$52m boost for Tamaki state housing

Sione Tongia says the Ridgeway Place house his daughter Poitirere, 1, lives in with her mother is 'very poor'. Photo / Glen Jeffrey.

State housing in two areas in eastern Auckland is to be revitalised in a $52 million project.

Housing Minister Phil Heatley yesterday announced the project to develop 150 new houses and renovate a further 120 in the first three years of the Tamaki Transformation Programme.

Some sub-standard houses will be demolished and $46 million will be allocated to five key housing redevelopment zones in Glen Innes and Panmure.

The balance of $6 million is for other ministries including education, health, Pacific Island affairs, social development and employment, economic development and Te Puni Kokiri.

The ministries will all work to change the area, Mr Heatley said. He wants more state houses in private ownership and for land to be used "more efficiently".

The $52 million was already allocated and he named the five redevelopment zones as:

*The Glen Innes area around Fenchurch St, Leybourne Circle and Elstree Ave near Tamaki College. This zone has some of the area's most degraded housing stock and some very old houses known as "Austrian pre-cuts" along Fenchurch St.

*The northern end of Apirana Ave near Apirana Reserve where Glen Innes meets St Johns.

*The 15-unit pensioner housing estate on Kings Rd near the Panmure shops and roundabout. Small units are on a large site but the places are in very poor condition and in need of replacement, a spokesman said. The flats will be knocked down and pensioners moved elsewhere in the area.

*The Tamaki area around the intersection of Pilkington and Tripoli Rds near the Apirana South Reserve with pockets of rundown state houses.

*The small cul-de-sac Kestrel Place, off Taniwha St in Pt England, which has a number of derelict houses.

Ata Vuna, a resident of Leybourne Circle, yesterday complained about her Housing New Zealand home. It is on a hill and is extremely cold, she said, and she wants to leave.

The family pay $93 a week for the three-bedroom house, whose residents include her son Filimone, 2, and daughter Onike, 4, who were yesterday playing in a nearby reserve while she planted roses down a fence line.

Gangs were rife in the area, she said. In just a year, she had had two burglaries. She wants to move to Mt Wellington where the children are in a pre-school centre.

"The cops say this is one of the worst streets in Auckland but we would have liked it if our case manager had said that before we moved in," she said.

A few streets away, Sione Tongia was yesterday visiting Ridgeway Place in Glen Innes, home to his daughter Poitirere, 1, also known as Lilly. The interior is riddled with holes although contractors are painting. An extended family lives in a two-bedroom house which Poitirere's mother said had once been used as a halfway house.

Mould grows on the damaged walls, the place is cold and damp and poor draining turns its large backyard into a "swamp" in the winter, she said. Mr Tongia said the state of the house was very poor.

Heading south towards the Panmure shops, an elderly resident is keen to leave the soon-to-be-demolished Kings Rd pensioner housing estate and move closer to her bowling club.

Waki Kerei has lived in a one-bedroom pensioner unit for 4 years but finds the place so cold that she wraps herself in a rug or gets into bed with the electric blanket on.

"It's got concrete block walls. They put in heaters but it was too costly so I just use a blanket instead," she said.

Units there are rented for about $45 to $69 a week each, she said.

Mr Heatley said the state house upgrade would provide jobs in the construction industry. School-leavers in the area would be encouraged to work on building sites.

A 20-year vision for Tamaki included housing redevelopment, upgrading parks and reserves and improving transport links, community services and infrastructure, he said.

Bill Christian, an Auckland City councillor and Tamaki Community Board member, welcomed the move to upgrade the area and cited the award-winning Talbot Park in Glen Innes which last year took the Property Council's top urban design prize.

"If the new work can keep to the same standard as Talbot Park," he said, "I'll be happy."