Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Housing NZ fast-tracks state home repairs

Updated at 6:29 pm on 26 April 2012

Housing New Zealand says it has fast-tracked repair work on its earthquake-damaged state houses in Christchurch.

Sixty-seven companies have registered to help repair 212 vacant Canterbury homes.

Housing New Zealand's Sean Bignell says the corporation has re-prioritised capital to allow stage 1 of its repair programme to begin early.

He says the settlement of three large insurance claims is not expected before the end of June this year.

Mr Bignell says the pre-matching of houses with tenants will be done before completion of the work so that people can move in immediately after repairs have been done.

Since the 7.1-magnitude quake on 4 September 2010, Housing New Zealand has commissioned over 20,000 urgent health and safety repairs on more than 5000 of its 6127 properties in Canterbury, he says.

Work on repairing the houses will start in May.

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