June 07, 2016
Whanau move in to Kaitaia’s Whare Ora
A far north trust says a state of emergency should be declared over the state of Maori housing in Taitokerau but it’s not waiting on central or local government to do anything to fix it.
Over the weekend 17 adults and 43 children shifted into nine refurbished former state houses He Korowai Trust moved from Auckland to Kaitaia.
Manager Ricky Houghton says the Whare Ora project is just the start, and he has crews of licensed builders fixing up 22 sub-standard and condemned houses at Te Hapua using funds from a pilot rural regeneration scheme.
He says housing could be affordable if layers of bureaucracy were removed, and the work is only possible because it’s bypassing the usual permitting regime.
"If you were to go to resource consent to do what we apply for, then code of acceptance, then building consent and then code of compliance, you would be spending a third of what it's costing us, maybe even up to 50 percent, on compliance," Mr Houghton says.
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