Common Ground

Are you a freelance consultant or social entrepreneur or project/organisation leader with a list of goals and positive impact you strive to achieve? Do you sometimes get side-tracked, or lose motivation, or need clarity on an important decision. Perhaps you wish for encouragement with a challenging task, or someone to reflect on what could be done better or what the next best step is? As a freelance consultant, I experience all of the above at times. It’s been shown that having an accountability buddy, a reciprocal support system, can greatly increase the ability to achieve one’s goals with more clarity, efficiency, creativity, and satisfaction. 🦋 So I’m looking for an accountability buddy—someone who would like to meet regularly to provide each other with the support we need to stay accountable to our big dreams and goals. 🙌🏼 The frequency and how an accountability partnership can structured is to be discussed and decided collaboratively. If this is something that piques your interest, PM me. I look forward to hearing of your audacious goals and to exploring how this system could work for us. ⭐️

The My Home, Your Home, Our Homes community engagement series in SE QLD to catalyse affordable community-led housing has been successful with its first week of events. We’ve gotten fantastic feedback that the seminars and workshops have been informative, inspiring, interactive, empowering, and motivating. We’ve got a list of assets/enablers and many actions steps. However now we need people to put the plans into motion! To date, I presented at the Brisbane Quaker Meeting as they are keen to consider housing options then the HOW team and I held events at the Gold Coast, South Brisbane, and Sunshine Coast. Participants have included Council staff, community-based organisations, social workers, women in need of housing, planners, small-scale developers, ecovillage pioneers, and others. Participants are fired up about housing justice, regenerative community development, economic fairness, resilient neighbourhoods, meeting older women’s needs, and more… This coming week: North Brisbane, a session specially for sector Influencers, a City Building seminar hosted by the Gold Coast City Council and then a council-only Masterclass, and finally a last workshop in the Sunshine Coast. We welcome collaborators to join us for the sessions and also join the movement. HOW have lots of advocacy to do and wish to get some pilots off the ground. The team working with me at Housing Older Women including Tracy Adams, Maggie Shambrook and Pip McGlinn Sharon Redmond FIML and Lynette and Deanna have done a most amazing job at organising and publicising everything. In my spare time, I got to visit with my daughter Oriah Rose as she was on holiday here, attend a contact dance jam, see a Brisbane Festival performance, join a playback theatre rehearsal, walk along the Brighton foreshore, and attend the Brisbane Vegan Expo. https://lnkd.in/g29MKJ6c

I'm assisting the Housing Older Women Movement with an initiative called My Home, Your Home Our Homes Project in SE Queensland from the Gold Coast to Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. We will be hosting a series of seminars, workshops, forum & networking events taking place from September 10th to 23rd to catalyse perpetually affordable community-led intergenerational and age-friendly housing in Queensland. We are inviting the public, housing and community organisations, local and central government, and those who have access to land and funding to join us. We aim to ‘seed’ similar citizen-led and government-supported demonstration/pilot housing projects across SE Qld. Register for any of the events here: https://lnkd.in/g29MKJ6c You can also see a video where we promote the events and talk about the importance of this project: https://lnkd.in/gGPGiyqg

I'm thrilled to be celebrating Women's Day (South African date) on 9 Aug with the Coalition to End Women's Homelessness, offering a presentation and kōrero on how more affordable and connected housing for women and particularly migrant and ethnic women can be enabled in Aotearoa. I'll be sharing case studies of successful women's housing initiatives and organisations in other countries from a report I wrote on the subject--hoping to inspire emulation in Aotearoa. On a personal note, I'll share about my unique journey of self-building my own off-grid house and homestead in rural Zulu-land South Africa as well as vulnerably speaking about my own family's experiences with homelessness as a migrant single mother in Aotearoa.

I’m excited to announce I’m going to become a citizen of Aotearoa NZ on 12 June. I feel very proud to call this place home for so many reasons—longer post to follow on that. However, I have concern that the affirmation I’m given to read doesn’t mention Te Tiriti which is the original agreement given by Māori for tauiwi such as myself to immigrate and live here and the principles that guide my relationships with people and place. It’s odd that the affirmation/oath, pledges allegiance to a King who doesn’t live here but makes no mention of the indigenous people and principles that formed the agreement to be here in the first place. I plan on reading the oath in Te Reo Māori and on adding a line or two about recognising Te Tiriti as the original agreement and my role and responsibilities as tangata Tiriti and an oath to uphold the principles and the promise of tino rangatiratanga in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. If you are a Te Reo speaker and able to help me craft this second part of the oath, I would be grateful. Otherwise, I’ll need to say it in English only. I’m interested to hear from those who have become citizens of Aotearoa NZ who have done similar with their oath.

A land trust model for affordable home ownership   I’ve just published the third episode of the Homefullness podcast, which you can find on most podcast apps. I interview Peter Southwick, a Trustee of the Bridge Housing Trust in the Waikato, on their land trust model for affordable home ownership. I hope you’ll find it informative in understanding how this model works, could be replicated around the country, as well as what levers need to be pulled to make it happen. Bridge Housing Trust has replicated the successful “Secure Home” model from the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust (QLCHT) where the cost of the house to buy does not include buying the land. Instead, the Trust holds the land for the wider community to always be able to offer affordable housing in perpetuity. What is different about Bridge Housing Trust is that, unlike QLCHT which was initiated by the District government, it was kicked off by a philanthropist who wanted to make his land available for affordable housing and so formed a Trust to be able to hold ownership of that land. I asked Peter what he believes are the leverage points and what he would do for housing if he had a magic wand. Actually, what we realised is that it doesn’t take magic to create better housing outcomes but it does take the more powerful role players of central and local government, financial institutions, big industry employers, and land-owning philanthropists to be bold, proactive, collaborative and then invest in and enable these tried-and-tested housing models.   Here are some clips from the interview to entice your listening.  I asked Peter which role players in our society could be doing more to enable affordable housing. Peter says, “for me, councils they have the potential to help change the affordable housing skyline in New Zealand. And so those councils that are willing to engage with it really have the potential to make genuine change. And I would almost say that without them at that local government level, without their engagement, without their involvement, without their financial contribution, affordable housing will always be on the back foot in our nation, so they have a huge role to play.” “So the financial institutions, have a big part to play there. They make so much money out of our country, don't they, the banks, that I reckon they have a bigger role to play. And I would love to see them setting up some funds, really directed more towards housing. “And then the other one that could be a player, are the big industry people. So, if I'm a massive employer of people say in Queenstown, and I can't house my workers, I can't run my business, can I? So I think there's a role to play for big, wealthy companies in thinking, how can we help in the affordable housing space, how can we engage with affordable housing providers, provide them some funds to build us some houses.