By Emma Stanford of RNZ
Aucklanders who were forced to move out of their storm-damaged homes for the past eight months, have been declined rates relief.
Some residents have received letters from the council saying their homes are habitable, despite no one from council having been to inspect them.
Mt Roskill resident Jen is one whose house was left uninhabitable after the Auckland Anniversary floods in January. She has been renting a room from a friend since.
“Saying, literally in the email, your house is habitable. It’s a bit ridiculous when I haven’t been able to live there for seven months,” Jen said.
Auckland Council admits that its process could have been better.
Group recovery manager Mat Tucker said the criteria for an uninhabitable home was where it was not safe nor sanitary to live in.
“For example, there aren’t bathroom or kitchen facilities, or the residual flood damage, such as dampness, presents a health risk.”
Jen’s home fits the bill: “There’s no bathroom. There’s no kitchen. There’s half a wall everywhere.”
She said being declined a rates relief was stressful.
“It’s not insignificant. It’s over $100 a fortnight that I can be putting aside for things that I might need to replace when I go home.
“It’s another cost to consider every fortnight, paying a mortgage and utilities and other things on a house that I can’t live in. The process of being denied is just another thing to keep following up on. Nothing seems to be straightforward in this journey.
“It’s sort of a job. You have to work all day and then in the evening, reviewing documents or following up on this, following up on that and just trying to make sure that everything is sorted. It seems like if you don’t follow up on things or make enough noise nothing progresses.”
Tucker said council had become aware that the assessment process had not worked well for some homeowners.
“This was obviously not our intention when we established the rates relief programme, so we have improved how we’ll assess applications to ensure rates relief is available for those that need it,” he said.
Homes that were red-stickered have had rates relief automatically applied.
Those with yellow or white placards, or no placard at all, have been taken on a “case-by-case basis”.
Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa Ward councillor Julie Fairey said it did not seem a widespread issue, but there was certainly a pocket in her area.
“We might have places where people are effectively camping in two or three rooms of their house and they don’t have running water. Now, is that inhabitable? Technically they live in the house, right? So technically, you could argue it’s inhabitable, but I think you could also make a very good argument that it’s uninhabitable.”
She said, in hindsight, a more nuanced approach should have been used for houses that had not been red-stickered.
“I think what might have been helpful here is if we had gone OK, here’s the ones that clearly all qualify, we’re going to say yes to you and here’s the ones where we’re not sure, we need to do a little bit more work, and we’re going to write to you and say we haven’t approved it yet. We need a bit more information and this is how we’re going to do that.”
She said the recovery office had caught the issue reasonably quickly, “and worked quite quickly to get in touch with people. So, the system didn’t work to start with, but it’s kicking in now.”
Tucker said council needed evidence from a homeowner that their home was uninhabitable before it could approve their application.
“Approximately 30 property owners have asked us to investigate their declined application because they believe they’re eligible for rates relief. We’re now proactively calling those customers to explain that changes have been made to the assessment process and we are reassessing their applications.
“Homeowners can give us documentation such as their insurance assessment or report from their own building professional. In most cases, we’ll be able to make a decision based on the documentation supplied, and we won’t necessarily need to come and reinspect the home.”
Fairey encouraged people to reach out to their local elected member.
“We’re dealing with potentially 7000 cases. We had 700 people on a webinar for impacted property owners earlier in the week. We’re talking about big numbers of people often operating under stress, as are a lot of the staff,” she said.
“Mistakes are going to happen and that’s where you know, get in touch and we can help to sort those out.”
- RNZ