The Wellingtonian Editorial: Who's to blame for homes?
20 May 10OPINION: The cost of the leaky homes crisis is estimated to be nearly $12 billion.
Though Auckland has been by far the worst hit in the matter of leaky homes, 9 per cent of the problem homes are in Wellington – about $1 billion worth – so it is an issue of massive importance here, too.
Prime Minister John Key this week made a "final, take-it-or-leave-it" offer: the Government would foot 25 per cent of the bill, local councils another 25 per cent and the home-owners the remaining 50 per cent.
Mr Key should rethink his "final" offer, because it's still not nearly good enough.
It's better than a previous offer, whereby home-owners would be up for 64 per cent, councils 26 per cent and the Government 10 per cent, but it's still not fair.
The leaky homes crisis is a festering sore that successive governments have hoped would just go away.
In 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark famously chided the media for "banging on" about leaky homes.
Obviously Premier House, where Clark was happily ensconced, wasn't having an issue with water seeping through the roof or toxic fumes emanating from mould in its wall cavities.
The root of the leaky homes problem can be traced back to the 1991 Building Act, which followed recommendations by the Building Industry Council.
The National Government of that time introduced legislation allowing "monolithic" technical plaster cladding, and things went on from bad to worse.
It was a boom time for building and, with so much work on offer, some builders began taking short-cuts.
From 1995, builders were permitted to construct house framing with untreated timber.
In 1998, the final nail was driven into the coffin of weather-tight buildings. The requirement for air gaps behind plaster cladding was dropped, so any moisture that got in was trapped, unable to evaporate.
At the same time, architectural designs changed – for example, flat roofs became the fashion du jour, as did eaveless buildings.
Allied to these elements, local councils' inspection procedures loosened considerably and buildings were approved that should never have been.
The result of this perfect storm of factors has been a massive headache for a generation of homeowners.
In 1999 a change of government stopped further damage to New Zealand building practices.
So what's to be done?
It's time the two parties mainly responsible for the misery caused to the owners of the 42,000 homes affected – the Government and the city councils – accepted they were to blame and undertook to fix the problem.
It's ironic that National, which helped cause the crisis all those years ago, is now back in power and is charged with doing something about it.
The answer is not for the Prime Minister to issue a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum and for his lapdogs – mayors like Auckland's John Banks and Wellington's Kerry Prendergast – to tug their forelocks and praise him for coming up with such a brilliant solution.
There is no way home-owners, victims of the Government's poor legislation and standards, slip-shod council inspection procedures and poor building practices, should now be told they have to stump up collectively with $6 billion, whether they like it or not. That's $143,000 each.
Source: The Wellingtonian
