Fox: From House to homes

AUCKLAND: Maori Party coleader Marama Fox is turning her hand to housebuilding after being ousted from Parliament.

Mrs Fox is involved in a recentlycreated consortium which wants to build 3000 prefabricated homes in the next three years for homeless or lowincome families. The newlyjobless Mrs Fox said she could now focus her energy on the consortium.

‘‘I’m going to build houses everywhere,’’ she said. ‘‘They will be affordable and gorgeous and they will be homesteads for families forever.’’

Negotiations are under way with a social housing provider in Flaxmere, near Hastings, to build the first 100 houses.

Mrs Fox’s unnamed company would follow the papakainga model for housing, which uses ancestral or multipletitle land for housing.

By using this model, building at scale, and using prefabricated housing, Mrs Fox hoped some of the houses could be sold for as little as $60,000.

‘‘We have been approaching iwi who have land that they want to put affordable houses on for their whanau,’’ she said.

Mrs Fox, a list MP, lost her place in the House after her party polled just 1.1% in the election and coleader Te Ururoa Flavell lost his Waiariki seat.

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