Open-source housing: Annie Wilson
To tackle the housing crisis, Kāinga Maha launches free toolkit for development.
There is a conversation I keep returning to in this work. It happens when a community organisation – a church, a trust, an iwi authority – realises for the first time that the land they have held for decades isn’t just an asset on a balance sheet. It’s an opportunity to house the whānau they’ve been walking alongside for years.
That moment, of possibility meeting purpose, is why we built our Development Toolkit.
At Kāinga Maha, we work alongside purpose-led organisations, from churches and iwi to community housing providers and trusts, who hold land with real development potential. Too often, they arrive with energy and vision but without the technical grounding to move forward confidently. We see well-intentioned projects stumble – not because the vision was wrong, but because the knowledge wasn’t there when it was needed.
This toolkit is our attempt to change that. It walks organisations through the full development life cycle – from strategic visioning and community partnership through to consenting, procurement, and project review. It shares the frameworks, questions, and hard-won lessons our team draws on every day.
The kaupapa is simple: knowledge shared is power distributed. The housing crisis in Aotearoa isn’t going to be solved by the market alone. It will be solved by organisations holding land, holding values, and holding the conviction that everyone deserves a home.
The toolkit is free. You can find it at bit.ly/km-toolkit. And if you’re sitting on land with potential and aren’t sure where to start, we’d love to help you unlock it.
