February 21, 2018
Loss of kainga leads to homelessness
A hapu’s experience of land loss has been used to highlight some of the issues around today’s crisis of homelessness.
Sharon Hawke shared Ngati Whatua Orakei story with today’s Coalition to End Homelessness conference, from the systematic taking of its Auckland lands and the destruction of its Okahu Bay papakainga to her own whanau’s moving around the country in search of stable housing.
While the hapu is now in a position to address some of its housing needs, building 55 houses since 1992 and housing more than 160 families in former state houses, it’s always aware that having a home of their own is still out of reach for many whanau Maori.
That has a profound effect on their lives and futures.
"It’s where you dream. It's where you provide for yourself, you form your strategies as a strategy to go and venture out and conquer and become good zoo keepers and airline pilots and basically good human beings so it is a personal story for a whole lot of individuals that none of us know but some of us do," Ms Hawke says.
Copyright © 2018, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com