Auckland’s clifftop homes were once the pinnacle of desirability, but floods and cyclones left devastation and uncertainty in their wake. Photos / Brett Phibbs
OPINION
Aucklanders have basked in a hard-won season of (largely) fine weather, returning us to a somewhat nostalgic sense of summer in the city: long sun-drenched evenings, scorching days at the beach, raincoats and jumpers kept in the cupboards. Auckland at its best.
The weather has been a salve to shredded nerves and seems to have put the city in a much better mood.
It’s easy to dream it’s a return to the norm and to forget where we were little more than a year ago.
On Friday evening, January 27, Auckland was pummelled with 71mm of rain in less than an hour. Streets in the west of the city quickly flooded, forcing families to be rescued from cars.
Thousands of cars travelling to an Elton John concert in the city – which was eventually cancelled – were stuck for hours in the pelting rain. Four people died in the floods.
The deluge caught everyone by surprise — including new Mayor Wayne Brown — whose delay in declaring a state of emergency was the subject of extensive scrutiny.
From February 12-14, Cyclone Gabrielle struck, plunging the country into a state of emergency as the most severe storm in a generation bore down.
Powerful winds and torrential rain downed power lines and swamped homes. On its way to devastating Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay, the storm lashed Auckland, causing a landslide at the beach settlement of Muriwai which tragically killed two volunteer firemen. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins declared the storm “the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century”.
The deadly weather changed what was once the dream for Aucklanders. Living in a beachside property or in one with clifftop views had become a nightmare.
The city’s traditional values and its aspirations had shifted with the earth.
For some, the pinnacle of city life was a cliff-top manor in Remuera or Parnell. Now, dozens of these homes were red or yellow-stickered: either unsalvagable or in need of intensive engineering work to remain atop the land left scarred and clawed by the storms.
OneRoof reported that Gabrielle had immediately affected the sales of some of Auckland’s most-expensive homes, and prospective buyers were doing more due diligence and seeking geotechnical reports.
The ideal of the beachside bach out west was also under a cloud, with buyers more cautious about Piha and Muriwai.
Beyond the shoreline lay more important questions: How could Auckland, on a foundation of porous and flood-prone land, stand up to the weather as it became more extreme? Where should the city, long strangled by housing shortages, develop its new communities in the wake of the floods and Cyclone Gabrielle?
The debate introduced many to the concept of managed retreat – relocating people and housing away from the areas of climate-change danger.
Niwa research from 2020 suggests more than 4400 homes in Auckland are on flood-prone land, and housing development continues in land susceptible to flooding.
A 2023 NZ Herald poll on managed retreat showed broad support for the idea.
The survey showed 77 per cent of Aucklanders, if faced with living in an area susceptible to climate impacts, would be willing to relocate if their home was purchased at market rates.
The poll, however, also revealed the rub for Aucklanders after decades of housing deficit.
It showed that 25 per cent of those living in the city still believed new homes should be built in areas susceptible to climate impacts, such as coastal and flood-prone land. That’s higher than the total number for Kiwis surveyed, which was 16 per cent.
The poll also showed the appetite for developing housing on flood-prone land was greater among young people: Of those aged 18-24, 32 per cent were in favour, double the total number keen on development in climate-risk areas.
This illustrates a challenge for Brown and Minister for Auckland Simeon Brown — balancing the need to provide homes for a growing population, especially first-time buyers, with the requirement to plan communities that are resilient to wilder weather.
For those blasted by the 2023 storms, Auckland Council is splitting the cost with the Government to purchase category 3, red-zoned homes from their owners – spending $774 million to buy 700 properties.
In what can be seen as an early taste of managed retreat, the houses that qualify are those at pose an intolerable risk to life which can’t be reduced. There is no cap on the amount that can be paid for each home – so if your $10m mansion is red-zoned you won’t be in the red yourself.
The first buyouts were completed at the end of last year and 60 more homes are going through the process at the moment.
The buyouts are part of a $2 billion storm recovery deal between the council and Government. It includes the nitty-gritty of rebuilding damaged roads but also $820m for projects that will help build resilience against future storm events.
Key to the plan is “making space for water”.
This involves creating “blue-green networks”: More parks, reserves, gardens and trees (the green stuff) and waterways, wetlands and stormwater channels (the blue) to allow more water to be absorbed and redirected when the hard rain comes.
One of the planks of the council’s broader Tāmaki Makarau Recovery Plan, which looks beyond the one-off funding deal with the Crown, is in partnership with mana whenua to ensure the process is community-led and consistent with tikanga. The plan mentions having less development in flood zones and Auckland Council says it’s looking to strengthen the Unitary Plan in relation to development in natural hazards areas. But it offers no details on proposals to halt or relocate housing development.
Then there is the problem of how to pay for it all. Many of the resilience initiatives rely on decisions in the council’s 10-year budget or by the reallocation of existing budgets. Public consultation on the Long-Term Plan ends on March 28 and it comes into force in June.
Brown makes it clear that recovery and resilience is a priority.
“We are warned that failure to effectively and accurately consider climate change in governance, decision-making and long-term planning is a top risk,” he says in his proposal for the budget. He is equally clear about his spending approach.
“I want to make sure we are getting the best value for the spend and levels of risk, not for gold plated solutions.”
The mayor is advocating for the creation of a long-term wealth fund for Auckland — the Auckland Future Fund — which could help pay for ongoing costs.
Auckland’s approach raises a wider question: What about our country-wide strategy to prepare for future weather disasters?
The Tāmaki Makaurau Recovery Plan makes this point clearly.
“There is currently no clear national policy response or comprehensive funding framework in relation to flooding and land instability.”
At Beehive level, the Environment Select Committee has an inquiry under way into climate adaptation and managed retreat, looking at how communities can relocate from areas at high-risk from climate change.
The intention of the inquiry, put forward by then-Climate Minister James Shaw in August, is to help develop a Climate Change Adaptation Bill this year to support community-led retreat.
A Ministry for the Environment paper drafted for the committee is starkly worded: “The chance of a disaster in some places will increase over time from unlikely, to probable, to highly likely and perhaps eventually to certain.”
Submissions to the inquiry closed in November, but there is no due date yet for the report on its findings.
Adapting to worsening weather is well down the list of priorities in the National Party’s environment plan, which contains few details of what it wants to do to prepare for the storms ahead.
There appears to be daylight between Auckland’s planning for a wilder climate and the preparations under way for the country as a whole.
That’s a challenge for the new Government and National’s Climate Minister Simon Watts and a political opportunity for the Opposition, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
Auckland is a great place to be in summer and this season we’ve enjoyed its full fruits. But last year showed us it won’t always be like this.
As the shadows lengthen, the Auckland Council battles through its 10-year plan and the Government wrestles with a tough economic environment and pledges of fiscal discipline, it’s crucial that preparing for the storms ahead does not slide down the priority list.
Let’s ensure that Auckland remains a playground of natural beauty and a place we feel safe to live, even when the forecast isn’t so pretty.
Red and green tape and orange cones on 'lofty' projects are the bane of Brown's existence.