Cyclone Gabrielle: Kāinga Ora mulls modular homes to flooding homeless

layout=”full”] Modular homes can be produced cheaply in factories.

Modular homes on vacant Kāinga Ora land could be used to house people displaced by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Kāinga Ora says it’s too early to know exactly how many of its 4500 houses have been signficantly damaged in Tairāwhiti, Wairoa and Hawke’s Bay.

But it will not just be families already in state houses that need new roofs overhead – others who have lost everything will be joining an already long queue.

Kāinga Ora deputy chief executive for central Daniel Soughtton said on Wednesday they are yet to assess properties in person yet, but teams are on the ground following up on people’s immediate needs.

“We’ve got several based in Civil Defence centres in case our customers turn up there, we have our 0800 number which is available for people to call through if they need any support or have had any damage to their properties,” he told RNZ’s Checkpoint.

“And as of Saturday morning, we also started some outbound calling to customers – where we could get through – just acknowledging the communications difficulties.”

Soughtton said the worst-hit areas did not typically have many Kāinga Ora homes – somewhere between 200 and 300 in “more rural and remote areas where we know there have been impacts”.

“We have a lot of housing in the main urban areas and they appear to have come through relatively unscathed. That being said, we are very interested to hear from any of our customers who have experienced damage.”

Of the approximately 170 calls Kāinga Ora has had, Soughtton said they were about relatively minor things – such as downed trees, broken windows and leaks – compared with what others have experienced.

“We haven’t heard of any sort of catastrophic events that are making homes uninhabitable, at this stage.”

With about 2000 already on the public housing waitlist home across the eastern North Island, and Kāinga Ora homes getting off lightly, Soughtton said the agency would have to play a role in helping those who had lost theirs.

That could include temporary modular homes – built offsite in factories and delivered to order.

“We’re looking into that. We have got land, we’ve got building sites already underway there. We have got other vacant land.

“So that’s part of… the thing that we’ll be looking at to see if we can bring some of that forward and contribute to the wider effort.”