Residents of Wellington's Lyall Bay fear a neglected property is a danger to people passing in front of the building. Photo / RNZ, Mark Papalii
By Bill Hickman of RNZ
Residents of Wellington’s Lyall Bay fear a neglected property in the seaside suburb‘s Queens Drive is in such a bad state it is a danger to people passing in front of the building.
Those fears have heightened since a severe storm struck the city more than a week ago, tearing roofing iron from the two-storey building and breaking windows and weatherboards.
Residents said the house had been the subject of multiple complaints over many years and now looked like it was just one wind gust away from collapse.
At ground level, the more-than 100-year-old house was boarded up – windows and what may have been shop frontage are covered in painted plywood.
On the second level, empty windowframes left the building open to elements. Extensive graffiti could be seen across the internal walls.
A verandah – blackened with dirt – hung above the pavement. Beneath it a supporting pillar bulged outward at its base.
Emma Dee said the sight of the dilapidated structure made her “hands shake” because her Rongotai home was struck by roofing iron from a different house during the recent storms.
“We had a neighbour – who lived five houses down from us – lose their roof and it took out part of our house while we were in there with our kids. It’s so amazing to me that nobody was injured by shrapnel or killed or worse.
“I’m shaking. There’s a little bit of PTSD there,” Dee said.
Michelle, a Lyall Bay resident for the past 20 years, said she was surprised the building survived the recent gales.
“There were previous storms where the fire brigade had been called and they had commented on how rickety the roof was when they went up to secure the tiles.
“I was kinda surprised to see it still standing though because over the last six to 12 months the centre beam in the shop window has started to bow quite badly. So surprised that the veranda’s still there but it’s quite dangerous. I really think that council should be looking at stopping people walking underneath it in case an accident happens.
“It’s not somewhere you’d dawdle around under now. It’s one gust of wind away from falling down I’d say,” she said.
Neighbour Jo Maunder said the structure’s deterioration over the past two years had heightened concerns about hazards on the property.
“It’s a safety thing for the community that worries me. There’s so many people going past that building every day to get their coffee or go to the beach and lately there’s been young people using it as a bit of a club house I think – coming and going – and the police have been involved in trying to secure it better.
“We keep an eye out. We’re just worried about their safety and the safety of anyone else ‘cause sooner or later that [beam’s] going to go,” Maunder said.
Several times a year people knocked on her door keen to contact the owners with a mind to purchasing the property but, as of yet, nothing had changed.
“Doesn’t it seem mad that a property like that would sit empty? The building’s gone to rack and ruin but what a great place to live. It upsets me because we need more housing and, you know, it just seems mad,” Maunder said.
Beside the building, rope and hastily nailed planks held together a sagging fence in front of a small garden swamped with 1.8m high weeds.
Maunder said the garden had become so overgrown someone had started stashing stolen items in the overgrowth.
“We just thought ‘what’s all that noise?’ one day and there were all these police cars outside. [They] were going into the property and pulling out brand new bicycles and tyres and kegs of beer,” Maunder said.
Wellington police said they had been called to the house at least five times in the past two years over problems with people entering and damaging the building.
They said they had been in contact with a relative of the owners and had provided “routine prevention advice”.
The home was listed as being owned by Eva Shue and Jan Meng Shue.
RNZ tried to contact the Shue family but had not received a response.
Property records showed the Shues were also listed as the owners of a property in Newtown’s Millward St which burned down in suspicious circumstances in 2013.
At the time of the fire that house had also been unoccupied for some time – although Detective Sergeant Glenn Barnett said there was evidence of people “dossing down” in the building illegally.
Wellington City Council said it had been receiving complaints about the condition of the Lyall Bay building since 1997.
It said, after complaints about the building’s veranda between 2002 and 2006, an engineer advised that the structure was not dangerous.
The council made further attempts to contact the owners and their son in 2017 and, after more complaints, between 2022 and 2025.
“The Building Compliance and Building Resilience teams have continued to attempt to engage with the owner with no response. A requirement to undertake maintenance work under the veranda bylaw has been requested with a due date of May 2026. It is important to note that on no occasion has council received any response or communication from the owner.”
The Building Act 2004 defined a building as dangerous if it was likely to cause damage to other buildings or injury or death to any persons in it or on another property – whether by collapse, fire or otherwise.
“Council has access to very few powers until a building has reached this high threshold. Once it has reached the threshold of dangerous or insanitary there are a number of provisions under the Building Act that council could consider – noting that no matter which path council pursues all we can require of the owner is to address the dangerous or insanitary elements of the building. We cannot require a building owner to renovate the building, or even get it to a habitable state again.”
The council said compliance officers made regular monitoring visits and said “the building remains secure”.
Another resident in the area – who did not want to be named – said he had made multiple complaints to the council about the building over the past six or seven years.
He said his partner had spoken to a man who regularly accessed a nearby building on Rua St understood to be owned by the same family, but he had reacted defensively and told her the structure was safe – a statement he took with a grain of salt.
“I don’t feel safe walking under the veranda and I purposely avoid it because I just don’t know how long it’s going to hold out.
“It’s very windy in the area and I can just imagine in a hot summer day – if a fire was to go on – it would definitely catch the neighbouring houses,” he said.
Property lawyer Kristine King said it could be a challenge to balance owner property rights against health and safety issues and neighbourhood concerns.
She said it was up to councils to determine how they interpreted the definitions of an insanitary or dangerous structure under the Buildings Act.
“We’ve got these definitions – which are fairly broad – [but] it’s the policies, their own internal policies of how they’re interpreting that and then how they’re applying it in practice.
“It’s interesting that council is saying that’s a ‘high’ threshold when the definition of ‘dangerous’ just includes ‘injury’. It says ‘injury or death’. I understand entirely if their definition required ‘death’, that’s a very, very high standard, but ‘injury’ in of itself is a far lower bar so I think it comes back to council’s interpretation and their own policies and whether we need to be looking at some measure to get them to revisit their approach,” King said.
The owners/occupants of the buildings have been approached for comment.
Wellington City Council said it would respond to a request for comment about recent storm damage to the building under the terms of the Official Information Act.
- RNZ