The Sanderson whānau are part of a community housing repair project by Te Rūnanga o Whaingaroa in Kaeo, which will see them get long overdue repairs to their home
Published: Rāpare, 22 Mahuru, 2016 | Thursday, 22 September 2016
Transcript for Video
Housing needs in our area are predominantly around unimproved homes. We have a large percentage of those homes that were poorly constructed in the start. There is also issues around safe new housing, so we have a lot of homes that have mould. We have a lot of children that have infectious diseases, repertory diseases, they contract Strep A a lot due to overcrowding and other issues.
With the overcrowding all the kids have had high numbers of Strep and had to have penicillin injections. There has just been a lot of ongoing support that they’ve needed.
This is one of our first homes that is due for home remediation. There is significant repairs that are going to be required in order to get the home warm and dry and safe for the family. A lot of the particle board in the wet areas has actually fallen through, so we have got the bathroom here that we are going to be replacing pretty much all of the bathroom. We are having to sort out the damp issue on the top there in terms of the rafters in the ceiling. In this room here you have got five tamariki that all are in this space, so all five have contracted Strep A and some of that is recurring. As you can see here with some of the windows, they aren’t fully sealed so there is a lot of cold that comes through. The boards have given away. Also, the bracing underneath when the home was originally made is insufficient so we have got some builders that are saying that the structural supports underneath were also a large part to play with why the floor and the condition of the floor is as it is. Sadly enough though, this is not the exception, so there are a number of homes in our community like this, so we are quite eager with the winter coming to be able to start some work on a number of these homes.
So the housing repair programme, we have got a number of homes that we are able to do through this programme. We are looking at all aspects of the home. Primarily it is from a health and safety perspective, so we are going to prioritise those repairs that keep the house safe and warm and dry.
We have done the driveway, but the impact that that has had on this family has been massive.
Oh, beautiful, you can get up in any weather now. Most times when it rains you couldn’t get up here, you had to walk up the hill with all your groceries and everything and with a decent road like this, we can get up any day.
So there is this real excitement and actually for a lot of the adults in the family as well. They are really thinking twice about what can we do now to move forward from this?
Well it has just opened up a whole lot of other support that we can give them. Especially around the health literacy, and then the kids go to school more.
Oh, I am really happy with it. Rescued my children, because they’ve been living pretty hard lately. It will be good to have everything up and running smoothly again, as it used to be.