Researchers link Māori housing inequities to 180 years of restrictive building laws

Source: Radio New Zealand

For centuries, Māori built homes that were warm, dry, sustainable and centred on whānau.

Homelessness, damp houses and overcrowding were not part of te ao Māori.

Two researchers say the systems that displaced Māori from their kāinga still shape housing inequities today and the solutions lie in restoring Māori autonomy over how communities build.

Professor Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) has spent more than two decades researching Māori architecture.

She is a professor at Te Pare School of Architecture and Planning at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland, and co-director of MĀPIHI, the Centre for Māori and Pacific Housing Research.

A few years ago, she and other Māori academics sat down to ask what issues most affected Māori and “what are the skills that we can bring to the table that might help?”.

“We all agreed housing was the No.1 critical issue that we could actually make a positive contribution to,” she told RNZ.

The rōpū went on to interview 30-40 stakeholders – from Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to Māori housing providers, marae, iwi, community groups and architects.

“We asked them, what are the challenges and opportunities in Māori housing?” she said.

Their work identified 130 interrelated factors influencing housing outcomes, with affordability as one.

MĀPIHI was formed from that research, with a mission “to increase the quality and supply of housing for Māori and Pacific people”.

Alongside Deidre Brown is architectural designer and new academic Savannah Brown (Ngāti Whātua, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Wai, Ngāpuhi), who is in the fourth year of her PhD examining how colonial building laws affected whare Māori – specifically in the Ngāti Whātua rohe.

She said the threads connecting traditional building systems and today’s policies were clearer than many people realise.

“I’ve always been interested in traditional whare Māori,” she said.

“Working in practice opened my eyes to the complexity, cost and barriers in today’s building system – legislation, codes, standards. When I compared that to how streamlined traditional building was, it made me want to understand what happened.”

From autonomy to restriction

Before colonisation, kāinga were self-determined, sustainable and organised at hapū level.

“We manaaki [look after] people,” Deidre Brown said. “The idea of someone being houseless or without whānau is outside our tikanga – it’s not part of our way of thinking.

“There was always provision of shelter.”

She said, because Māori had self-determination over their own lands, they always had dedicated areas for gathering materials like raupō, nikau and timber, and knowledge about harvesting in ways that kept those resources renewing.

“It’s what we’d now call the circular economy.

“Our people, our Polynesian navigators, they got here by knowing how to put things together and how to make them stay together.

“We had our own building technologies as well and they were highly socialised within our communities. People knew how to build.”

Savannah Brown said whare were built in response to demand – “a growing hapū, a new baby or a new whānau forming”.

Both researchers said misconceptions about traditional Māori houses – that they were cold, dirty or unsafe – came from colonial writers.

“Colonial authors claimed Māori housing made us ‘sick’, but evidence shows the opposite,” Deidre Brown said

She recalled her brother visiting a whare at Taupō Bay in the 1950s, a traditional whare with dirt floors.

“He remembers it as the cleanest house he’d ever seen.”

Savannah Brown said many early texts carried “white-superiority undertones”, using words like “savage” or “inferior”, yet the materials were climate-adapted and regionally specific.

“We evolved our architecture for centuries and post-contact legislation disrupted that progression.”

1842: A turning point

One of the earliest disruptions, the pair said, was the Raupō Houses Ordinance, passed in 1842 – just two years after the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

It imposed a £20 annual tax on existing raupō houses in the main centres and a £100 fine for anyone building a new one.

The plant raupō (Typha orientalis), also known as bulrush, is a common wetland plant in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Māori used raupō to build whare, including domestic dwellings and some early official buildings, by using the leaves and stalks for walls and thatching, and the pollen for other purposes.

The law was framed as a fire safety measure, but Deidre Brown was doubtful.

“There’s been research suggesting the government was concerned Māori builders were undercutting the new settler builders, because Māori could build out of raupō,” she said. “The ordinance was more about protecting newly arrived British carpenters.”

Savannah Brown said she read the original document at the National Archives and “touching it was profound”.

“Realising this single piece of paper marked the beginning of the decline of traditional Māori architecture.”

The ripple effects of this legislation were quick, they said. Use of traditional materials dropped, hapū lost access to wetlands and forests, as land was taken or drained, and rangatahi (young people) moved away from their kāinga, taking labour and expertise with them.

Through the early and mid-20th century, Māori home ownership declined sharply. Instead of homes being free to build and live in, and homelessness being “virtually unimaginable”, whānau Māori found themselves at the “bottom of the housing heap”, living in low-quality accommodation in the cities.

Government-built state houses helped some whānau, but the designs reflected European nuclear families, rather than Māori communal life.

“They just weren’t built for the bigger Māori families,” Deidre Brown said. “Six, maybe eight kids, lots of aunties and uncles coming in and out, bringing kai with them.”

Standard layouts placed bathrooms next to kitchens, breaching tikanga, and put houses at the front of sections, leaving little room for pōwhiri, visitors or tangihanga. Even hallways worked against whānau life.

“It prevented the singing and storytelling that went on in a traditional whare moe.”

Later, Māori were excluded from government mortgage support for decades – access began only in 1959.

In the 2023 census, Māori home ownership had fallen to 27.5 percent, and, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s latest insights report for June 2025, more than 60 percent of those experiencing homelessness identify as Māori.

“When legislation stopped us building for ourselves, autonomy disappeared,” Savannah Brown said.

Rebuilding autonomy

Both researchers said Māori-led solutions already existed and they may be the key.

Te Māhurehure Marae in Auckland’s Pt Chevalier and Ngāti Toa were among those creating papakāinga that wove housing into marae life, natural environments and cultural practice.

“They’ve done away with front yards and back yards, [and] people are closely linked to their wharenui,” Savannah Brown said.

“They have kura kaupapa, a community vegetable garden [māra kai], and they’re creating their own supply chain. In many ways, it’s like what their ancestors had in the 19th century, but using modern technologies.”

Savannah Brown said capability within whānau was key, but smaller hapū often struggled, as rangatahi moved to cities.

She also believed systems needed reform. One of her research areas was the possibility of a Māori building authority.

“There are huge misunderstandings at council level around tikanga Māori and whenua Māori,” she said. “Some processes become absurd… like marae having to seek resource consent from themselves.”

Both told RNZ that they hoped more Māori entered architecture to help shift the sector.

“Housing sits at the centre of wellbeing,” Deidre Brown said. “The more Māori we have in this sector, the better for our people.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand