Long-time local forced out as flood woes linger

A community stalwart tells Janetta Mackay about the struggle for housing as rents and demand soar

Despite being brought to despair by repeated floods, Sandra Stretton (right) is quick to say others are worse off than her. But she’s been through plenty.

Next weekend the Sunnynook local – who is sole carer for her grandchild – is leaving her home of nine years, which was yellow-stickered after flooding early this year.

That means leaving the community she grew up in and where she is a valued volunteer.

After four months of camping upstairs in her damaged rental property and futile efforts to find an affordable local alternative, she is reluctantly moving to Browns Bay. “It’s not where I really want to be, but it’s clean and dry.”

The cost of shifting is more than emotional. This month, Stretton, who is in her mid-50s, ended up in hospital. “Just stress,” she says. Now her car is playing up.

Financially, she must find more than $200 extra in rent each week. Then there’s the bond and rental advance totalling $4500 to stump up.

“It is what it is, but there have been days when I want the world to let me off.”

However she considers herself lucky to have found a home on the North Shore, after being offered emergency housing options in West Auckland or over the Harbour Bridge.

Seeking stability for her 11-year-old granddaughter, who she would like to stay at Wairau Intermediate, she kept applying for places in and near Sunnynook. But she found rents rising and unprecedented demand.

“There are 50 people going for one house.” House-hunting exhausted scant time, energy and petrol.

Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member and Sunnynook resident Mel Powell says the rental shortage has seen around 40 flood-affected families leave the area since the Auckland Anniversary Day flood of 27 January.

More recent flooding has put people back on edge. One family had returned to India, Powell said. Others were in despair at delays in the settlement of insurance claims.

Stretton credits a sympathetic real estate agent with helping her find her new private rental for $760 a week. Her adult son, aged 23, is moving in to help meet costs. “He’s my rock,” she says.

Longer term, she would love to move back to Sunnynook, where she tends the community garden.

She will leave behind a garden filled with her plants.

The landlord of the house she is leaving lives overseas and has a friend acting as a property manager.

The house still needs decontamination, she says.

After the January flood, Stretton pulled up carpets and floorboards to dry things out. Water had cascaded down the section into the house and also rose from underneath the lower level.

On 9 May, water again flooded downstairs, despite sandbags, rising to 30cm. Other leaks had appeared during heavy rainfall, she said.

Hopes her landlord might recognise the flood clean-up she did, and pay her bond back early to help with costs came to nothing.

Her already tight budget has been further squeezed: a $750 emergency grant received for replacement bedding turned out to be a loan she must repay. Work and Income assistance with higher bond costs is also having to be repaid.

Milford residents plead for council to explain plan

Residents hit by repeated flooding are also suffering from poor council communications, say two Milford men who live near the Brian Byrnes reserve.

Bruce Ward and Andrew Sissons want a clearer idea of what remedial works are planned to fix stormwater deficiencies, prevent sewage overflows and come up with property exit strategies.

“Many people are experiencing huge financial loss, even the insured,” Ward told a meeting of the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board on 9 May, less than an hour before heavy rain again triggered an emergency alert across Auckland. Widespread surface flooding resulted through the wider Wairau catchment, which drains through Sunnynook and Milford.

Talk of the big 27 January flood being exceptional could not be relied on, the men had warned. In fact, if high tide had coincided with peak rainfall it would have been worse. “After 102 days we are no further ahead. It will happen again.”

Ward, who has suggested improved outlets from lower Milford to the Wairau Estuary, said it was difficult to reach council staff and get answers from them. It was also frustrating not to know when various reviews by council and

House sticker tally remains high across suburbs

Four months after the January floods, 128 Milford homes remain yellowstickered.

Milford also has two red-stickered homes and 44 given white stickers.

Forrest Hill has one red-stickered property, 20 yellow and 40 white, according to Auckland Council figures released to the Observer last week.

Takapuna has seven yellow stickers and its arm Watercare would be reported back.

Sissons pointed to 45-year-old old infrastructure in the Inga Rd area that could not cope with the amount of development above. And on Stratford Ave, off Shakespeare Rd, where at least eight badly damaged homes had been vacated, he said a 12-dwelling development and another of six units was proceeding,

A letter tabled from Sunnynook resident Peter McNee expressed similar concerns, pointing to inadequate infrastructure and high levels of intensification, including in known risk areas, in that suburb.

“We want consents stopped until flood risks and eight white; Sunnynook 12 yellow and four white; and Castor Bay 11 yellow and eight white. in the catchment area are sorted,” said Ward. If the council kept allowing development it should take responsibility for costs and losses.

Red stickers deem a property unsafe to enter, yellow stickers restrict entry by only allowing people to enter a certain part of the building or by allowing them to go in temporarily to remove things, and white stickers indicate insignificant damage.

Ward reminded board members he had also appeared before them in March.

Chair Toni van Tonder told him the board was lobbying council and its arms Watercare and Healthy Waters to get action locally on what were complex problems.

Work was being done behind the scenes, she said. But the issues were complex.

Van Tonder suggested Ward take his case to the council’s planning committee “to keep the topic live”.

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