Home improvements for Wellington families

The spending on maintenance covers things such as painting, fencing, roofing and driveway safety improvements. It’s all part of Kāinga Ora’s focus on improving the quality of its homes for families, Regional Manager Jackie says.

Kāinga Ora owns 8550 homes in the Greater Wellington region. The FY18/19 $11 million investment includes more than $840,000 on fencing improvements, about $5.5 million on painting, nearly $4.5 million on roofing and over $118,000 on 100 driveway safety improvement projects that will help make those homes even safer.

Jackie says Kāinga Ora is committed to ensuring the health and safety of its tenants. Investing in the maintenance of its homes plays a big role in that.

“It’s great to see this money being spent on our homes in Wellington. These improvements will help keep our homes in good condition and provide a safe, warm environment for tenants and their whānau.’’

The Driveway Safety programme began in 2013 and aims to reduce the risk of children being run over in the driveways of state homes. This is achieved by installing fencing, self-closing gates with child-resistant latches, speed restriction signs, speed humps and convex mirrors, where appropriate.

The programme has already seen improvements made to many Wellington properties and focuses on separating play areas from driveways and ensuring play areas are directly visible and accessible from main living areas.

Overall, Kāinga Ora spends about half a billion dollars a year on maintaining and improving its homes across New Zealand.

As well as driveway safety, fencing, painting and roofing programmes, this yearly maintenance amount includes other planned programmes, keeping properties to standard between tenancies, and other exterior and interior maintenance.