Editorial: Weather-battered home buyouts welcome

A red sticker marks a home as uninhabitable after damage from extreme weather. Photo / Michael Craig, File

EDITORIAL

Crucial details are yet to be sketched out but the plan to buy out property owners whose dwellings are uninhabitable after recent extreme weather events is to be welcomed.

An estimated 700 properties across the country are now considered unliveable due to recent weather events and homeowners will be offered a voluntary buyout through a funding arrangement between the Government and councils. A further 100,000 homes will require shoreing up to withstand what the weather next throws at them.

There will, no doubt, be frustrations with the delivery of the scheme over the coming months but the voluntary cost-share deal is an excellent first step.

Government is responsible for the overall well-being of its people and councils are responsible for the built environment of their territories. It is entirely appropriate for these agencies to take the lead when such disasters strike.

Homeowners will have to contribute as well and will, likely in many cases, pay more than public contributions. Insurance companies must also be scrupulous in delivering what they are contractually obliged to provide.

The stress on these homeowners and their families must have been immeasurable over these past months. No bureaucracy could move fast enough for them but moving as quickly as humanly possible to estimate the damage; the cost needed to remediate it; and sheeting home responsibility for doing that is exactly how a country should treat its people.

Lifting our own up from such catastrophic events should be a shared cost we all help to pay.