By Hamish Clark
Prisoners will be used to fix up state houses that are badly damaged and lying empty in Christchurch’s red zone.
The houses will be shifted to prison land where the criminals will carry out the repairs. The scheme is part of Housing New Zealand’s $1.5 billion rebuilding programme.
A three bedroom state house from Woolston is getting a complete makeover, including new carpet, new cabinets in the kitchen and a brand new roof.
It’s one of 212 Government-owned homes in Christchurch being repaired at a cost of $20 million.
“These aren't $5000 repairs, these are $80,000, $90,000 repairs,” says Housing Minister Phil Heatley.
About 95 percent of the 6000 state houses were damaged during the earthquakes. Now 200 lie empty and in ruin inside the red zone, but a number of them look set to be saved - fixed using cheap prison labour.
Housing New Zealand general manager of asset development Sean Bignell says it is a big saving.
“Our internal costing shows that it basically makes the repair economic, but we are saving nearly 50 percent of the cost of refurbishing, repurposing a house that we might otherwise not been able to do. It is material, it is worthwhile.”
Mr Heatley admits that without the prison training scheme being available, houses in the red zone would be demolished.
“We get to repair a house that we wouldn't normally get to do,” he says. “An inmate gets to learn new skills supervised by a properly qualified new person and that house is relocated probably somewhere in Canterbury.”
But it's the repairs to earthquake-damaged homes that are the most pressing, Arrow project manager Jason Bartram says.
“This will be handed back to Housing New Zealand for occupation by the end of the week.”
There are another 49 big repair jobs still to get started to be completed by the deadline at the end of the month.
3 News