SPEECH BY PATRICK COSTELLOE FOR THE DEDICATION OF THE HOME OF
RACHAEL FAATILI AT 57 OTTAWA ROAD, WAINONI ON FRIDAY 27 MAY 2016.
Welcome
1.
Our patron, His Excellency Lieutenant General The Right Honourable Sir
Jerry Mateparae, Governor-General of New Zealand Murray Lapworth, Chief
Financial Officer for Rata Foundation.
2.
The trustees of the Community Housing Trust, and our manager Garry
Moore.
1.
3.
Rachael Faatili and family and supporters (whanau)
4.
Bruce White and Andrew Coombs.
A particularly warm welcome to His Excellency Lieutenant General The Right
Honourable Sir Jerry Mateparae who has so generously agreed to attend this
ceremony to dedicate the home of Rachael Faatili and her sons Jeshaiah and Riko
today.
Sir Jerry stepped off a plane this morning from England and so we say a
big “thank you” for your commitment to the cause of affordable housing in being
so generous toward us with your time.
2.
It is important to celebrate milestones. For Rachael, Jeshaiah and Riko this is your
first home. For the Community Housing Trust this is the culmination of a lengthy
process of selecting a house in Burwood and shifting it to this site in Wainoni. We
are determined to support home ownership for working families on low incomes.
Our builder, Andrew Coombs, and his sub-contractors have managed the
construction of this property. Our engineers Dwain Wilson and Steve Barrow have
inspected the ground conditions and designed the foundations. Bruce White
supervised the foundation design, laid out the grounds, and volunteered with many
other matters to assist with the timely conclusion of this project. If we had not had
input from all the contributors to this project to produce a complying bespoke
foundation design and had followed the MBIE foundation design guidelines,
PGC-309171-2-421-V1:MEF
foundations would have cost 3 times what we paid. Thank you team for a job really
well done.
3.
Our Trustees are all from the private sector and all volunteer their time.
Our
objective is to support low income families into home ownership. To date we have
shifted houses from the Red Zone and supported families who have purchased a
section to battle their way through the complicated planning process. I think we
have made every mistake there is to make, however, we have learned along the
way. We realised early on that some of the families could not fund a staged build
so we needed to provide a finished product and obtain funding to do so. We
approached the Rata Foundation who have generously supported the Trust, and
though it, our trading company Your Home 2014 Limited and the families we have
been working with. Without Rata we would have failed as a Trust. Without Rata we
would not have saved these Red Zone houses. The Rata Foundation has taken a
risk supporting us and we greatly appreciate their support. We continue to talk to
Rata on other projects. We look forward to our relationship with Rata growing over
the coming years.
4.
This house already has history. We purchased the section from a family who
approved our goals and sold it to us at a very fair price. We obtained the house
from Lumley Insurance. It is now completely rebuilt, including a very high level of
insulation and double glazing. We have been supported by the neighbours who
welcomed us, and then Rachael and her family. This house is not complete yet. The
grounds need completing. There is no garage. The fences need completing. Rachael
and her family will do these in the future. A message we want to give to financial
organisations is that families in the past used to be able to complete their homes
slowly as they could afford to. This was an important part of a family stamping their
own personality on a home, a section, and, a suburb. It used to be that when the
PGC-309171-2-421-V1:MEF
family poured a new concrete drive their finances had improved, it wasn’t all
instant.
5.
Our Trust, through its trading entity, is about to move onto building new homes.
We have four more houses from the Red Zone to move and will then start building
new units. We have a section up the road at 89 Ottawa Road. Our architect Graham
McDermid, from Architects Plus, has generously designed three units for us free of
charge. Bruce White, using lessons learned from this site, has worked with Graham
and Steve Barrow to design foundations which will be even cheaper to produce than
the foundations used on this site. There will be two 3 bedroom and one 2 bedroom
units built on 89 Ottawa Road. We are hoping this will suit an extended whanau.
It may even be suitable for three generations of family. The site used to contain
one three-bedroom house.
6.
If building affordable homes was easy everybody would be doing it. It is hard. We
are working at analysing every part of house construction and seeing how it can be
done better. The interesting thing is that the people who are assisting us the most,
are older tradespeople. They remember how things were done in the past. They
are often frustrated with the complexity of the regulations which are in place
nowadays. There might be a message in this observation.
7.
I wish to challenge our society. Without all of us working together we are going to
have a two tiered society. This is a property owning democracy. We need to look
carefully at how we can assist younger families get into their own homes. Those of
us with equity may need to share our equity with our children. We may need to
become guarantors to assist our children into family homes. The banks and lending
institutions may need to consider more flexibility particularly to allow families to
settle on partially completed homes that they can complete over time. Local
Authorities may need to consider a “Partial Certificate of Completion” to allow a
PGC-309171-2-421-V1:MEF
family to borrow funds and move into a partially completed home. As a society,
there are so many things we can do, we just need to have the desire.
8.
The Community Housing Trust has charitable status.
It is happy to accept
donations either of your time and expertise or of cash. Our intention is to turn
such generosity into real life projects for families so they can own their own homes.
9.
To everybody here who has played a role in getting a home ready for Rachael,
Jeshaiah and Riko we say “thank you”. You have been part of achieving a family
dream of owning their own home. 18% of Pacifica families own their own home and
this number troubles us and is a challenge. Well done Rachael Faatili and thanks
to Brad Roche who brought the Cooperative Bank to this partnership.
10.
It gives me great pleasure to invite His Excellency Lieutenant General The Right
Honourable Sir Jerry Mateparae, Governor-General of New Zealand who is the
Patron of our Trust to dedicate this house for Rachael and her family.
PGC-309171-2-421-V1:MEF