Hi, my name is Tania and this is my partner Lei.
We lived in a private rental property in Manurewa with our young childrenere in a three bedroom house for over six years. We both come from big families so are used to squeezing in but came to realize that as our children got older it was becoming a tad bit ridiculous. We just didn’t have enough space for our growing family especially when the school holidays came around.
We heard about the Housing Foundation programme through a friend and at first, we were a bit sceptical and thought it was too good to be true. We were scared it was a scam so turned a blind eye to it and ignored that nagging feeling of ‘what if’ until two of my sisters got accepted for a house through the Foundation.
Lei and I sat down with each other and talked about our future, and we realised that our goal was to have a better life, for us and our family. That meant we needed to find a way to find a better home and realised that if we didn’t make a change, take a leap of faith, we’d still be renting someone else’s home, paying for someone else’s mortgage in 10 years’ time! That was the key factor to our decision. Where did we see ourselves in 10 years’ time? I thought that if my sisters could do it and other families like mine can do it, then surely so can we!
We wanted better for our children, stability, a home we know that isn’t going to get sold out from beneath us. We also knew our rental home was causing us all health problems because it was so damp and cold. So, we went onto the Housing Foundation website and filled in the forms. Fingers and toes crossed, we waited patiently for them to get in contact with us.
They called me back and we started talking. There was a lot of information to go through and financial things we needed to work on, but it was all clear and open (no hidden agenda’s) and, one step at a time, we realised they were for real, and we did what we needed to do to save towards getting into our new place.
I still can’t believe how great it felt when we were told we were accepted into the programme, it’s an exciting time. We’ve gotten to choose our homes interior colours, carpets, benchtops and curtains and then as things progressed, they took us to show us the piece of land where our ‘home’ would be built.
We are very excited and motivated to make this work. It seemed too good to be true. But now we are in our warm dry new home, we know it is true and achievable.
We are working hard and taking our chance to make things better. We feel very blessed and very grateful. Just a few weeks after we moved in, Lei turned to me after we had put the kids to bed. He said to me “you know what is different? I can’t hear the kids coughing any more”.