QUALITY HOMES FOR $150K
A Tasman couple will soon move into a 60sqm home that’s the first step in an ambitious housing project, writes Joanna Davis.
For a woman who has faced an incredible run of bad luck, Babs RobertsBorchers talks a lot about how blessed she is. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. Just last year, brain tumours, since surgically removed, took away her mobility – her right lower leg is a dead weight and she has a weakened right arm.
But she says she is grateful to be living with husband Mark Roberts in a warm, dry temporary flat in Golden Bay, made available through their church. She feels lucky that her oesophageal cancer responded to immunotherapy drugs; and blessed that their daughter, a professional fundraiser in the United Kingdom, is using her skills to help fundraise for the non-funded drugs.
And in a few weeks, the pair will move into their own small home just out of Collingwood, north of Nelson, the first completed 60-square-metre, rentto-buy home in the Golden Bay/ Mohua Affordable Housing Project.
The project, spearheaded by Canadian engineer Chris Bennett, aims to build 100 homes for $150,000 each, to help address a dire housing need.
When Bennett told people about his idea, they said he’d never do it. But the trust running the project has been offered 35 plots of land for free, and others for a peppercorn rent. Locals have offered time and money to help, and suppliers have discounted materials.
The couple’s house is sited on a corner of their son’s land.
‘‘He had a big paddock, and now he’s taken the oak tree down, and eaten the sheep. We’ll be right next to him and our grandchildren, Piper, who’s 4, and Malachi, 2,’’ RobertsBorchers says.
Roberts, a civil and structural engineer by training, looked over the initial house plans, and suggested close to 50 changes that would be needed to make the home accessible.
‘‘I knew about how things would function for Babs,’’ he says. ‘‘Initially I said, you can’t live there, it just won’t work. We liaised with the architect and re-designed the whole thing.’’
The housing project will eventually offer both standard and accessible homes, with two different designs, and is seeking
Lifemark accreditation, a standard for accessibility.
Bennett, a trustee who is funding the early builds himself, says the project is not building tiny homes.
‘‘We are building small, quality houses that are fully compliant with the Building Code and Healthy Homes Standards.’’
He approached Ka¯ inga Ora, the Government agency that provides rental housing for New Zealanders in need, but found it had no plans for building any new housing in Golden Bay ‘‘nor much of regional New Zealand, outside of the main centres’’.
‘‘This is in spite of growing lists. It is therefore essential for projects like ours to address this gap, otherwise nothing will happen.’’
Bennett is optimistic about future funding.
‘‘One of the big four banks approached us after we were on [RNZ and Newsroom podcast] The Detail. They want to see if they can be part of the solution.’’
The $150,000 price tag is a goal, and Bennett says the project will refine the process as it goes.
For instance, the team is changing the foundations for house No 2, to save ‘‘several thousand dollars’’, and is testing different kitchens, to see which is the most affordable when installed.
‘‘By house No 5, we’ll be as close to $150,000 as possible. Once you’ve actually built using different approaches to foundations, windows and so on, you begin to converge on what works.
‘‘People are helping us and not charging what they could.’’
Roberts-Borchers, 56, and Roberts, 57, have been married for 24 years and have four children. They have lived together in England and Germany, and moved to New Zealand in 2006 during what Roberts jokingly calls ‘‘a midlife crisis’’.
They’ve lived in Hamilton and Napier, and never had as much difficulty finding rental accommodation as they have in Golden Bay.
Both were working in Golden Bay, Roberts in his own maintenance and painting business, and Roberts-Borchers as a healthcare assistant at Golden Bay Community Health. But her cancer diagnoses put paid to that, particularly the damage to her mobility from the brain tumours.
She says not being able to work is the hardest part.
‘‘I miss work: I’m young, I’m not retired. But in Golden Bay there are no jobs for disabled people.’’
The couple had owned land in the past, but had sold and used the capital to pay the more than $70,000 cost of Roberts-Borchers’ unfunded cancer drugs. She had also accessed her KiwiSaver to fund treatment.
A Givealittle page has been set up for the ongoing cost of Herceptin, which is funded for some cancers in New Zealand, but not the type RobertsBorchers has.
To move into their new home, they will need to downsize even more than they have for their current 80sqm rental.
Roberts-Borchers will somehow have to make space for the exercise bike she needs to use to keep her leg moving, but the slow cooker will have to go, as will the large dining table.
She says they are ‘‘really, really grateful’’ for the new home.