A tour of $2.5m state housing development
A walk through Kāinga Ora’s $2.5 million new development in New Plymouth makes it clear that state houses are not what they used to be.
Gone are the long, dark hallways, single-glazed windows, kitchen-sized laundry rooms and power points spaced few and far between.
In their place are houses that make maximum use of space and light.
They are very similar to those in the recent Kiwibuild housing development in New Plymouth, right down to the storage space beneath the stairs.
During a tour, Graeme Broderick, Kāinga Ora regional director for Taranaki, Manawatu and Whanganui, said the five houses on Wrantage St, Westown, had replaced four state houses that were at the end of their life.
Construction began in June last year, and three of the houses are already occupied by tenants.
The two largest houses have four bedrooms, with a kitchen, lounge, bathroom and accessible bedroom on the ground floor, as well as a compact laundry area in a cupboard underneath the stairs.
The house should be no problem to heat, Broderick said, given it is fully insulated and double-glazed, with a large heat pump as well as heaters in every bedroom.
‘‘It’s just about maximising the space while providing a good, solid, functional home.’’
Upstairs is a second bathroom and three bedrooms, one of which has a view of Taranaki Maunga.
‘‘When our placements team are showing people around these homes, quite a few of the customers are in tears,’’ Broderick said. ‘‘They’ve got the best job in the world.’’
Out the back is a fenced lawn and garden area complete with a shed, and folding washing line.
Broderick said that while they have standard house plans, they are able to adjust features such as the cladding type and rooflines ‘‘so that we’re not just building the same thing over and over again’’.
‘‘I’ve seen in other places we’ve got houses right next door to each other with the same floorplan, but they’re actually completely different-looking homes.’’
Also important is getting the mixture of housing right, as many of Kāinga Ora’s clients suit a two or three-bedroom home.
Making the houses look different is also important, as just across the road Kāinga Ora has obtained resource consent to build 15 more units.
Construction is expected to start early next year, and should be completed around mid-2024, Broderick said.
‘‘You think about some of the state housing programmes in the fifties and sixties. You just saw rows and rows of three-bedroom houses, so you don’t get that mix of the community now living in there. Now we’re getting that mix right.’’
Out front are two off-street parking spaces per house, as well as on-street parking.
Meanwhile, a three-storey complex is being built by Soho Group Ltd, on the corner of Leach and Cameron streets, opposite Pak’n Save New Plymouth, and is expected to be completed by the middle of next year.
The two-block complex will be made up of 23 two-bedroom units, and 22 one-bedroom units.
While good news for those lucky enough to secure a spot, the new homes are still a long way from alleviating the housing crisis in the region.
New Plymouth alone has 405 people on the housing register as of June this year, up from 51 in 2017.