Auckland developers take family's rainbow letterbox after neighbours complain
Thursday, 12 May 2022
An Auckland family had their rainbow letterbox taken by property developers after neighbours complained about it.
Hannah Lee and her family, who live in West Auckland’s Sunnyvale, have had the rainbow-coloured letterbox – which they share with two neighbours – since the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.
“During that time my neighbour decided to paint the letterbox as a symbol of love and hope and our kids and all their friends loved walking past it,” Lee said.
Lee said they’d never had complaints about the letterbox or any issues, until it disappeared on Wednesday morning.
“We asked contractors, neighbours, the local Facebook group, no one had seen it. My neighbour decided to file a report with police.”
Next to Lee’s driveway is a newly-built apartment block, which was overseen by property developers Williams Corporation.
Lee said her neighbour who co-owns the letterbox got in touch with the company, but was told they had no idea about the letterbox.
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After filing the report to police, Lee said her neighbour who co-owns the box called Williams Corporation back and less than an hour later, someone called back and admitted the company had removed it.
“I feel like … it’s possible they just thought it wasn’t a good aesthetic by their apartments, but why wouldn’t they talk to us first?” Lee said.
The Williams Corporation spokesperson said the situation appeared to boil down to a misunderstanding about who the letterbox belonged to.
“The neighbours generally asked Williams Corp to remove the rainbow letterbox because they said it belonged to the demolished house,” she said.
“The contractor accepted this as being correct. Maybe the rainbow letterbox was not as well located as it could have been? I'm unsure how this happened, and we have never encountered this situation before.”
Williams Corporation said it would return the letterbox on Thursday morning. Lee contacted Stuff confirming it had been reinstalled shortly after a story was published on Thursday.
The spokesperson for Williams Corporation said when she was told of the missing letterbox, she emailed the project manager to find out more.
“Upon completion of a development a neighbour emailed me to say her letter box was stolen. I forwarded her email to our project manager to ask if we knew anything about this.
“The letter box owner then phoned back to say her other neighbours had complained to Williams Corp and said that we had not completed the development because a letter box from the original demolished house was still to be removed and they required this to be gone.
“A Williams Corp contractor accepted this complaint as genuine and removed the letterbox.
“The project manager followed up yesterday afternoon, to see if this was correct, and found that this actually was correct. They located the letter box and said it would be reinstated today.”
The spokesperson described the situation as “most bizarre”.
“I phoned back the letterbox owner and said her information about the neighbours complaining was in fact correct, we were sorry this occurred, we have never had this situation occur before and admit, this is most bizarre,” she said.
Lee said she knew development in Auckland was necessary, but there was no need to have a lack of care for people who lived in the community.
Correction: Neighbours' complaints to a developer to have a letterbox removed were based on their belief it belonged to a demolished house, not that it was ugly as reported. This story has been updated.