localmatters.co.nz
July 17, 2019
Your locally-owned Community Newspaper FREE
Inside this issue Seawall consent costs top $1.6m page 3
Accidents on the rise on Coast page 6
The Browns’ “dream home” has ended thoughts of a happy retirement.
Reforms too late for leaky home couple A call by Auckland Mayor Phil Goff last month for radical reform of the Building Act and Building Code has come too late for Rodney retirees, Gerrard and Evelyn Brown. For more than a year the couple, both in their eighties, have been confined to the study and one bedroom of their Algies Bay house while repairs to the rest of what was to be their dream retirement home take place.
Beyond their two-room enclave, everything is covered in plastic and surrounded in scaffolding. The couple has spent all their retirement savings trying to repair the house, with costs exceeding the original building costs and continuing to mount. “Heaven knows what the finish cost will be. As for a completion forecast, not even the builders doing the repairs
will hazard a guess,” Mr Brown says. The couple’s only income is superannuation and they cannot sell their home as it would not realise enough to rent a property. The impact on their health and wellbeing has been enormous. “Travel to our family and grandchildren is no longer possible, and shopping is restricted to grocery shopping only. This has all but destroyed us.”
The nightmare began when the Browns engaged Cranston Homes to build a house for them in 2003. Following completion of the build, Cranston addressed minor water ingress issues during the build guarantee but made no offer to undertake repairs when major problems emerged 13 years later, around 2016. Former Cranston director Blair
continued page 2