When Batemans Bay carpenter David Crooke lost everything except the white ute he fled in during the Black Summer Bushfires, he decided he was going to use his skills to help the community rebuild and recover.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He has spent the last three years building relocatable cabins and sheds for people recovering from the fires.
It is part of a bottom-up approach Mr Crooke sees as the best solution for dealing with natural disasters and community recovery.
"After the fires I began reusing my skill set to build cabins for the community," Mr Crooke said.
"We were just a bunch of blokes. The local plumber and electrician - we all just jumped in together and started putting these cabins up."
The group of workers wore donated football jerseys while they worked because their own clothes, like their homes, had been lost to the fires.
The bAy TEAM, as Mr Crooke's new company is called, construct small, relocatable cabins up to three bedrooms - with a kitchen and bathroom. So far, the team have constructed six cabins, funded by companies, charities or individuals. The cabins connect to existing amenities, or use pump and septic systems to provide amenities.
Mr Crooke sees these cabins as a pilot for effective community recovery after a disaster and as a potential solution to the south coast housing crisis.
Social enterprise Path to Prosperity director Michael Ferguson has worked closely with Mr Crooke through the process of building cabins for the community. The cabins are one element of the organisations 'build back better' recovery construction scheme.
According to their introductory document, "Pathway to Prosperity is a framework to help the community through [disaster recovery] in a way that empowers them to take charge and 'build back better'".
They aim to "provide communities with a sustainable means of regenerating and rebuilding communities and their assets after disaster".
READ MORE:
Path to Prosperity proposes to build housing pods, such as Mr Crooke's cabins, which are relocatable and available for quick deployment in cases of emergency. Mr Ferguson and Mr Crooke hope these pods will be community-owned and located in hubs on vacant blocks of land around shared amenities. They could be rented out on short term leases to people in need during emergencies, or in other times of personal crisis, such as homelessness or to victims of domestic violence.
"Investors could buy them too, and lease them out at a cheap rate and still make a profit off having many pods," Mr Ferguson said.
However he accepted this model only worked if returns for investors were equal to or greater than using the cabins for short-term holiday leasing.
"The capitalist greed has to change," he said.
"We actually have to want to empower homeless people."
Mr Ferguson lost everything when the fires ripped through his home in South Australia just four days after the birth of his daughter.
His experience of disaster recovery led him to dream up the Path to Prosperity concept.
"There was no overriding system that could point our community to effective overall recovery," Mr Ferguson said.
Path to Prosperity has a three step process to dealing with disasters: response reaction, rebuild and recovery. Mr Ferguson hopes Path to Prosperity can be the model for the coordination of non-government and non-emergency services after a disaster and create a roadmap for community recovery.
"Recovery has to be from the bottom up for the local community," Mr Ferguson said.
"Top down models don't understand the people on the ground.
"Recovery centres are always set up after a disaster and everyone doesn't really know what they are doing, and then after a few months everything disappears.
"The Path to Prosperity model can push through when everyone else leaves."
Path to Prosperity applied for a Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants with the support of the Eurobodalla Shire Council, but was unsuccessful.
Mr Ferguson said they would continue to raise funds and try re-think how communities recover from disaster.
It aims to be locally based, run by locals and employee and community owned.
If Mr Crooke had unlimited money to solve the housing crisis, he would start a training program to equip workers to start building more cabins. With a well-trained chain of workers, he said he could easily double the pace of production.