Rainbow Homestead & Sustainability Commons

Designing Connection with Neighbours April Theme: Belonging and the Neighbour Connection Challenge In this episode, Zola introduces April’s theme of belonging through designing connection with neighbours, linking it to Common Ground’s focus on collective living and affordability via sharing and reciprocity, and permaculture’s peo...

Why our planning system is making the housing crisis worse & what we can do about it Reshaping Aotearoa’s Planning Laws: Regenerative Housing, Community Agency, and Structural Affordability New Zealand’s housing crisis, like many countries around the world, stems from a system producing unaffordable homes, ecological harm, and isolated communities. Zola highlights this “rare o...

From Vision to Reality of Building a Thriving Ecovillage: Interview with founder Lyndall Parris Zola interviews Lyndall Parris, founder and resident of Narara Ecovillage on Australia’s central, east coast (about an hour north of Sydney), about what it takes to create and lead an intentional ecovillage from vision to reality and what daily life feels like there. The episode outlines Narara’...

Home as relationship with community, land, soil, tradition: Zola Ndimande on building her own home in ancestral Zululand In this episode, host Zola Rose interviews Zola Ndimande, a Zulu woman from KwaZulu Natal South Africa about her return to her ancestral land to build her own home using traditional earth building methods, and integrating into that community-focused way of living in relationship with people and rela...

From Straw to Structure: Re-creating housing in a warming, wasteful world Zola Rose interviews Magda Garbarczyk from Fine Line Architecture about the 'Straw Lines' project, a modular housing system using low carbon materials like straw and timber to address New Zealand's housing crisis, climate change, unhealthy and expensive building materials, and waste from the agricul...

Intergenerational Community and Affordability: Peterborough Housing Cooperative's Winning Combination Host Zola Rose interviews Trystan and Stephanie from the Peterborough Housing Cooperative to discuss this housing model that is a rarity in Aotearoa NZ (a more common model in Europe). They explore how the cooperative structure, owned by a Trust, keeps rents affordable and fosters a close-knit commu...

Recipes for Baking Belonging into Housing: Zola’s journey from Homelessness to 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 chal...

Rethinking Rural Development: How Alignment of Planning Policy Enables Sustainable Hamlets 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, rege...

Empowering Women to End Homelessness 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....

Empowering Women to End Homelessness 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. Dionne shares her journey from a scientist to a real estate developer and impact investor. She highlights....

Building Resilient Futures: Insights on Ecovillages In this episode,host Zola interviews Zahra Lightway about her tour of eco villages across Australia, India, and Europe. The conversation delves into what made the ecovillages she visited successful, mainly a robust governance system, income-earning programmes and opportunities, a shared worldview (v...