Hardship & Hope: How reclaiming ancestral land helps whānau struggling with housing crisis
Whanaungatanga (family connection): The papakāinga development allows whānau to live alongside one another and thrive, says Zack Makoare, left, with wife Georgina and their daughter Matariki. Photo / Supplied
Nestled in the soft hills of inland Hawke’s Bay, near the tiny settlement of Te Hauke, is a cluster of smart new houses. Nothing ostentatious: two-, three- and four-bedroom places, dark-grey Colorsteel roofs, nice kitchens and bathrooms, sunny decks, ample space for children to run and play.
Named Puke Aute, it looks like any other modest residential subdivision. But it is not ordinary, nor is it a subdivision in any conventional sense. This is papakāinga housing – a rare modern expression of an ancient way of living, a village in which every resident is connected to the earth beneath their feet and where no one can make speculative gains. There are no fences – mokopuna can roam between the houses of grandparents, aunties and cousins.
On the Saturday I visit, there’s a buzz of productivity. An area of ground is being tamed with loppers, garden forks and weed-eaters, and music is pumping from a portable speaker.
Everyone who lives in the houses is linked through whakapapa to this 2.8ha block, and they have proven their right to be here through their labour – attending working bees like this one, coming to hui, and splitting and distributing firewood to those who need it.
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It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But for Matariki Makoare and her husband, Phillip Wainohu, who were among the first to move in early last year, it offered profound relief from a housing system that had condemned them to severe overcrowding and stress.
Despite both working in good jobs – Makoare as a teacher and Wainohu as a meat worker – they fell into chronic housing stress when Covid hit in 2020. They lost the home they’d been renting because the owner needed to move in, and they couldn’t get another place, despite looking at nearly 40 houses. “The viewings were packed,” says Makoare. “And we were young, we were Māori, we had two young children – I knew we had a slim chance of getting a rental. We were losing our home, I was hapū (pregnant), we had nowhere to go, and I had just started a new job. I had anxiety, depression.”
Nor could they buy their own place. Every time they had tried and got close, some years-old unpaid fine or other blemish on their credit record would disqualify them.
With no other choice, they moved in with Wainohu’s parents, whose old three-bedroom home was already crowded with 12 people, including other family members who couldn’t find anywhere of their own to live. Two more whānau joined the household after being evicted because their landlord wanted to sell, bringing the number to 18.
Despite the lack of space and privacy, Makoare says her in-laws’ home was full of love and generosity, and she was grateful her family of four had a cabin on the property to sleep in. She organised everyone into a roster for cooking and cleaning, but she couldn’t help but feel hopeless. “I got depressed because I felt I’d let my kids down. I was putting myself down, telling myself, ‘You’re useless.’”
Land court ‘fraud’
While she and her family struggled, a decades-long dream to build a modern-day pā on the land at Te Hauke was inching towards realisation.