OLIVIA CARVILLE
Daniel Tobin
Olivia Carville talks to Shanita Araipu, a Christchurch mother of 12, who is facing homelessness for the third time in less than three years.
DEAN KOZANIC/Fairfax NZ
SHANITA ARAIPU: "We are facing homelessness. We are worse off now than we were living in the `house of horrors'."
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They have gone from the "house of horrors" to the threat of homelessness.
The family that lived in the home attached to one of Christchurch's most infamous crime scenes is facing homelessness for the third time in less than three years.
The Araipu family watched their Wainoni home burn to the ground after "bodies were found beneath our kitchen table" in 2009.
Their second home "pretty much completely collapsed" in the February 2011 earthquake.
And now, the family is facing imminent eviction.
Shanita Araipu, 39, and her 12 children were the "filling to the sandwich" in the "house of horrors" saga.
The family lived in a semi-detached house in Wainoni, separated by just a wall from murderer Jason Somerville.
They were there when their neighbour on the right, Tisha Lowry, went missing in 2008.
They were there when their other neighbour, Rebecca Somerville, went missing almost a year later. And, they were there when both bodies were pulled from beneath the floorboards.
Jason Somerville pleaded guilty to murdering both women in 2009.
He strangled them, stuffed underwear down their throats, had intercourse with their bodies and buried them beneath his house.
Meanwhile, the Araipu family were living unaware on the other side of the wall.
The "media circus" that descended on their front lawn, the smell of death and the constant arson threats forced the family from their home.
In the following weeks power was cut to the apartment block, bricks were thrown through the windows and their belongings were covered in soot and looted.
After nine attempts at firebombing the building, the "house of horrors" and Araipu's home was razed to the ground on January 14, 2010.
"We saw the bunks falling out and the TVs toppling to the ground. We watched it burn while my kids were crying on the side of the street," she said.
"We lost our whole life there. All my kids' belongings, all the baby greenstones and photographs. We never got our money back from that home and since then it has been about staying on our feet."
The family was left homeless and forced to stay in a motel, a women's refuge shelter and various friends' lounges until they found another rental home in May 2010.
The February 2011 earthquake brought down their second home and the family was forced to temporarily shift to the North Island.
They returned three months later and on May 4, 2011, the family of 13 moved into their six-bedroomed Grenville St home on a year-long fixed term tenancy.
With only one toilet and shower in the house, the only bathroom has a strict schedule. Primary school pupils bathe at night, high school students shower in the morning.
The eldest two children sleep on couches in the lounge, five of the girls sleep on bunks in one bedroom and the other six were dispersed throughout the house, she said.
The single mother has nine children, aged from six to 21, and she took on her younger sister's three children when they were removed by Child, Youth and Family for neglect.
The family received a letter on April 13, saying their tenancy would not be renewed because the landlord wanted to sell the house.
Since May 4, the family has remained in their Waltham home, despite the lack of a tenancy agreement. Now they fear eviction.
The threat of sleeping on the streets with her children was more frightening than returning to the "house of horrors", she said.
"We are worse off now than we were living in the `house of horrors'. I am a protective mother and I am going to fight for my children's rights. If I have to fight for this home, then I am going to fight for it."
With the city's housing problems, Araipu said she was in a near impossible position to find a new home for her family.
She had trawled through newspapers and internet sites to no avail.
"If they want to kick us out then we will stand before the courts and ask, `where do we go?'," she said.
"I'm frightened of being homeless.
"I stay awake at night listening out for the police cars that will come and turf us out. But if that happens, where do we go? I don't even have a car that could fit us all in."
Her 18-year-old son, Paewhenua Araipu, answered her question: "Out to the gutter."
The family has a housing inspection on Saturday and will then discuss their tenancy agreement with the landlord.
LIVING WITH DEATH UNDER FLOOR
The Araipu family were sandwiched between one of Christchurch's most shocking double murders.
Living in the semi-detached home next to the "house of horrors", the Araipu family knew both victims and murderer Jason Somerville.
"We knew both women. They were both our neighbours," Shanita Araipu, 39, said.
"There was a body right beneath our kitchen table and our bedroom backed up to his; where he strangled Rebecca."
Despite living in the home for nearly five years, Araipu never warmed to Somerville and described him as an "abrupt man you'd never trust".
She remembered his first murder victim, Tisha Lowry, hurling abuse at him from her balcony.
"She would yell at him over our veranda but he never yelled back. He was never out-there angry."
Araipu also recalled hearing a bang "like someone being thrown against a wall" on the night Rebecca died.
In the days after his wife's murder, Somerville approached the family asking if anyone had seen or heard from his wife, she said.
"Every single day he would just bang on the fence and ask if we had seen her. It was horrible."
On September 7, 2009, when the police started ripping up the floorboards to search for Tisha's body, Araipu said she was in bed "dry-retching" from the smell.
"We could hear them pulling up the floor boards looking for her and it was the most horrible sound.
"We hadn't noticed the smell of death until they started pulling up the floor, but it was repulsive. Inhaling that smell was foul, it was like rotten meat," she said.
At that stage, Araipu had been fielding about 50 threats a day from people wanting to burn her house down.
Their home, along with all their belongings, burned down in January 2010 and Araipu said the family had never received financial support for their loss.
- ? Fairfax NZ News
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