Giving her kids the best start to life has never been an easy prospect for Maia*.
The Aucklander, now 27 - who Newshub has agreed not to identify - gave birth to her first child when she was just 16. Since then she's had five more children, one roughly every two years, and it's been a struggle throughout.
"I'd fallen into a trap where I was lost - I had no family support," she told Newshub.
"When I reached out for help from family, it was more like, 'I'm going to get your kids taken off you, you don't know how to look after them' - that type of thing a lot.
"It was the lack of knowing how to be a mother - I just needed to upskill my knowledge and skills about being a mum."
For a period of more than two years, Maia's children were placed in the care of Oranga Tamariki while she received support and worked on herself.
Last year, she took back custody of her kids - now aged 11, nine, seven, five, two and eight months. She is getting a benefit and has launched a business as she aims to give them a good future while juggling the challenges of raising them on her own.
"New Zealand has always been known for poverty. Throughout my life, since I was with my parents, it was just the same - it's just like I am now. But I'm trying to be different."
'We're all over the place'
One of the keys to future success is providing her whānau with a stable home - something that in recent years, she's been lacking. Maia tells Newshub she's had to move roughly five times in the last 18 months, swapping one emergency home for another.
Her kids have also moved around a lot in that time, initially because they were in Oranga Tamariki care and then because they moving around with her. She says it's clearly taken a toll on them.
"Their grades were immaculate, they were amazing," she said. "And from them coming back to me and moving from emergency housing to emergency housing, their grades are dropping.
"I can just see it, they're so unsettled… It's frustrating as a mum to try and get back in routine when we have to move all the time. I just feel like we're all over the place, we're not settled at all."
Maia has other concerns for her kids too. A few of them have health conditions - one of them was recently diagnosed with a heart murmur and ingrown disc in their neck, while another has lung abnormalities and severe asthma. A third is chronically unwell.
Maia's most recent move was in October 2021, when the family left a rental home in Otara which didn't comply with healthy homes standards. She applied for Kāinga Ora housing and was placed in her current Māngere home within two weeks.
There are issues with this one too; she found shards of glass throughout her lawn and the fibre internet box had been ripped off her wall, leaving wires hanging into the living room.
That's not to mention the intel she'd received from neighbours about her home apparently being used for manufacturing meth, and the Black Power gang members who regularly loiter outside her home or come knocking on the door looking for the previous tenants.
Despite its problems, it's far from the worst home Maia has lived in. She likes the stability it provides and is eager to stay long-term to give her children the chance to settle in Māngere, where they are now bedding into the community and local school and establishing friends.
However just weeks after moving in last October, she was shocked when a Kāinga Ora staffer mentioned to her in passing that her family wouldn't be able to stay there long-term as the property sits within a future redevelopment area.
Maia's home is one of 2700 state houses in the south Auckland suburb that Kāinga Ora plans to replace with as many as 10,000 new healthy homes over the next 15 years.
As a result, Maia and her children will soon be forced to up sticks again, putting them once more through the painful process of being uprooted from their established life and resettling them somewhere new.
Adding to the stress is that Kāinga Ora hasn't given Maia a timeframe for their relocation - only telling her it's soon. Because of this, she wants to rip the bandaid and shift now, rather than later, when they've embedded themselves more fully into their home and community.
"Since they're moving us and they don't have a timeframe, I want them to move us to a permanent place that we can call home."
Maia's eldest, her 11-year-old daughter, is most affected by the uncertainty.
"She's finding it hard to adapt and find new friends all the time. She always asks me, 'Mum, when are we moving? What is the point of doing my room when we're just going to move again?'
"She's like, 'I can't even have my photos up because you're going to tell us we're going to move'. I don't want my kids to be stressing over this."
Maia says her children love the outdoors and have been asking to start growing their own plants in the backyard. But she doesn't want to throw money at a project that they'll just have to leave behind in the months to come.
In her desperation for more certainty, Maia had looked into moving her whānau out of their current home and into an emergency motel so that Kāinga Ora would fast-track them into a permanent home.
She was told this wouldn't work, however, and that the agency wouldn't provide them with another house if she took that approach.
But she's frustrated and just wants to go.
"All I want them [Kāinga Ora] to do is listen to me," she said.
"I've made so many complaints. I've constantly been on the phone and no one's replying to me and no one cares what I have to say. No one can hear my stress, my pain, the worries that I have as a mum.
"I want them to hear me, I want them to feel this. I want them to remove us from here - [but] not next year, not when they feel like it."
A support person for Maia emailed Kāinga Ora for reassurance that a permanent home was being looked into with urgency. More than two weeks later, they had received an acknowledgement of the email but no response.
Kāinga Ora responds
Angela Pearce, Kāinga Ora's regional director for Counties Manukau, told Newshub the agency understands the importance of providing a stable, safe home for Maia and her whānau.
She says they had worked with her and her support people over the past few months to address her concerns.
"Given her current urgent housing situation at the end of last year, we wanted to ensure we could move [Maia] and her whānau quickly into a home that would meet her needs.
"Although the property sits within a future redevelopment stage area as part of the Māngere large scale development project, we had discussions with the customer and her support people that the property provided temporary housing, and that once timeframes were established on the redevelopment of this area, we'd work with the customer to provide suitable rehousing options.
"The programme for future stage areas in terms of redevelopment, are generally 1-3 years subject to master planning on individual areas. We will be able to provide more clarity to [Maia] and affected customers in this area on potential timeframes for delivery later this year once this work is complete."
On concerns over gang-linked visitors and potential drug manufacturing in the home, Kāinga Ora didn't respond directly to Newshub's questions.
However Pearce said the agency has a responsibility to ensure its customers are "living well within their home and wider neighbourhood".
"We would not place a customer in a home if we thought it was not safe for them and their whānau to live in. Appropriate measures would be taken if needed before a customer moves into a Kāinga Ora home."
Pearce says a local Kāinga Ora team will continue its work with Maia to ensure they're providing her with the best possible support.
"We're committed to continuing to have productive conversations with [Maia] and her support people, and provide updates on the redevelopment of the area as and when we receive them."
But I want to reply to Kaianga ora as what they are saying is not true I have recently tried to get in touch with them and they are not responding to me.
*This name has been changed.
Update: After this article was published, Maia got in touch with Newshub to challenge Pearce's comment that Kāinga Ora wouldn't place a customer in a home if they thought it wasn't safe for them and their whānau to live in.
The house she's living in has never had a healthy homes report nor an asbestos report.
She also requested a meth test report, which is part of Oranga Tamariki's criteria for checks on Maia. She says they promised to look into it but never did.
Maia also says Kāinga Ora's claim they are keeping in touch with her is false, telling Newshub she has recently tried to get in touch with them and they are not responding to her.
