The yellow sticker that used to be on Madison Valmont's home. Photo: Supplied / Madison Valmont
An owner of a flood-damaged Auckland home is appalled at the council's communication about whether it is safe to live in.
Madison Valmont has been living between hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts since her Hillcrest home was flooded in January.
But recently, she stopped by her home to find the yellow sticker - stating her house was unliveable - had been removed.
"I thought, where has it gone? You know, it's been there for nine months, has somebody stolen it?" Valmont said.
"I thought, you know, maybe something funny's going on."
Valmont emailed her case manager at Auckland Council, who said he had taken it down - but did not explain why.
RNZ saw that email. It said: "I confirm that I removed the placard from your property as the placard could be closed."
Valmont said her placard stated the house was not safe to live in, and needed an electrical check and an engineering report before the placard was removed - neither of which had been done.
"The whole point is, the house is yellow-stickered, it's been yellow-stickered from when it was first assessed. Nothing has changed," she said.
Auckland Council's compliance manager Adrian Wilson told RNZ it would never remove a yellow placard if the house was not safe.
He said council sometimes reassessed buildings to check whether a placard could be downgraded or removed - because some risk factors, like flooding and high moisture levels, had since reduced.
"The assessors did the initial rapid assessments based on the situation at the time," he said.
"At the time the environmental risk factors were at their peak and hugely affecting safety in homes.
"Since then, those risks have eased, and we are able to take this into consideration when reassessing the safety of a building."
Wilson said there was a process to follow to tell residents when and why their placards had been removed.
"Once the review is complete and the property is deemed safe, we will remove the physical placard.
"The resident will receive an email notification and updated letter with a change of placard status, if appropriate.
"We apologise if we haven't been quick enough to update residents, we are working through a significant number of placard assessments."
The council told RNZ that notification should happen within a couple of days, but sometimes it could take longer.
Valmont said council had since apologised for not clearly communicating with her, but she said she still was not satisfied that her house was safe to live in.
She planned to continue living in a hired cabin that was placed on her driveway this week.
