Rongopai Apartments: Good News Built From The Ground Up

Brooke from Vision West joins Andrew Urquhart to mark the opening of Rongopai, a new 24-apartment social housing development built on the charity's West Auckland home campus beside Glen Eden Baptist Church. Forty years in the making, the complex includes a community hub and eight ground-floor apartments built to the LifeMark accessibility standard, designed to let older people and those with disabilities age in place.

Brooke argues good social housing must be fit for purpose, neighbourly and supported by wraparound services like chaplaincy, community meals and social workers, contrasting this with poorly built, profit-driven rentals she says fuel the stigma around social housing. She shares stories of residents - an elderly couple who lost their home to fire and a stroke survivor stuck in a rest home - to illustrate the human need behind the project, and hopes Rongopai can be a blueprint for other providers building the "right houses in the right community for the right need."

Tune into Thoughts & Comments from 10:00am - 2:00pm on the Rhema Media App.

For more from the show, visit the Thoughts & Comments page at rhema.co.nz.

Produced using AI tools under human supervision.

Support Rhema: https://donate.rhemamedia.co.nz/?brand=rhema&utm_source=omnystudio&utm_medium=link

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.