Housing Crisis

PHOTO: Housing Crisis

A cluster of inner city townhouses has solved a single parent’s search for a home and may hold an answer to Christchurch’s housing crisis.

 

In October last year, nursing student Rosie Moore and her seven-year-old son Ernie moved into the Peterborough Housing Co-op, a pocket neighbourhood of 14 townhouses (plus one tiny house) on a block of land between Manchester and Madras Streets.

“It’s a new house, a change in lifestyle, and it is a really positive thing for both of us,” says Moore in an interview with Frank Film. “I think more people would live in the city if they could, if it was more affordable. It is more convenient and there are a lot of really great facilities in town.”

For Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb, it is his first visit to the co-op. He has friends here, he says, “and from all reports it is fantastic, very exciting”. He is impressed.

The housing co-op dates back to the 1980s, when the Te Whānau Charitable Trust that governed Piko Wholefoods expanded to include a land trust. In 1980 the trust bought four villas on Peterborough Street under the ownership of the new Ōtākaro Land Trust, set up to support community development through co-operative housing. After the earthquakes of 2011, says trustee Stephanie Pole, they got a good payout from their insurance “and a rather large mortgage from our bank”.

They decided to build back bigger, and better, with the well-being of the community in mind.

READ MORE VIA RNZ

MOST READ