He Korowai gets housing plan moving with PGF funds

The head of Kaitaia’s He Korowai Trust says its next housing development will be used to transition whānau back to their own whenua.

The trust is getting $1.8 million from the Provincial Growth Fund to develop sites for 24 former state houses, which will be trucked up from Auckland and refurbished by its trainees.

Chief executive Ricky Houghton says it’s an extension on the work it has done developing its 27-home Whare Ora complex, which now houses 72 adults and 58 children and includes a kura, early childhood centres, Māori trade training and community gardens.

This next lot of houses will be plug and play, and won’t stay on the land forever.

“People who are homeless, we can move them along the continuum, put them into their own homes and then unplug them, send them back home and reconnect them to their whenua and their whānau and their whare, move them back home and then the infrastructure will be recycled for another 24 homes and that’s how we are going to do it,” Mr Houghton says.

He says many people who become homeless become disconnected from their whānau, and part of He Korowai’s approach is to rebuild those connections.

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