Managed retreat: West Auckland residents call for voluntary buyouts after repeat flooding

West Auckland residents have banded together to demand the managed retreat of homes from flood-prone areas after some have been inundated multiple times over the last two years.

West Auckland is Flooding (WAIF), an independent organisation formed by residents after the Auckland floods on January 27, is demanding the council and the Government consider voluntary buyouts for the most at-risk properties after hundreds of homes were yellow and red-stickered due to flood damage.

“These homes are unsafe for anyone to live in. It’s only a matter of time before more lives are lost.”

The chairman of WAIF Lyall Carter said some people who had joined the committee had experienced flood damage to their properties up to eight times over the last two years.

“Just recently West Auckland has flooded twice in 18 months, first in 2021 and again in January 2023. Saying a flood is a 1-in-100-year event shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction,” the group said.

Carter said the phrase “1-in-100-year floods” was misleading.

“It’s terminology that’s really not fit for purpose anymore. It’s really deceptive, especially for people buying property because of the intensification without the infrastructure to back it up,” he said.

Flood damage from Auckland's weather event on January 27 has left many West Auckland properties yellow and red stickered. Photo / Ashok Sudhakaran

The organisation aimed to get key stakeholders to the table to “apply pressure on the council and government”.

“The most important stakeholder is flood-affected residents. We want to get their voice around the table and then go to organisations such as local and central government politicians, insurance companies and banks.”

The group says it makes no sense to repair these homes in their original place as “the rebuild must be flood-resilient”.

WAIF said the Auckland Council had a “moral obligation” to find a solution for affected residents as it had consented those properties to be built.

“Council’s failure to properly maintain streams, and to build adequate infrastructure increased flood risk and made the destructive impact of the floods more severe.

“People cannot wait years for a managed retreat solution,” said a WAIF spokesperson.

Carter said WAIF was not advocating for all property owners to be paid out, but for action to be taken to repair infrastructure that should have been upgraded years earlier.

“My street, for example, backs onto a stream ... If they clean out our stream and put in retention ponds and build better infrastructure, our street will be saved so we can rebuild without the risk of future flooding,” he said.

Former Cabinet Minister Phil Twyford wrote this week to the Government urging it to help flood-stricken homeowners in his Te Atatū electorate by buying them out.

Twyford said requiring these homeowners to rebuild where they were was irresponsible and impractical, knowing that they would likely be flooded again.

In the most extreme cases, homeowners should have the option of a voluntary buy-out to be able to move on and live elsewhere.

“There are about 10 neighbourhoods in my electorate that were badly affected by anniversary weekend floods,” Twyford told the Herald.

He said they were “all houses that were built on overland paths and floodplains”.

“The council has been consenting new homes in floodplains right up until now,” he said.

Phil Twyford said, with hindsight, we now know the houses should never have been built where they are. Photo / NZME

In his letter, Twyford said, “In hindsight, we now know they should never have been built there. And we know surely that it makes no sense now for those homeowners to just rebuild in the same place.

“But unless managed retreat is adopted, my constituents will be forced to either rebuild in the same place and wait for the next flood, or walk away from their properties and face financial ruin.”

Carter said whatever the outcome, it was going to be a cost to society.

“If you don’t do anything and just let people go back into the flooded areas, you have people risking life and limb ... people might also abandon their houses, which is a burden on banks.”

The cleanest way to do it is to come up with a process that’s fair and equitable for everybody, taxpayers included, and manage retreat for some of those properties, Carter said.

MAIF spokesperson Morgan Allen had his flooded West Auckland property yellow-stickered.

“We had half a metre of water throughout the house, all of our fences were knocked down, cars submerged, contents gone and our house was ruined ... It happened so quickly, in about 10-15 minutes it went from being just outside to being all throughout the house.”

Allen said he was aware that managed retreat and state property buyouts often provoked an emotional response.

“However, when you weigh up the cost of rebuilding the community, children having to change schools, and the emotional and social trauma, managed retreat actually starts to make sense, even from a financial point of view,” Allen said.

“When we talk about managed retreat, we’re not always just talking about a buyout, that’s just one option... It can be a package of things together such as raising houses, moving them to higher sections on a property, or moving houses to different parts of land.”

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said “tough calls” would need to be made regarding areas vulnerable to adverse weather events, which are expected to get worse as the climate warms.

“In some cases, there’ll be extensive damage [from Gabrielle] but it will be safe to rebuild,” Hipkins said.

“And in other areas, we may have to make some tough calls about managed retreat and about not rebuilding in those areas,” he said.

“We need to make sure the process we have got in place there is fair and transparent.”