Shortsightedness and poor planning lead to property buyouts

The failure of successive councils and governments to prepare for inevitable flood events has left ratepayers and taxpayers burdened with bailing out the owners of weather-affected

The Government will enter into a funding arrangement with councils in cyclone and flood affected regions to support them to offer a voluntary buyout for owners of Category 3 designated residential properties. It will also co-fund work needed to protect Category 2 designated properties.

Minister of Finance Grant Robertson says the facilitation work that the cyclone taskforce had been engaged in to undertake risk assessments has been completed.

“From here the councils will lead engagement with their affected property-owners. This will help councils get the right solution in the right place and avoid significant financial hardship for property owners.”

For properties designated Category 2 (where it is determined community and/ or property level interventions are feasible to manage future severe weather event risk) the Government will work with councils to help them build flood protection and other resilience measures. The initial support for this is already in place with $100 million initial funding announced in Budget 2023. People in homes designated as Category 3 properties properties

(where future severe weather event risk cannot be sufficiently mitigated) will be offered a voluntary buyout by councils – the costs of which will be shared dented, but they were not unexpected. between the Government and councils.

Finance Michael Wood says initial indications are that across all regions there will be about 700 Category 3 properties, and up to 10,000 homes in Category 2 areas.

Last year, then Associate Minister of Local Government Kieran McAnulty received a report titled Vulnerable Communities Exposed to Flood Hazard.

“The focus of today is on residential properties. We are working with sectors, such as the horticulture sector on possible targeted support for commercial operators, and on regional plans that will provide overall support for recovery and rebuild,” Robertson says.

A parallel process is also underway to engage with Māori, including on appropriate processes for whenua Māori. Engagement with those communities will be led by the Cyclone Response Unit, Te Arawhiti and local councils. The process will ensure that there are equitable outcomes for these communities.

Associate Minister of

Robertson says there is no precedent for the response required, but there will be more events like this in the future.

“As a Government we have to strike a careful fiscal balance between supporting affected communities and not making all taxpayers bear the cost.”

This is a cost that could have been avoided if it were not for decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, poor planning and the shortsightedness of building homes in flood-prone areas without the necessary flood protections.

Proactive, rather than reactive policy is what is needed here. Robertson may call this year’s extreme weather events unprece -

“This report identifies 44 communities that have a high level of socio-economic vulnerability and are exposed to flood hazard, are not planning to build flood protection infrastructure according to council LTPs, and communities in the wider district may have limited financial capacity to fund responses to flood risk,” it says.

“More than half of the vulnerable communities exposed to flood hazard are in the upper half of the North Island.”

This is not a new problem, with the report making reference to the July 2021 flooding of Westport, which revealed the challenging mix of flood hazard and financial limitations the community and councils face.

The report spelled out to the Government that what happened in Westport could happen in the North Island unless action was taken.

That action is at last being taken, but it is too little, too late.

Global cities are fundamentally different to New Zealand cities which makes the geographic boundaries difficult to compare. Regardless, the themes around location preferences are transferrable across geographies and provide important insight. We consider ‘city centre’ to be more comparable to the Auckland isthmus, and ‘suburbs of a major city’ relevant to other suburbs in the Auckland urban area.

The survey showed that 36.4% of global respondents live in a city centre, with a further 24.0% living in the suburbs of a major city. Relatively few (9.2%) live rurally.

Education levels have a strong impact on the location results. For respondents with no formal education, they are most likely to live in a small town, whereas more than half of respondents with a PhD qualification live in a city centre.

Income level has a similarly strong correlation with dwelling location. 12.5% of low income households live rurally, compared to 7.2% of mid income households and 3.1% of high income households.

Age has less of an impact than education and income indicating that it is easier to achieve this