Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa’s current emergency/transitional housing policy provides a short-term (approximately twelve weeks) housing for up to six whānau at any one time, in three detached self-contained units located at He Whare Āwhina rūnanga housing complex. These whānau will then be supported by the rūnanga to move into long-term housing in private rental or Housing New Zealand properties or to other options provided by wider whānau
Published: Thursday, 22 September 2016 | Rāpare, 22 Mahuru, 2016
Transcript for Video
A lot of the families that are moving from Auckland are moving back to their parents or grandparents because they own a home, but they don’t realise that the infrastructure here and the community is really stretched and strained, but overall it does put a lot of pressure on our families especially a lot of our elderly. They come back to nana and koro and they feel aroha for their mokos so they go kei te pai, come and move in. A lot of times we end up with our elderly that are needing attention to as well, so one of our units we’ve set aside for respite for a lot of our kaumatua and kuia. We have to pull them out of that situation.
We also have a number of families who are suffering from homelessness so they do come in to see us to get some emergency housing, and actually in some of the outlying areas as well we’re having a lot of families come to us for emergency housing. And we’re not talking about individuals, a lot of times we’re talking about whole families so often we get requests for a mother with three or four children.
We have five units at the moment, and we’re going to build a couple more units.