marae will fill with whanau who are working to purchase their first home.  Throughout the entire period the whanau occupying the home will be mentored, trained, and supported by the marae.
In other areas across the motu, marae have been hosting young people on the Community Max programme and have utilised that opportunity to establish trade training for young Maori apprentices in areas such as carpentry, joinery, plastering, bricklaying, plumbing, drain laying and so on.
This, along with the initiative led by my colleague, Dr Pita Sharples, with InfraTrain, the industry training organisation for the civil infrastructure industry, will create a whole new workforce that could be used in advancing housing solutions.
The Infratrain initiative will amount to an additional 1,820 MÄori receiving training in industries with strong employment prospects.
The key thing is in knowing that the kete is well and truly overflowing with good ideas and opportunities - it’s just about getting the people together, to get started.Â
The Maori Party totally supports any opportunity we can see for mana whenua to be involved in the design and discussions around affordable housing in their districts.Â
Finally, if I could advocate for one more key item in your kete it would be to ensure that the right to adequate and supportive housing is a right extended to all people.
We must ask ourselves what support can we provide to vulnerable young people? What are the specific housing needs for people with mental illness; for people with high and complex needs?
What are the strategies Maori providers have used that work? How do we know that we are preventing youth homelessness?
We all know of people living in boarding hostels and backpackers; or staying with friends or family in unfit or overcrowded housing.
We know too, that housing may be only one of the issues facing some of our most vulnerable people - there is also the relentless grind of poverty, poor physical or mental health, addiction, unemployment and exclusion.
The way forward will come from the development of durable and meaningful relationships between Government and Maori; whanau, hapu and iwi and local agencies; and between each other.  I wish you all a very successful forum, and we will be looking forward to receiving your recommendations to guide our own work programme as we continue to invest in the concept, nou te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi’.
ends
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