Housing meeting promised 'good news'

Graham Cameron (left), John Minto and Tommy Wilson will attend tonight's meeting to discuss state house sales.

A Tauranga social agency has promised to bring "good news" to what was expected to be a highly politicised public meeting tonight organised by the State Housing Action Network.

Te Tuinga Whanau support services director Tommy Wilson said he was going to the meeting because there was a bit of a myth that private enterprise was going to buy up Tauranga's state houses.

Action Network convener and veteran activist John Minto said the meeting was to give the community the chance to discuss the Government's plan to sell thousands of state houses. The Government had started the sell-off in Invercargill and Tauranga because it thought locals would not put up a fight, he said.

Mr Minto said the Government intended to walk away from housing in Tauranga at a time when more state houses were needed. "Nowhere in the world has the private sector ever provided quality affordable housing for families on low incomes."

But Mr Wilson and Te Tuinga Whanau Trust chairman Dr Bruce Bryant will promote a different perspective on the issue of social housing, based on what had been achieved by the He Korowai Trust in Auckland and Northland.

The trust run by Rick Houghton had shifted state houses from big sections in Glenn Innes and replaced them with modern units, so that a property that once housed three or four people in a run-down state house was now home to 15 people.

"There is a good-news story here," Mr Wilson said.

Te Tuinga Whanau was partnering up with approved community housing provider Accessible Properties to piggyback on what He Korowai Trust had achieved. The residue state houses would be shifted to Maori-owned land in the Western Bay and redeveloped to provide even more much-needed housing.

Accessible Properties, a charitable organisation fully owned by IHC, had extended its scope from people with disabilities to the wider community and was committed to pursuing the purchase of state houses.

Mr Wilson said 80 per cent of the people who walked through their doors were looking for emergency housing.

Tauranga community leader Graham Cameron of Merivale will be one of tonight's speakers.

Mr Cameron said there was a lack of community understanding. "People want clarity around the current policies and what it might look like in the future."

None of the state house tenants he was aware of had been consulted by Housing New Zealand. All they knew was from the media and politicians.

"They would like to have a voice as well."