Almost all of the homes on a South Auckland street have been bulldozed after last year's flooding, and residents say they feel like they are losing a part of their community.
Pito Place is within the flood plain of Te Ararata Creek in Māngere and almost the entire street has been condemned, forcing out some families that have lived there for generations.
Kāinga Ora confirmed so far 19 state homes on the street have been demolished - another two houses have been demolished on nearby streets, with another 23 in the suburb earmarked for the bulldozers - of the 89 state homes to be demolished, half are in Māngere.
Kelly Dey lived on Ventura Street with her four children until the night of the storm, when the state house flooded and tilted off its foundations.
"When I lived at Ventura Street, we were all a community there - me and all my neighbours, even the ones on Pito Place, we just all knew each other. We were there to help each other.
"I miss it, I miss Ventura."
She still lives in Māngere but misses her neighbours, many of whom also had to move.
Another resident, Viliami Halaufia, faces a difficult decision - after 30 years living in Māngere the house he owns flooded waist deep, and he has a buyout offer from Auckland Council.
He lived near Pito Place and said seeing vacant lots where houses once stood had changed the neighbourhood.
"For me, I expected it because of the flood but ... there's hardly anybody around, the street's cut off, and most of the [residents in the] area, they are gone."
I AM Māngere is a community trust set up four years ago to equip and support local groups with their mahi, from enviornmental to safety initiatives.
Kelly Dey lived on Ventura Street with her four children until the night of the storm. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Chief executive Toni Helleur said they were losing a neighbourhood.
"Each day we would pop in, we'd see one family still there, next minute they're not there. It is a real ghost town now. And now with some of those homes gone, it definitely is a real reminder of what happened last year in Māngere during the floods."
Losing so many homes on one street changed a community, Helleur said.
"It feels like we've just lost communities, you know, a whole neighbourhood and that's really sad for us," she said.
"You've had grandparents who lived in the home, their kids live in the home and now their grandchildren live in the home, so they've been there for years. Families around Māngere, they tend to live in quite close proximity, so like five minutes down the road aunties there and uncles there.
"And to lose that in a community or in a neighbourhood, it's very noticeable and it is quite heartbreaking."
Kāinga Ora rehoused 246 households forced out of their state homes after the January floods in Auckland last year.
Some had chosen not to return to Māngere.
"We have had families choose not to return back to Māngere though, because of the trauma that they did go through. So they have definitely been given the option of returning back to Māngere, returning back to obviously another home," Helleur said.
State homes are not part of the governtment buyout process for storm-damaged homes, through which Auckland Council's recovery office expected 900 homes in the region will be demolished or relocated over the next two years.
So far, 520 privately owned homes have been deemed unlivable and of those 103 have completed a buyout - but just four homes have been demolished and removed in Muriwai, a West Coast community hard hit by slips during Cyclone Gabrielle.
Auckland Council homes for recovery head Fiona Wright said they would start removing storm-affected homes in Rānui, Henderson, Massey and Swanson next month.
"Empty sites will be maintained, including mowing, weeding and pest control, along with having their utilities sorted," Wright said.
"Where needed, we will look at options for any issues arising around the empty homes."
Kāinga Ora Auckland and Northland deputy chief executive Caroline Butterworth said the land's future use was still being worked out.
"What happens long-term with the vacant plots of land we own is complex and dependent on a number of factors," she said.
"As a major residential property owner and landlord, it is important that we have a clear picture of the risks to our properties, and the possible mitigations that could be used to reduce the risks before we make decisions on how we are going to use the land in the future."
Some of the properties might be impacted by Auckland Council's proposed blue-green network which was aimed at helping mitigate the future flood risk, while others might be impacted by specific stormwater management projects, Butterworth said.
"We won't know exactly how our properties will be affected until Auckland Council has progressed its plans further," she said.
"While we await further information from the council, we are carrying out our own assessments of properties that we own in flood-prone areas, using a similar methodology to the council."
The timing for demolishing the remaining 34 state homes was still being worked out, Butterworth said.
"Those factors include technical work we have under way on selected properties and Auckland Council's planning and infrastructure investments for flood mitigation, which will influence how the underlying land is used in the future."
The flood plains
Māngere resident Julia Tuineau is part of a group working on restoring Te Ararata Stream, which winds through the suburb and has wide flood plains either side, where houses flooded.
A retired teacher with a degree in environmental science, she said close to 200 homes near the creek flooded the night of the Auckland Anniversary weekend storm.
"There were 198 just around here that were flooded and it wasn't minor flooding, because there was quite a lot of sewage in it and that got into carpets and walls and appliances, cars," she said.
"Part of the problem was that there was a lot of weed and a lot of broken fences that the water picked up and jammed under Walmsley Road, where there was only one outlet to this whole area so the water backed up from there."
Plans to naturalise the stream, widen the culvert and extend the flood plain were still on the table, years after being mooted, Tuineau said.
"We were hoping for a naturalised channel and the other idea was to lower this flood plain again, extend it, so that the houses alongside, probably many of them would have had to go. That would have made quite a large capacity flood plain."
She said the work was long overdue.
"It is important because people are on tenderhooks when it rains," Tuineau said.
"We've had some fairly heavy falls over the last year or so since the flooding, and the water has come up, but not into houses at present. It only takes another rain event like January last year and we'll have another problem."
She sees the creek as an asset to the community if greenfields around it could be widened - native species, including a long fin eel, have been found in the waterway.
"There's values of the stream itself there. It has ecological values, of course, and we have nearly lost two populations of native fish, just because of persistent pollution from stormwater that comes down the drains from the roads," Tuineau said.
"We have to look after this so that it's healthy, because it is, and it could be much more of an asset in the heart of Mangere to all who live around it."
Students from local schools visit the stream for science lessons.
"It also has educational value, because we have brought school classes out and done hands on science along the stream, and it illustrates so many of the scientific concepts like metamorphosis, food chains, cycling of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen," Tuineau said.
"It's all illustrated in pocket size in a stream and very close to several schools."
She believed Māngere also needed more green space.
"There is the recreational value. We're going to need it more and more, because the housing around here has really intensified with townhouses and apartments and very little green space."
