KEY POINTS:
"I swore I'd never go back," leaky home victim Colleen Dicks said after making a short visit to her uninhabitable Hobsonville house.
But the brief visit was to meet builder and Tauranga MP Bob Clarkson to discuss issues.
Mr Clarkson wants victims to get no-interest state loans to fix their houses.
"This is just cruel, what's being done to people by the Government which is taking no responsibility," he said.
He is worried about the leaky homes system sucking up taxpayers' money while people wait in rotting homes for action and said Mrs Dicks should have sued the now-axed Building Industry Authority rather than the council and builder.
Mrs Dicks, who spent the past few weeks in Fiji with relatives and is now staying with a daughter in Auckland, expects the next few weeks to be taken up with lawyers as she gets ready to defend herself.
The 69-year-old galvanised public support after facing an appeal against her landmark court victory in which she was awarded $250,900 to fix her Wiseley Rd house.
Waitakere City Council has issued a notice of appeal, which spurred John Gray of the Leaky Homes Action Group to establish a trust fund to pay her legal expenses.
Radio Live host Michael Laws also pitched in, saying he and the station would pay for her appeal.
"Most people have resigned themselves to the fact that the legal bills are going to be sorted out by Radio Live," Mr Gray said.
Although that had meant some people had held off donating, he was overwhelmed by the support.
Laws said he had the money and "Radio Live and myself are contributing $10,000 to Mrs Dicks' legal defence".
