Councils and Community Organisations
Whanau happy in their newly repaired rural home
- Whanau happy in their newly reparied home.
Carmen Kirkwood's whanau home on the Whatapaka papakainga has been given a new lease of life.
“We are confident that the home we love so much, will be with us for at least another generation to come,” says Carmen, a daughter of the Kirkwood whanau.
The whanau home was built more than 20 years ago. It needed urgent repairs to address the health, safety and wellbeing of the whanau.
"Help arrived at a critical time,” says Carmen.
Huakina Development Trust is a body that works in partnership with Housing New Zealand to deliver an Essential Repair Suspensory Loan programme in the South Auckland region.
The programme helps address urgent and essential health and safety issues on owner occupied properties in rural areas. The repair work started in March 2006.
Carmen says right from the beginning, everyone involved dealt with her and her whanau in a very respectful and sensitive manner.
The whanau had built the house themselves. “Each building detail of the house had been supervised by my mother who was in her late 60s then. Now, she is 85 years old,” says Carmen.
Housing New Zealand has had approval to assist 17 families under the Essential Repair Suspensory Loan programme since it began in the South Auckland region in 2005.
