A Papatoetoe mother whose family is still living apart after last month's tornado has opened up about the disaster's lingering financial and emotional burden.
Carla Makiha is looking for suitable, long-term accommodation nearly a month after the twister destroyed her family home.
Makiha is also bracing herself as she prepares for a year of effectively paying for two homes.
Right now she, her husband and three children are in limbo, living across two hotel rooms, each about 3x8 metres.
Her mother, who lived with the family, is bunking down with a relative.
It is nowhere near a long-term solution, but Makiha told Checkpoint finding more suitable, long-term accommodation has been tough.
"The priority is finding suitable housing for us while we rebuild our whare, because to start to rebuild we actually need to be back together. Being apart is not ideal," she said.
Makiha wants to rebuild the family's existing home, but right now it is far from livable.
"And in the properly market in Auckland ... we're never going to get anything near what we have here.
"We were blessed to find this properly ... no tornado is going to take it away from me."
The roof has been torn off, its windows are shattered. It is shrink-wrapped to keep the water out.
Luckily, at the time of the tornado, two of her sons were in a car at the front of the property and Carla was out back with her mother.
Her son's room is particularly grim, with shards of glass shattered through it.
Had anyone been inside at the time, Makiha said it could have been a very different story.
"We were safe, because otherwise you and I wouldn't be having this conversation at all," she said.
"Because we would have been in the living room, [my son] would have been in his bed and we would be having tangi."
The family is intact but, for now. Home is two small hotel rooms not far from Auckland Airport, packed with the family's possessions.
Makiha called her old place "a hub". Now it is anything but.
Inside a tornado-hit, shrink-wrapped home in Papatoetoe. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
"The longer this goes on, the harder it is for me [not] having my whānau around, my friends around, my house is our hub," she said.
"They'd come here in a heartbeat, you know, but it's just not my home."
Initially the family was paying for the hotel itself, then it had part of its accommodation allowance paid.
But the rates are premium and insurance does not cover the lot.
"Ideally we'd be looking for a three to four bedroom home, and the market rates in Papatoetoe, Manukau [are] $700 to $750," she said.
"That doesn't meet what we have been given per-week at all. And remember we're still paying a mortgage."
All of this, Makiha says, will seriously hurt her family financially. It will be noodles for the next 12 months, she joked.
That is her hope - to be back in their place within a year.
"I'll move heaven and earth to get back there within 12 months," she said.
"But to get there ... we need to be settled in somewhere temporary first."
Many houses in the battered suburb remain, seemingly, untouched - tarps still draped on their rooves.
In her case, Makiha believes insurance has been, in a way, a barrier.
"So we've got different services helping but when you're an awesome taxpayer and ratepayer, and you tick all the correct boxes, you don't become a priority because you have insurance. And that's hard," she said.
And it's not just her.
"My neighbours, you've seen my street - there are still tarpaulins on their houses."
