Māori Housing 4-Part Podcast Series

Housing Kaumatua. Daisy Haimona Upokomanu outside her Hamilton whare. Photo: Desna Whaanga-Schollum.

A series of four podcasts focussed on Māori housing has been produced by Becky Kiddle with support from Desna Whaanga-Schollum and Jo Smith as part of the Ako ahu team in the Kāinga Tahi, Kāinga Rua (KTKR) research programme.

The role of the Ako Ahu team is to support KTKR researchers to build a community of interest related to the current housing issues facing diverse Māori communities and to help create research that our communities might find relevant, and ideally, transformative.

Māori housing is a complex issue and requires a whole of landscape (systems) research approach that is embedded in kaupapa Māori methodologies. The Ako Ahu team worked to use pūrākau (storytelling techniques) to synthesise research findings across the three whenu of papakāinga, hauora, and whai rawa to identify key issues, concerns, innovations, and educational opportunities relevant to Māori housing. Understanding how this work connects with others is one of the steps towards developing more sophisticated solutions to critical issues such as housing needs. The Ako Ahu’s remit was to build and share knowledge throughout the KTKR research programme as well as build a broader community of interest in KTKR activities. These podcasts are one of the outputs of the Ako Ahu team. Post production assistance by Thom McIntosh

Housing Kaumatua

This podcast sees Desna Whaanga Schollum and Becky Kiddle travel to Rauawaawa Kaumatua Charitable Trust to talk with the CEO, Rangimahora Reddy, and the Project Manager for Housing at Ngā Rau Tātangi Māori Housing Foundation, Yvonne Wilson, about their kaumatua housing developments and the research work they’ve been undertaking evaluating the housing programme. We also got to speak with three kaumatua, Patihana Takuira-Mita, Clark Takiari, and Daisy Haimona Upokomanu – all living in housing as part of these developments – to ask what they thought of their new whare.

Housing Rangatahi

This podcast focuses on an exciting new research project that has been undertaken by Jacqueline Paul, Maia Ratana, and James Burghan on rangatahi housing experiences. Māori make up a relatively young and fast-growing share of the working-age population in Aotearoa/New Zealand. According to 2013 census data, the median age of the Māori population was 23.4 years, compared with 38.0 years for New Zealanders in general. There were 127,600 Māori aged 15-24 years in the 2013 census. Māori aged 15-24 made up 19 per cent of the Māori population. The decisions made today about our Māori housing futures will have particular impact on the generations to come. Yet how are rangatahi Māori adding their voices to current housing debates? We talk to the three researchers about their mahi, which focused around three wānanga in Kaikohe, Auckland, and Dunedin. Their findings focus on both the experiences and aspirations of rangatahi Māori with respect to housing alongside reflections on appropriate methods for undertaking research with rangatahi.