Budget 2023: Tauranga families speak out on what the Government’s priorities should be

The belief that everyone deserves affordable, safe, warm and dry housing is one that hits Carmen Grant-Cairns “straight in the heart”.

That’s why the Tauranga mum’s No 1 hope for Budget 2023 tomorrow is for the Government to put more money into “getting whānau into homes”.

“When you have somewhere safe to be, things start to fall into place,” she told the Bay of Plenty Times.

“If you don’t even have somewhere to stay, how can you expect to thrive in anything else? I hope the Government continues to support getting everyone into affordable housing.”

Grant-Cairns (Ngāti Tūwharetoa) and her husband Tuterangiwhiu (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tūhoe) spoke to the Bay of Plenty Times in March after being handed the keys to a newly built three-bedroom home at Sanctuary Point in Tauranga, as part of Habitat for Humanity’s rent-to-buy Progressive Home Ownership system.

Previously the family of four, including daughters Ivy, 6, and Alivya, 5, had been living in one bedroom at a friend’s house in Rotorua.

“For me affordable housing - it hits me straight in the heart as a mum,” Grant-Cairns said.

“Having somewhere safe, warm and dry to live has always been my No 1 thing.”

Grant-Cairns wanted to see organisations such as Habitat for Humanity receive a “healthy amount” of funding so they could continue their important work.

“They are the ones on the ground genuinely helping people who need somewhere to live.”

Tuterangiwhiu and Carmen Grant-Cairns with daughters Ivy, 6, and Alivya, 5. Photo / Alex Cairns

Tuterangiwhiu and Grant-Cairns run the Online Reo Agency - teaching te reo Māori to workplaces and individuals. The business started teaching te reo online to people living overseas and had since expanded.

Grant-Cairns homeschooled their two daughters.

Tuterangiwhiu, also a kaiako at Toi Ohomai, said the Budget should prioritise putting more money and support into initiatives promoting te reo Māori and tikanga.

This would help improve education in Aotearoa and “create genuine curiosity and appreciation towards te ahurea Māori [Māori culture], te reo Māori and these kaupapa Māori”.

Tuterangiwhiu said more funding in this space would allow for increased educational resources and finding “the right people” to come up with solutions.

These initiatives were highly important to the “identity of this nation” and also made up about “50 per cent of the partnership of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, he said.

The pair also worried about how other whānau were being affected by rising living costs, with Grant-Cairns saying that “inflation is hurting a lot of families”.

“It’s making it hard for people to have quality of life,” she said.

They tried to buy secondhand where possible and kept grocery costs to a minimum - most days eating porridge for breakfast, noodles and tuna for lunch and chicken and rice for dinner.

Grant-Cairns said while they should be financially comfortable, they hit their threshold weekly after paying for food, petrol, insurance and other everyday costs.

“There is nothing after that,” she said.

“It’s important to highlight if we are feeling like this - other whānau are too.”

Tuterangiwhiu added: “I am sitting on the second-highest tax bracket on a single income - I don’t know how people in the middle are managing to feed their whānau”.

Tauranga family Justin Rowe, Nikki Wade and Marni Stowe,15.

Meanwhile, Tauranga mum Nikki Wade said non-government organisations were “so overstretched” in Tauranga and needed more funding.

Wade worked as a case worker and programme facilitator for an NGO in the family violence sector.

“We are overworked, under-resourced and the people we support aren’t being served properly. The wait lists are too long and we are not getting there in time when things are at crisis point.”

She was hopeful money from this year’s budget would be allocated to “community services that are really doing the mahi on the ground”.

Wade said more action was needed around long-term prevention in the sector otherwise services would continue to act as an “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”.

Wade, who lived with her husband Justin Rowe and 15-year-old daughter Marni Stowe, said housing affordability and the cost of groceries were also issues “affecting everybody”.

“I would love to own a home to secure our and our daughter’s future.”