Communities not communes

Winning designs

The Governments plan to provide cheaper houses for people not only makes sense it is also a good example of what we could do for our people, if we wanted.

Good point one - the designs chosen came from a nationwide design competition. Wow! imagine if Ngai Tahu ran a similar type of competition. They could look at all sorts of cool angles, including eco-materials, price, cultural design aspects etc

Good point two - it would cost $168,000 to build - that's half of what it would normally take. You did read it right; it takes on average between $300,000 and $350,000 to build a new house in this country. I believe we could get the price even lower.

To me, helping our people into homes based upon traditional and contemporary models makes sense. It brings people together - too often our kaumatua are lonely. Our young can't afford to buy a house. We need more opportunities to get the kaumatua and our tamariki together. Some say, "Our people don't want to live so close together etc", I say rubbish, the cult of looking only after number one is pakeha not Ngai Tahu based.

Are there any other advantages? It will be us looking after us. As the baby boomers get older and as more people begin to find their way back to their home fires, we will need good, affordable housing. Why not create these homes for our people. There are many ways to make it work, for example, perhaps some of the homes could be set aside as holiday homes so that members of the runaka, who live away from their marae can book the family and come back and stay there for holidays. Maybe TRONT can have a shared equity stake in the house. If the Government can do it why not us?

"The Government's shared equity scheme is expected to help up to 700 applicants during a two-year $35 million trial that started last July.
The scheme allows people with a household income of $55,000-$85,000 to borrow between 5 and 30 per cent of the value of their home."

Think about this... we have NT Property doing all the deals and building all the buildings and developing all the land... what about putting some directly back to Iwi members! Lets start thinking like maori instead of always getting caught up in the money.

Finally, as people live closer together, they will bond tighter and this will be good for the iwi as a whole. The stories of our elders will be heard and not be lost to the wind.