The 41-year-old, who has Fowler Homes nationwide as well as the local franchise, has had his Queenstown team build a Hanley’s Farm home that will hopefully raise about $500,000 for Gumboot Friday when it goes up for auction next Friday.
Gumboot Friday is a fundraiser for youth mental health counselling through Mike King’s I Am Hope Foundation.
Jason encouraged 50-plus suppliers to donate or discount services and items towards the high-spec three-bedroom home with attached two-bedroom unit, at a time the building industry has been under huge stress through cost pressures and the like.
As to what is behind Jason’s ‘‘passion project’’, he learnt about mental health during five and a-half years in the police in his home city, Christchurch.
‘‘Every three and a-half or four minutes nationwide there was a domestic violence or self-harm incident, and I dealt with some serious stuff.’’
Mental health issues became even more alarming during eight years in the Aussie mining industry, where he ended up with about 140 people under him.
‘‘I took part in some serious rescues, and I was known for how I operated.
‘‘So, ‘you tell me you screwed up, it’s OK; you don’t tell me, you’re in the shit’, and then everyone was like, ‘just tell it’.’’
Jason says over those years at least six people confessed to suicidal feelings — ‘‘that’s a lot’’.
‘‘[Mount Isa’s] a difficult place to live and work, and I know there were at least two while I was there that did it — one was at work.’’
While over there, Jason also got a builder’s licence and ran a building company.
He and Jen, who had two kids there, moved to Queenstown in 2017 and bought the then-ailing Fowler Homes franchise, now NZ’s best in the group, two years later.
Like mining, building also has many stresses, he says — ‘‘some days it’s not enjoyable, it’s just not’’.
As to how ‘The Hope Home’ came about, Jason says he and Jen, late in 2022, heard mental health advocate Mike King on radio on The Rock’s ‘The Morning Rumble’ pleading for help in the lead-up to Gumboot Friday.
‘‘He was crying, he was desperate, so we said to each other, ‘surely we can do something small’.
‘‘We’re like, title’s coming up [on a Hanley’s Farm section they’d bought], we can use this and do it for charity.’’
Jason recalls emailing King and thinking, ‘‘he won’t know who the hell I am’’.
‘‘Five or 10 minutes later he responds, ‘I’m overseas, I’ll call you’, and we were on the phone
— could have been that day.
‘‘So we flew to Auckland the next week and rocked in with consented plans, proposal, everything.
‘‘He goes, ‘we didn’t believe it was going to be like you said’.’’
To build the house, Jason had help from second-tier lender Squirrel ‘‘because I couldn’t fund the entire thing’’.
He then approached myriad suppliers — ‘‘every single item, I had to have conversations’’.
To those who were a bit on the fence, he pointed out he and Jen were sacrificing about $200,000 in capital gain on the section.
‘‘The bigger ones I pushed harder.’’
With smaller guys he’d even rebuff their offers of help if he felt they couldn’t afford it — ‘‘I said, ‘nah, you charge full swing’’’.
Jason’s proud of his team delivering a 10-month energy-efficient build to the highest specs.
As of last Friday he didn’t know the exact build cost but it’s thought it’ll be over $1 million.
The entire margin between that figure and what it sells for — via an on-site Bayleys auction — is what I Am Hope gets given.
Jason hopes it’ll go for about $1.75m which would mean raising at least $500,000 — ‘‘on day one I wanted that and everyone was like, ‘cool your jets’’’.
With Gumboot Friday youth counselling sessions costing $150 an hour, that’s a great help.
‘‘If I took stock of what we’ve done, I should be proud of myself a little bit — I’m not good at that.
‘‘And if it goes well, we’ve already said we’ll do this as a biennial event.
‘‘That gives me time to secure land, design and build the project, and we’re up for that.
‘‘I think we are going to grow our company big enough that suppliers won’t get sick of me.’’
‘The Hope Home’ charity auction takes place 11am next Friday, November 1 (on Gumboot Friday), 18 Kernel Loop, Hanley’s Farm.
