West Coast floods: Two hundred homes in Westport uninhabitable stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Buller mayor Jamie Cleine previously told
Stuff the town had long been dealing with a lack of available rental properties or houses for purchase which meant there were few homes available for flooded residents.
Peter Meecham/Stuff Trade Me had one rental listed in the entire Buller district on Saturday. Cleine said with “next to no available rentals” already, the concerns now were about finding somewhere for displaced families to live either medium or long-term while houses were repaired or rebuilt. O’Connor said this was the biggest flood event he had seen in Westport over his lifetime, saying it was a one in 100 year event.
Many of the hardest hit streets were those with Kāinga Ora homes, he said. Buller emergency operations centre controller Bob Dickson said building assessors were going through homes from Sunday afternoon to determine which were still habitable. People were resilient, but support would be needed long-term. “We re looking at many, many months [of work] this is a big, large-scale event.” Faafoi said the Government would provide $300,000 to the Buller District Council s mayoral fund and $100,000 to Marlborough s fund – another region affected by flooding, road closures and evacuations over the weekend. Westport s housing issues would be “one of the challenges we ll work through” once the floodwaters had receded and the damage could be better assessed.
Uninhabitable homes, livestock losses and damaged roads: Westport turns to flood recovery stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.