New Kāinga Ora boss in Northland outlines his plans

Community consultation for help to get housing projects off the ground will be a big focus for new Kāinga Ora boss in Northland Jeff Murray. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Building social houses near essential services and partnership with iwi and councils are key priorities for Kāinga Ora's newly-appointed regional director for Northland.

Jeff Murray began work on January 25 after working as a self-employed contractor consulting on local government, iwi, land use and transport matters, mostly in Auckland.

He was contracted to Kāinga Ora from March last year and had been working in its Māori policy and strategy team, while also helping them get some larger projects off the ground regarding engagement with Māori.

"The ability to work with iwi groups and the local councils and the local communities was something that I've got a good background in and feel very strongly about.

"I think for me just looking at Kāinga Ora's mandate, it's important that we invest where we build houses near services like schools and hospitals so that people don't have to spend a lot of their income travelling to reach the services and to access jobs.

"So that leaves us to invest probably two-thirds in Whangārei and one-third in towns in the rest of the Far North.''

"Kāinga Ora is mandated and something I'd like to see more of is us partnering up with iwi and hapū and the councils so that we are able to bring our skills and our balance sheet to play to help get housing projects up," Murray said.

He said the new role was an opportunity for him to be close to the community and involved in forward-looking work in terms of where Kāinga Ora invested, how big the need was and where.

Murray said partnership with the relevant stakeholders was something that needed to happen more as there were things Kāinga Ora could do that have not yet been taken up, apart from its housing relocation programme.

"One of the things Kāinga Ora is doing is producing a regional investment plan. The first one is in June and that will largely be a statement of commitments we've already got. There'll be a Northland-specific plan."

The Government this week announced that Kāinga Ora would be given a $2 billion loan to scale up land acquisition around the country.