West Auckland homeowners who have repeatedly suffered over years of flooding are banding together to pressure central and local government to buy their low-lying houses.
Many residents no longer want to live in their flood-prone properties and don't believe they can sell them with a clean conscience.
Newshub Nation's Simon Shepherd went to Border Road in Henderson to speak with some of the residents hoping to be bought out.
Rakesh Chand's house was flooded on Friday, February 3, during the Auckland floods.
Chand was not home when the flooding began, but his two children were, which he described as "really scary and really bad."
With the driveway underwater, he went over the back fence to rescue his 10-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son.
"It was still rising when we left," he said.
The floodwaters reached knee-height in Chand's house, which was already on stilts to try and mitigate the risk.
The house has since been yellow-stickered, indicating moderate damage. Access to the house is now restricted.
"My family don't want to come back here. It's really hard to tell whether we have to work through my insurance or get an assessment done.
"I don't want to risk my kids again. It's already happened two times now. Not again," Chand said.
When he bought the house, Chand was told it would only flood during a one-in-100-year event, but in the four years he has lived there it's flooded five times.
Down the road, Bex Hurley's Henderson home has flooded 10 times over the 13 years she's lived there.
She's described the experience as a potted history of climate change.
"It started off being quite small floods, which were just a bit of a nuisance. They were about a metre to a metre and a half high," she said.
Then in 2021, the water was two and a half to three metres high, and then in February, it was three metres high.
Hurley's house has now been white stickered, meaning she can live in it - but she doesn't want to.
"We feel that the only option is for these houses to be demolished so that nobody has to live here.
"When we move out, morally we don't want to put anybody else in these houses or sell them to anybody else, because we know what they'll go through."
Border Road is just one of several west Auckland areas that regularly flood.
Now a group called West Auckland is Flooding (WAIF) has banded together to pressure local and central government to buy them out.
"These are real people with real problems that have been displaced not only from their homes, but from their communities," said Lyall Carter, the chair of WAIF.
Property buyouts have happened before in west Auckland, with the last happening between 2001 and 2010 as part of the Twin Streams project to create flood paths and community gardens.
However, the Border Road properties owned by Chand and Hurley were not considered at risk back then and so were not purchased.
Homeowners are getting desperate, with Hurley saying "we're at the point where we would have to walk away from them and leave them empty at this point to morally feel okay about it."
Chand too is looking for help. He has no contents insurance to cover the damage from the flooding and his family of four is now living with his cousins.
To make matters even worse, he's still paying the mortgage on a home he can no longer live in.
Watch the full video for more.
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