After all this time, John Gray isn’t far from where he started. The office of Hobanz, the Home Owners and Buyers Association of New Zealand, is a space in a bustling, well-appointed co-working centre on Auckland’s Ponsonby Rd. It’s just metres from the corner of Vermont St, where, in 2004, Gray discovered that his new house, part of a back-section development where he chaired the body corporate, was a leaky home.
As nice as the new office space is, the return to Ponsonby has been a retrenchment for Hobanz, the advocacy organisation Gray formed with Roger Levie in 2007. Hobanz used to have its own office and more staff. It continues to provide advice and services to people who find themselves in bad buildings, but the dream of it being a mass-membership organisation modelled on the Automobile Association has receded. Gray, who never gave up his day job as an airline pilot, is 64 and so is Levie.
“Roger and I do ask, where do we go next, and we’re not making any traction,” he says. “This will be our last push.”
“This” is a second, three-part season of the documentary that originally screened as a one-off in 2021, presented by Gray and Levie. It makes the case that the leaky homes problem that emerged in the 1990s has not only not gone away, it has morphed
