The Hawke’s Bay suburb Flaxmere is looking to a positive horizon with a proposed housing development. Plans have been revealed for 500 new homes bringing homes, jobs and opportunities to a community that has been on the end of bad publicity for many years.
It’s a small community widely known for crime and violence but, beyond the darkness is the light and it is plain to see for one of its heroes, Henare O’Keefe.
“Pāharakeke is an opportunity, it’s not a liability and no longer are we in grievance mode. We’re not victims anymore - we are now masters of our own destiny.”
Five hundred new homes are expected to be built spread across 36 hectares in Flaxmere, providing more job opportunities as well as new homes for its residents.
Project developer and property manager Simon Tremain says this is a great opportunity for the Hastings suburb.
“It’s got to be good for the community and the rebuilding of the actual CBD of Flaxmere is a big part of how all of this comes together as well.”
O’Keefe further says every man, woman and child deserves to have a warm affordable home.
“It’s not a privilege, it’s a right. It’s our God-given right. We recognise this in Pāharakeke - that’s why we’re saying we’re building Pāharakeke from the inside out, not the outside in.”
O’Keefe has been a community leader and advocate for years.
His love for his community stretches far and wide, and he says that Tremain has his full support.
“I would not have put my name to it if I didn’t get a guarantee to those things, which isj obs for our people and affordable homes. So, I’ve put my name to it because I trust Simon Tremain, and I said to him, and he won’t mind me saying this ‘I’m only here because of you’ and we shook on it and he said,’ I will honour you’.”
Tremain says the value of the land in Flaxmere is going to make it easy for whānau to find a home.
“The cost of the land is where this development can have some real traction for locals and for the community. The cost of land in comparison to other areas in Hawke’s Bay and other regions in New Zealand will be very affordable.”
Over the years Flaxmere has been a community known for gang ties, violence, murder and more.
However O’Keefe says the tides have turned.
“These things that are happening now, it’s not by chance. It hasn’t fallen out of the sky and landed in our lap. We’ve worked damn hard. What’s happened here is, this is a community that has taken ownership and responsibility. They are the masters of their own destiny.”