Homefullness

Show host Zola shares her personal experience with housing instability through a creative reading of her unpublished article titled 'Homefullness: Recipes for Baking, Belonging, Connection, and Resilience into Housing Futures.'

Zola details her struggles with feelings of homelessness due to the challenge of finding available, affordable accommodation and precarious short-term house and room rentals, despite her professional background and stable income. 

She highlights the systemic issues in housing policies and market forces that creates housing insecurity for many working people in our society as well as for single mothers and older women.

S...

In this episode Zola interviews Steven Liaros to discuss the importance and the roadmap to create a network of Circular Economy Villages (CEV).

These villages aim to integrate private housing development with public infrastructure to alleviate stress on local governments and create sustainable, regenerative rural and peri-urban communities.

Steven delves into the critical barriers that traditional eco-village projects face, such as local area planning policies, financing, and necessary infrastructure.

The CEV model addresses these issues by incorporating principles of the circular economy, emphasizing reduced waste and enhanced efficiency in energy and water usage...

In this episode of the Homefullness Show, Dionne Payne, founder of Women for Homes, discusses her ambitious mission to inspire 1 million women to invest $5,000 each to end homelessness by 2030.  She is inviting women to contribute to an ethical investment fund that will, when a substantial amount is accumulated, will develop affordable housing projects.   We discuss what "affordable" means in this context, which is 30% of a homeowner or renter's income, and how to create perpetual, retained, intergenerational affordability.   Dionne shares her journey from a scientist to a real estate developer, impact investor for affordable housing, and financial educator for women, driven by...

In this episode, host Zola interviews Zahra Lightway about her tour of eco villages across Australia, India, and Europe.

The conversation explore what made the ecovillages she visited successful, mainly a robust governance system, income-earning programmes and opportunities, a shared worldview (values and beliefs), and mission-driven activities.

They cover sociocracy as a governance model, the difference between eco estates and eco villages, and innovative financial models like Les Pas Sages for start-up ecovillages, and the significance of a well-structured internal economic system.

The episode concludes with a conversation about the future of ecovillages.<...

In this episode of the Homefulness Show, host Zola Rose engages  with Jo, the chair of the Hemp Builders Association in New Zealand, and Barbara, a resident of a hempcrete home, to explore the benefits and potential of hempcrete as a sustainable building material.

Jo discusses hempcrete's ability to sequester carbon, its role in mitigating the housing crisis, and its use in community-driven, regenerative housing models. Barbara shares her personal experience of building and living in a hempcrete home, highlighting its thermal and acoustic properties.

The episode also covers exciting updates, including the support from t...

Zola explores the concept of regenerative real estate with Neal Collins, founder of the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast and Choose Latitude. The discussion delves into transformative housing models that prioritize sustainability, community engagement, and affordability.

Zola shares her personal journey of finding a suitable site for her tiny home, emphasizing the importance of shifting from an ownership mindset to a stewardship approach and creating a regenerative checklist for assessing potential land for creating a homestead.

Neal discusses the need to reimagine real estate practices, focusing on community-based decision making and ecological design.  He describes how t...

In this episode, host Zola Rose discusses what creates successful community-led housing (CLH) with guest Thomas Moore, a senior lecturer in Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool.

They explore the concept of Enabling Hubs, a practical form of advocacy infrastructure, and why these Hubs are so important for overcoming the challenges communities face in achieving affordable and sustainable housing for themselves.  Tom explains how these hubs are funded and function and about the training programmes to build capability for community-led housing advocates.

Tom shares his excitement at discovering collective housing models, his insights f...

In this special episode of the Homefullness Show, host Zola Rose sits down for an engaging interview with her daughter Oriah, a law student at Otago University in New Zealand.

They explore Oriah's unique upbringing in an off-grid homestead in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.

Topics include their unconventional home setup with indoor and outdoor 'loos,' the transition from a suburban lifestyle to a self-sufficient homestead, their meaningful rituals and traditions, the "free learning" style of education, and living surrounded by wild animals.

The discussion also touches on the broader community involvement through...

Sophie, a public works advisor at Land Information New Zealand, discusses her PhD in law, focusing on achieving housing affordability through collective housing, and cooperative housing in particular.

The conversation covers various aspects, including the lack of research and public awareness on collective housing in New Zealand, her personal experiences with different housing systems in Europe, and the role of local and central governments in addressing the housing crisis.

Sophie emphasizes the need for legal reforms to support cooperative housing structures and discusses her findings on the limitations of the unit title structure for collective...

In the latest episode of the Homefullness Show, I interview Trypp West, the founder of an urban community called Springfed in Boulder, Colorado (USA).  He describes the founding of Springfed, a community that started as his thesis project and has continued for the past three years. The community operates on a non-residential model with the meeting place being his rented farmhouse where they hold fortnightly potlucks and Sunday gardening days to foster social bonds and teach self-sufficiency.

The five take-aways from this interview are:

Community Impact:

The intentional community has profoundly impacted individuals, h...

 Gentle density is a term in Australia for infill housing development in urban areas, to create more housing within existing neighbourhoods, also known as incremental development in the U.S. 

In this episode, I interview Mark and Lynda Utting on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland Australia.  They share about their way of developing housing in their backyard to give a great place to live to the future residents. 

They are able to do this because their area has been rezoned to medium density, meaning they've been given permission to build up to nine units in their...

The Sharing with Friends housing model was born out of a burning desire for housing justice for single older women who are in the "missing middle"--who do not qualify for social housing but also can't afford market rental or to buy their own home and who are living on the edge of housing insecurity. 

The unique co-housing model provides an affordable, secure, and connected way of living where five women, who self-select, share a specifically designed house which offers privacy and automony while also a sense of community, having spaces for shared meals and activities.

In our latest Homefullness episode, I interview Chloe Howorth on the HomeShare for Her program located in the Nelson-Tasman region of Aotearoa NZ.

The program addresses the lack of affordable housing and the lack of available housing for single women. Because in our region, according to a Stuff article in April 2023, it says “low wages and expensive housing make the Nelson Tasman area unaffordable” with our housing being the third worst in the country, with some people spending over 50% of their income on housing.

But the other thing that the programme does is it mitigates the...

If you're frustrated by the amount of rates that you pay and the increasing rates that many councils are doing, you are not alone.  Many people complain, “councils, all they care about is money.” And yet, they have increasing expenses & responsibilities to pay for with less income--a gap that's been widening over decades.  The amount of income that they're able to generate through rates is not covering all the things they're responsible for. So, what is the solution?

Well, we've got Nick Clark, with the NZ Initiative, on to explain to us how the new policy he's propos...

In this interview with Greer O'Donnell of The Housing Innovation Society (THIS) and The Urban Advisory (TUA), I speak with her about a growing demographic in housing--the missing middle--as well the increase in people who wish to have more say in the kinds of housing that they want to create and how they want to live in that housing. The New Zealand Housing Survey was created to be able to capture this information.

We speak about the kinds of housing that we could have and how you, the listener, by taking part in the survey, can help...

The fastest growing demographic who are vulnerable to housing insecurity and unaffordable housing is older women.  Many of these women have been valuable contributing members of their communities and working professionally yet find themselves in housing precariousness later in life due to a range of systemic societal and economic factors.  

The Housing Older Women Movement believes these women should have a say and be able to participate in creating the kind of housing that meets their needs and aspirations.  HOWM are advocating and raising awareness for what they see meets not only the needs of women but prov...

In this interview with Aksel Bech, we are tackling housing unaffordability and the levers within legislation, policy, and at the local government level that are available to be able to create better outcomes for housing.

I reached out to Aksel because he and I care deeply about addressing this housing unaffordability problem in Aotearoa NZ and he is leading the way on housing reform in his local area through The Housing Czar, a housing advocacy initiative in the Waikato. (http://housingczar.nz/)

Aksel tells us about the Waikato Housing Initiative (WHI), which is a collaboration...

In this episode, I interview Sam Stout and David Diaper who are homeowners of the Secure Home programme in Queenstown, as well as Corina Sommerville who is a staff member with the programme. I really like this program is because keeps housing affordable for generations into the future.

Secure Home is an assisted ownership program created by the Queenstown Lakes, Community Housing Trust.  Designed as a stepping stone to independent home ownership, this program provides people the chance to purchase a quality and secure tenure home at an affordable price. The model works by separating the land f...

I interview Peter Southwick, a Trustee of the Bridge Housing Trust in the Waikato, on their land trust model for affordable home ownership. We discuss 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 housi...

This episode is a recording of the Women Revolutionising Housing (WRH) learning and networking event where Ruth Gerzon, a WRH member, shares about her efforts championing for housing justice in her hometown of Whakatāne, in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ruth and others formed a group called the Whakatāne Housing Action Reform Enthusiasts which makes the acronym WHARE, which means home/house in Te Reo Māori, to address the housing justice issues in her community. 

In this episode you will hear of the great strategies Ruth and WHARE have done '

In this first episode, I share why I've started the show, the housing challenges that propel me to do this work, and what you can look forward to learning.

With this platform and network, we can catalyse housing and neighbourhoods that are places of belonging, of home, while also providing solutions that address some of the biggest challenges of our time.

You will also hear a beautiful song by one of my neighbours at Riverside community, Florian Pauls, called We Live in Love.