$17m Government-funded temporary village promised for flood-damaged Westport

Tuesday, 14 December 2021

Stuff visited various members of the Westport community to see how the recovery is going. (Video first published in September 2021)

A $17 million temporary accommodation village will house about 50 people still waiting for flood repairs in Westport, but won't be ready until mid-2022 – a year after the West Coast town flooded.

Almost 500 homes were flooded when the Buller River reached a record 12.8 metres in July. The flood caused 71 homes to be red-stickered and 393 yellow-stickered, and did $97.2m worth of damage, according to provisional Insurance Council figures.

Associate Minister of Housing Poto Williams said 23 per cent of Westport’s available housing stock was damaged.

The Government’s Temporary Accommodation Service (TAS) was supporting 100 households still needing somewhere to live while their homes were repaired.

* Agencies pledge funds to help 140 people still out of their flooded homes

* Long road ahead for flood-weary residents with red and yellow-stickered homes

A red stickered home on Gladstone Rd, Westport.

Williams said the Buller District Council had supplied an elevated site for a temporary accommodation village on Alma Rd. TAS would pay to build the houses, connect services and do landscaping, and would oversee tenancy and property management.

A state of emergency was declared in Westport when the town experienced widespread flooding in July 2021.

The village would have between 25 and 30 two and three-bedroom homes.

Construction would begin in January and would be completed during the third quarter of 2022 – more than a year after the flood happened.

Buller mayor Jamie Cleine says the delay for the village isn’t ideal, but it’s a complex situation.

Williams said TAS had housed affected residents in portable cabins, motorhomes and motel rooms since the flood.

“This is a truly multi-agency response. Three houses built for the response to flooding in Napier, where demand for the service has eased, have been transported to Westport along with five houses from Kāinga Ora,” she said.

A TAS statement said the houses would be completely wired and plumbed and ready for residents to settle into.

“This is also important so that the village can continue to have a life beyond the recovery phase of the Westport flood response.”

TAS reassured residents accommodation would be provided until the village was ready, and people could move in as houses were finished based on need.

Buller mayor Jamie Cleine said ideally the village would have been announced sooner, but he acknowledged that assessing need was a complex task.

He had been told the village would have about 22 homes that could be sold, or placed into a housing trust once the residents were back into their own homes. It would help solve a housing crisis that existed before the flood.

TAS had used data from insurance companies to determine what the need might be based on estimates of when work would be completed, he said.

He understood work would be continuing on flood-affected properties well into 2023.