Ayla Hoeta’s attitude to, and success in life, belies bleak beginnings. Growing up her life was challenging – gang connections, family members in jail, teenage mothers without the resources needed to look after babies, alcohol, unemployment…

Yet somehow Ayla – once in state care – had an extensive education (she’s the proud holder of an honours’ degree) and has an interesting and flourishing career. She’s raised twin boys, now aged 10, as a sole parent and she’s a home owner.

The latter is certainly an achievement under her circumstances, let alone in the escalating and exorbitant Auckland housing market. But having a home, a safe haven, for her and her family had always been top priority for Ayla, something she just had to strive for. And with some all-important help it happened.

Ayla applied for a home in the Waimahia Inlet development undertaken by a partnership between The Housing Foundation, Tamaki Collective, The Maori Trustee and CORT Community Housing, all not-for profit organisations dedicated to providing affordable housing for families in a beautiful coastal setting facing the Manukau Harbour.

Waimahia is a new community of affordable homes, primarily for first home buyers, using the assisted ownership financial products offered by the partners such as shared home ownership, rent to buy, home saver and community rental products.

It boasts close to 100 percent of its 300 homes sold as “affordable” with 70 percent assisted affordable and 30 percent sold to the private market. Each is architecturally designed to be warm and energy efficient and built by experienced registered builders to a high standard. And it enjoys a number of reserves, parks and playgrounds.

Ayla and her boys Kyran and Lyronz love living there. Their three-bedroom, two-storeyed modern home has been lovingly decorated. The boys have decals of their favourite basketball players shooting hoops above their beds and in the garden flowers, vegetables and herbs are flourishing.

Apart from a few family members in her grandparents’ generation no one else in Ayla’s family has bought a house. It just wasn’t something any of them thought they could make happen. But Ayla was on a mission.

“I guess you could say that when I put my mind to something I do make it happen,” says Ayla. “It wasn’t easy but the end result was definitely worth it. We absolutely love this house and every day I feel blessed my boys and I have somewhere safe and nice to live and grow.”

Ayla was 18 when the boys were born and by her own admission very immature. But she had entrepreneurial skills. She would buy cheap clothes in opp shops, clean them up and make a few artistic additions and then sell them online and worked at the Otara Market selling vegetables for a small profit.

When Ayla finished her degree the boys had just turned five and she had saved money towards a deposit on a house. But it wasn’t enough. She picked up more work as a lecturing assistant while completing her honours degree and saved every cent.

“I had got a job at The Southern Initiative as the director’s PA with the opportunity to use my degree on a special project aimed at giving rangatahi a voice,” says Ayla.

“My life was finally falling into place and a time for the icing on the cake – a place to call home. A work colleague told me about Waimahia so I went to have a look. As soon as I got there I could feel the energy of something special. My heart was beating out of my chest and I just knew it was going to be the community where I lived. So I started the application process. Initially I only had enough to get a two bedroomed place but with a bit more determination and saving I managed to save enough to apply for a three bedroomed one.

It was so exciting. On the day we got the key the boys and I camped out on a mattress in the lounge with no electricity or anything but just to revel in the fact we were the proud owners of a beautiful new home. We had somewhere safe to live. We were so, so happy.”

Today, Ayla is TSI’s Youth Innovator and oversees a digital crowd empowerment platform called Upsouth which asks youngsters how they feel about community issues and offers them a chance to contribute to solutions. Upsouth won Auckland Council’s 2018 Engagement Awards and has also received overseas recognition of the socially innovative work it is doing.

Ayla loves her job. She visits schools to talk to young people about the platform and she uses her communications skills to market the initiative.

“These days I feel strong, independent and settled. Buying a house was incredibly empowering and it has given me and the boys a feeling of security. The mortgage and all the other costs associated with the house are large but I just make sure I stay on top of the bills. Love those automatic payments!”

Ayla owns 70 percent of her house. The rest is owned by the Trust. Ayla is working hard to ensure she owns her home 100 percent as soon as possible. And after that?

“I’ve always dreamed about a beautiful family home in Maraetai near the marae and the beach…

After her divorce, Jackie found herself starting over again. She moved from Wellington to Auckland in 2005 with four children between the ages of 1-13 years.

Jackie: “I had a lot of debt from my marriage to pay and was constantly receiving notices from collection agencies. Trying to rent a home in Auckland as a single parent with bad debt meant that I was seen as a risk for rental homes.
Reluctantly I had to move into my parent’s house and share one room with my four children. I couldn’t see myself owning a home as a single parent.”

I thought there’s no way banks would touch me with a 10 foot pole. I was resigned to the fact that I’d be living with my parents or others until my children left home. I realised that if I was going to get ahead and try and rebuild my life again I needed to get a better paying job which meant that I had to return to study to further my qualifications.”

Over the last 10 years Jackie has worked hard to get into work she really enjoyed and has now found that she can support herself and her children without being on a benefit.

Jackie: “Eventually I was able to rent a home, but the cost of renting was still really hard to afford on one income. I moved several times, staying with friends and family members over the years but this was unsettling for my children..

In early 2013, a work colleague introduced me to the Housing Foundation’s Affordable Housing Programme. Then I went to a presentation held in the community and listened to what was required to apply for a home. I had reservations about the programme and believed that I wouldn’t be considered due to my circumstances, and that I would not be a suitable candidate. At that point I decided not to go any further.

“But in late 2013, the Housing Foundation came and gave a presentation at my workplace, and this time I decided to submit an application for one of the new homes in the upcoming Waimahia Development. I remember when I completed the form on the website and I received a reply to advise the criteria I needed to meet to be considered for a home. I saw that I was not eligible because I was a single parent and did not meet the income threshold. I also had a bad credit rating and hardly any savings.

I wrote an email back to withdraw my application and within 20 minutes I received a phone call from the Housing Foundation team to say that ‘I was the type of family that they are there to help’. Housing Foundation staff encouraged me to complete my application and they told me what I need to do to qualify. It was a life-changing moment for me as the support and guidance provided by the Housing Foundation gave me the confidence to move forward.”

Jackie began to see that her vision of becoming a homeowner was possible.

“Jackie: “In January 2014 I was accepted onto the programme for the Shared Home Ownership scheme. The support I received from the team at Housing Foundation was overwhelming.” Jackie put some short-term goals in place to improve her financial position and managed to pay off her debts. In September 2015, Jackie and her two boys moved into their 4 bedroom home in Waimahia Inlet and have now settled into the community.”

Hi, I am Richard Drake. I live here in Mangere with Nicola, my wife and our three sons Oliver, Thomas and Peter aged 6, 5 and 1. I work as an Organisational Development Advisor at Auckland Council. Nicola is currently a stay at home mum, who is on leave at present, but when at work, is a Triage Nurse in the Emergency Department at Middlemore Hospital.”

Richard: “Seven years ago we were living in Greenlane in a little unit in a block of four thinking about what is next for us. It was okay, a bit damp and small, but a rental and not really what we needed. So I started looking around, we decided we didn’t want to keep paying rent. It was dead money and I had a map of Auckland and I drew a circle starting from the centre and over time I made that circle bigger and bigger and bigger to see if we could find something we could afford.

At that time I was working for a church in the city, Nicola was working as a Nurse, and we had our first child. I started to feel really down about housing affordability. The more I looked at houses we might be able to buy, we were moving further and further away from where I worked at the time, and where our friends were, and where our sense of community was at that time.

We felt stuck. The sort of house we could afford was going to be old and poor quality and would require lots of maintenance. We had decided we wanted to move towards home ownership. Friends of ours around that time had a bad experience, were asked to move out of their rental property with very short notice so this was part of what drove our decision to make a change.

Having a family was important to us. We could have coped in the flat with one child but our vision of our future was to have more stability and some space. We thought when we first heard about the Housing Foundation that it had to be a scam. I saw an ad and it was really simple and plain. I remember thinking it’s got to be a scam, it can’t be real. I really like to look things up and so when I checked out Housing Foundation I saw a press release from the Beehive and then realised there was credibility there.

I was surprised to find that this idea of shared equity is actually real and decided then that I needed to find out more. It was hard to understand at first. So I called up the number and within a week someone came to us and was willing to explain how it all worked.

“We had to read through some documents and we had to look at our resources and get all our finances in order. It was a pretty big checklist I felt. It was a big job, but I felt pretty determined to give it my best shot.”

Nicola: “It was all a bit scary for me and overwhelming. Neither of us is from Auckland and where I come from buying a house is something you do for the rest of your life and I didn’t want to be stuck”. Richard: “I had work and I had home life but I made giant check lists and all of my spare thoughts and time was devoted to making this happen. It is a life that we imagined and we wanted a flourishing family life. The drive to get through this checklist came from all the investigation I had done before I came to the Housing Foundation.

I had spent a lot of time looking and it was pretty grim out there. People warned us against it saying the property market was going to collapse. Once I realised the Housing Foundation was genuine it made me very focused on getting the work done to join their Shared Equity Programme. It was the only way we could see to move towards home ownership based on the income we had at that time.

When we moved in here, the house itself and moving location from Greenlane to Mangere, provided a platform for re-evaluation and changes in our life. We did move further out of the city than we had wanted to. It broke a lot of our habits. It was an amazing opportunity to look at what we wanted. My job wasn’t taking me in a direction I wanted to go.

“So Nicola went back to work full time nursing and I became a stay at home Dad and did some retraining and additional study. We had security. We were blown away that this house was so well insulated and dry and we had the space we needed. Once I completed my 4 years of part time night classes I got a Master’s degree and it opened doors, allowed a career change and an improvement in job satisfaction and earnings. We then swapped roles again.”

Nicola: “It was an unexpected opportunity for me to advance my nursing career and that time allowed me to get a higher paid position. It has also been great for our relationship because we both have an understanding of what it takes to look after pre-schoolers. We have been here six years in September 2017. We have lovely families in this street. Our kids play with kids across the road and jump on their trampoline and we have local kids in here playing Monopoly or playing together down at the reserve.

We realise that we are really lucky to have found the Housing Foundation. We are also really mindful of how we spend our money. We are not really buying into consumerism in the same way we see others doing these days, like holidays in Fiji, but we have a house. If we didn’t have this house, it would have been foolish for us to have a third child, but with the space and security we have, it all makes sense. Now we have full ownership it’s just amazing. It has been hard work but we got here in the end.”

Hi, my name is Tania and this is my partner Lei.

We lived in a private rental property in Manurewa with our young children. We had lived there in a three bedroom house for over six years. We both come from big families so are used to squeezing in but came to realize that as our children got older it was becoming a tad bit ridiculous. We just didn’t have enough space for our growing family especially when the school holidays came around

We heard about the Housing Foundation programme through a friend and at first we were a bit sceptical and thought it was too good to be true. We were scared it was a scam so turned a blind eye to it and ignored that nagging feeling of ‘what if’ until two of my sisters got accepted for a house through the Foundation.

Lei and I sat down with each other and talked about our future and we realised that our goal was to have a better life, for us and our family. That meant we needed to find a way to find a better home and realised that if we didn’t make a change, take a leap of faith, we’d still be renting someone else’s home, paying for someone else’s mortgage in 10 years’ time! That was the key factor to our decision. Where did we see ourselves in 10 years’ time? I thought that if my sisters could do it and other families like mine can do it, then surely so can we!

We wanted better for our children, stability, a home we know that isn’t going to get sold out from beneath us. We also knew our rental home was causing us all health problems because it was so damp and cold. So we went onto the Housing Foundation website and filled in the forms. Fingers and toes crossed, we waited patiently for them to get in contact with us.

“They called me back and we started talking. There was a lot of information to go through and financial things we needed to work on, but it was all really clear and open (no hidden agenda’s) and, one step at a time, we realised they were for real and we did what we needed to do to save towards getting into our new place.”

I still can’t believe how great it felt when we were told we were accepted into the programme, it’s an exciting time. We’ve gotten to choose our homes interior colours, carpets, benchtops and curtains and then as things progressed they took us to show us the piece of land where our ‘home’ would be built.

We are very excited and motivated to make this work. It seemed too good to be true. But now we are in our warm dry new home, we know it is true and achievable. We are working hard and taking our chance to make things better.

“We feel very blessed and very grateful. Just a few weeks after we moved in, Lei turned to me after we had put the kids to bed. He said to me you know what is different? I can’t hear the kids coughing any more”