KEY POINTS:
Larisa Boyko doesn't remember much about the day she tried to hang herself in the bathroom of her home. Or the two suicide attempts after that.
That time in her life is a blur, a distressing period of chronic depression, repeated stays in a hospital mental unit and a struggle to make sense of how her life had fallen apart. Boyko is yet another victim in the leaky building saga which a new report, commissioned by the Auckland City Council, estimates has cost New Zealand almost $500 million in health bills.
Ten years ago Boyko, a Russian-born engineer, was working at Rocket College, the Moscow State Technical University. She retrained to teach secondary school maths, physics and computer skills, after moving to New Zealand in 1998 with her daughter.
Now she lives in a Housing Corporation unit and is on a benefit. She could not return to her "home" in Morningside's Rossmay Terrace. There are too many ghosts, horrifying memories from the past.
"I am scared to be there. In that unit ... I tried to commit suicide so now I can't even live there. I can't mentally handle to be there any more."
The unit is up for mortgagee sale on Wednesday. Boyko, unable to pay her share of the levy to fix a multimillion-dollar leaky building problem in the 36-unit complex, says she has lost everything.
After the suicide attempts in 2005 it has taken her two years to become "80 per cent well". She is determined to speak out, to warn other victims.
She accuses the lawyers, consultants and building companies specialising in the leaky building business of cost blow-outs and of scaring ill-informed property owners into going to court without being upfront about the likely outcome.
Boyko asked that the photograph of her smiling, taken in Auckland earlier this year, be used "as a message for body corporate managers and their lawyers that nobody can take my life and my smile from me any more".
She says she felt pressured and says she was threatened with bankruptcy and that her property would be put up for sale if she did not pay the levy.
In Boyko's case, that pressure nearly cost her her life in 2005. Midway through that year she had lost her teaching job, her relationship had broken up and she was heavily medicated to cope with depression and anxiety.
"I had a bad nervous breakdown. I went to hospital five times. I was asking the doctor 'please just put me down because I don't want to live like this any more'. I lost all pleasure out of life."
A letter from psychiatrist Dr Zoya Vuletic-Korac confirms she was admitted to Auckland Hospital's mental health unit several times in 2005 for "compulsory treatment procedures".
The letter confirms significant stresses in her life were "body corporate payments for leaky building repair, her illness and as a result a relationship break-up and unemployment".
Details of 2005 are still hazy for Boyko. Her 22-year-old daughter, Imessa, now studying to be a lawyer, alarmed by her mother's deteriorating condition, arranged for her to return to the Ukraine to convalesce with Boyko's mother. "I felt like I was a vegetable. I was still breathing but I was not alive."
For Boyko, the nightmare started in January 2005 when the Rossmay Terrace body corporate approved a levy to fix weathertight problems which consultants Babbage estimated would cost $2.1 million. (In the end, it would be more than double that, because of unforseen additional problems.)
Boyko, unable to pay the $60,000 levy, asked her bank for a loan but was told they would not lend on leaky buildings.
She says she then asked the body corporate secretary, who was with Crockers, if she could make weekly payments of $100 until the arrival of a lump-sum settlement expected from the Auckland City Council and the architects involved in Rossmay Terrace. She was told she needed to pay the full amount.
Boyko says Grimshaw and Co, an Auckland law firm which is representing thousands of leaky-home owners, advised the unit owners to go to court rather than attempt a settlement through the Weathertight Homes Resolutions Service.
Body corporate minutes in January 2005 show that lawyer Paul Grimshaw (then with Cairns Slane) said he considered the WHRS to be a waste of time.
The skill level of their assessors, mediators and adjudicators was lacking, and their reports were inconsistent and not very reliable. He warned that if the owners elected to use the WHRS mediation service only remediation costs would be awarded - not general costs, loss of rents, general damages or interest on loans.
Leaky homes advocate John Gray disagrees with this advice.
Gray points to his own leaky home at Ponsonby Gardens, which took a multi-unit body corporate claim to the WHRS in 2003. "We went on to win and win handsomely, and we didn't have a damned lawyer, we didn't need one."
He said the process did work, it was quicker and did not cost the tens of thousands of dollars that homeowners were spending with lawyers. Gray said that in the case of Ponsonby Gardens he was awarded interest, general damages of $18,000 for stress and anxiety, and all his consequential costs such as curtain cleaning and carpet replacement.
Boyko says Rossmay Terrace owners received no extra costs in an eventual out-of-court settlement - a figure understood to be around $2.1 million. Shortly before settlement, Boyko said, the estimated $2.1 million cost doubled when contractors discovered the walls were not straight and would need correcting.
The case is difficult, all parties acknowledge, although it is underscored by the responsibility to the body corporate. When Boyko bought her home, she took on the obligations - as well as the benefits - of being in a large, multi-unit dwelling.
Helen O'Sullivan, chief operating officer at Crockers, said the decisions were arrived at by voting carried out by the other owners. "The body corporate votes to raise a levy, it is binding. It is a majority rules situation."
The issue of collecting the levy became a matter of debt collection once beyond the due date. That process, too, was decided by the body corporate.
On the issue of refurbishment costs rising, O'Sullivan said the scale of work sometimes differed from the estimate. She spoke highly of Grimshaw & Co's work. She said the firm was used for much of Crockers' work.
Grimshaw said he would have advised multi-unit owners to go to court, rather than through the WHRS. He believed the court system gave owners greater opportunity to recover their funds. While this case had gone to mediation, rather than through the entire court process, it returned the best result for the owners.
"We feel very sorry for people like her ... What happens in these cases is majority rules."
Babbage general manager Philip Gormack said there was another side to the story. He directed the Herald on Sunday to the staff member best briefed on the case, but that person was unable to be reached.
Boyko's future is uncertain. For two years she has been involved in legal battles after arriving back from Ukraine to find judgment for $73,000 had been made in her absence.
She had initially hoped to cover the cost of Rossmay Terrace by selling another investment apartment she owns in Morningside Drive but was shocked to discover it too was in the grip of a leaky building problem.
She now owes the special levy to fix that problem, is behind in her body corporate payments and is being sued for the outstanding amounts.
Boyko says she has seen no money from the Rossmay Terrace compensation settlement. "They say I am not entitled to it. They have charged me $150,000. The bill should be half that."
Auckland woman, Suzanne Guerin, who has helped Boyko with her case, decided to take the matter into her own hands when faced with a large quote to fix weathertight problems in her Parnell apartment block. Guerin became chairwoman of the body corporate committee and arranged for two independent structural engineers to examine the building. They agreed there were leaks but nothing major. The cost could be covered by the regular body corporate levy. The fight took a year, and now she warns that apartment owners need to get involved and not accept what body corporate secretaries advise.
Guerin is concerned there is no code of ethics for body corporate secretaries. "It's a bit like drycleaning - all care and no responsibility. We wasted $40,000 proving it wasn't a leaky building."
Leaky homes facts
* 80,000 people are living in homes that have leaked or are at high risk of leaking.
* 30,000 homes are at risk of leaking.
* Average cost of settling claims is $150,000, or $4.5 billion in total.
* Subsequent unpublished work says the total cost of settling claims is $2.8 billion.
* Councils' bill for leaky homes is between $660 million and $2.1 billion.
* Health study shows people living in leaky homes develop asthma and suffer mental health problems.
