‘Homes For People’ in PN is doing their bit for alleviating homelessness – helping people rent or buy affordable homes

Meet Darren and Cheri Birch of Palmerston North, who created a business building new houses to help alleviate increasing homelessness. These people are putting their money where their mouth is so to speak. Read Stuff’s article & see their interview, plus have a look at their website called https://www.homesforpeople.co.nz/ Brilliant. I know many are now living in WINZ’s very unaffordable & totally insane solution to homelessness … racking up debt living in their ’emergency housing’ … MOTELS! While elsewhere in the country hundreds of state homes are boarded up & empty, many landbanked by your current pretend government.
EnvirowatchRangitikei

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Darren Birch walks by the property on Limbrick St where he is building two Homes for People houses.

Manawatu’s Darren and Cheri Birch have done this.

The lack of affordable housing in New Zealand is something that really concerns them, as does the number of people without a place to call home.

Discussion turned into Homes for People, a Palmerston North-based response to the growing housing need in provincial New Zealand.

It took them five years, but an empty plot of land is about to become six homes.

And those homes, says Darren Birch, will be for people who need them.

“There are people in our community who others look down on for one reason or another and think ‘you should have helped yourself, you should have made better choices’.

“We are pragmatic about that perception and, for us, that is just an obstacle – it doesn’t have to be the end of the story.”

Homes for People allows a house to be bought through shared equity ownership.

In a nutshell:

* Someone who has been struggling to get on the housing ladder purchases the share of the home they can afford.

* The remainder is owned by Homes for People.

* The mortgage is proportionally smaller than is ordinarily needed to purchase the same property at market value.

For more information go to: https://www.homesforpeople.co.nz/

Your Local Housing Association

Homes for People is a locally managed Housing Association:

Providing affordable homes for low income households
Helping fulfil the Kiwi dream though supported home ownership

Homes for People provides scalable and sustainable models for Kiwis to partner together to increase the accessibility of home ownership within our communities.

Homes for People also exists to develop and enhance social and affordable housing, for those in our community who need supported housing.

Do you have Expertise, Experience, Equity to contribute? (read more at the site)

Comment from Cheri:

If people go to our Homes for People page there is a place for them to sign up to our regular updates.
We’ve now got some compact homes for sale if anyone wants to enquire. I expect they will go on Trademe this week.