Our Whare Our Fale Stage 1 2025. Photo: Supplied/CPC
The dream of owning a home is now a reality for 18 Pasifika families in Porirua, one of the four cities that make up the Wellington Region.
The housing initiative 'Our Whare Our Fale', led by community-led organisation Central Pacific Collective (CPC), has delivered eighteen new homes, building momentum towards its goal of up to 300 homes in total.
The project is primarily about lifting Pasifika home ownership, and improving Pasifika health, education, and employment, with many living below the poverty line, according to the CPC. The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is responsible for managing the project funding appropriation.
The houses are built around a central malae (community space) and allows multi-generational living.
Speaking to Pacific Waves, CPC chair Fa'amatuainu Tino Pereira said homeownership has always been the ultimate goal for Pacific families.
"Our people since coming to New Zealand, always talked about owning their own homes, always talked about getting into homes that allow them to live their lives," he said.
Our Whare our Fale aerial view of build 2025. Photo: Supplied/CPC
The 2018 Census shows only one in three Pacific people in New Zealand own their own homes, and more than half live in homes that are not up to standard.
Fa'amatuainu said talks of the housing initiative started three years ago when he met up with Ngāti Toa CEO, Helmut Modlik at a cafe.
During their meeting, Modlik offered CPC land as long as they were able to "find the money" to build the homes.
With government support, CPC was able to receive funding to start construction.
"Finding hundred-million dollars wasn't easy. We [had] no assets where were we going to get the money... but we pursued that two years with the government," Fa'amatuainu said.
According to a Salvation Army's 2024 State of Pacific Peoples report, Pasifika homeownership rates dropped from 51.8 percent in 1986 to 35 percent in 2023, compared to the national rate dropping from 75 percent to 58.7 percent.
Te Lakilua Teao and Melissa Nansen, one of the 18 families who have secured their own home said they heard about the initiative through friends, family and social media.
For them, the processes and paperwork that comes with getting on the property ladder was a challenge, but having their own home meant there would be no more renting and dealing with house inspections.
"We will no longer be paying for overpriced, cold rental homes," they said.
"We will have peace of mind knowing we won't have to move again, but also instead of enriching someone else through rental payments. Each mortgage payment we make builds equity."
Our Whare Our Fale Stage 1 build in progress 2025 Photo: Supplied/CPC
The houses re-imagines the Pasifka village and are designed using traditional architectural structure and guided by cultural values.
"In Samoa, we say 'e le'i o le fale, o le anofale' - it's not the house, but the people living in the house and how their lives are lived," Fa'amatuainu said.
"So that's the focus and that's why these houses are particularly specially designed because the architecture doesn't design these houses - that's the palagi approach.
"It's the values, it's those traditions that inform the architect to then sit down and make sure those houses are developed."