An Auckland woman's pleas to the council over months of a neighbouring housing development restricting access and services to her property go unanswered
Damaged water pipes, power cuts, a blocked driveway and a ruined lawn - the development neighbouring Agnes Chow’s Pakuranga property has been the gift that keeps on giving.
But despite months of disruption and reaching out to Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and Watercare numerous times, the chaos on Swan Crescent has continued unabated.
The issues began in May with a large hole blocking access to her driveway from construction at the property next door, where two houses valued at an estimated $3.1 million combined are being traded in for eight units.
Since then it seems to have morphed into a suburban Auckland version of the biblical plagues, with the destruction of her front lawn, late-night cacophonies and a flooded driveway.
The development is being built by Haian Homes Limited, a company registered to Stephen Shouhai Hang.
In an intensifying city like Auckland, Chow wondered if she is the only one who’s been dealing with this ‘now what’ feeling for months, and if the council has been more receptive to other people’s problems.
Working as a flight attendant, she said she returns home always wondering what trouble she would be returning to.
“It’s been very stressful,” she said. “When I’m away for work, I’m thinking what’s happening at home?”
Although work has been going on at the property for most of the year, the bulk of the disruption happened in the past month or so, with a previously-fixed hole appearing on her driveway at the beginning of August.
Chow said her driveway was wholly or partly blocked for three weeks with no communication from the developers before or during construction, while off-street parking was also made unavailable.
What’s more, without signs on the property with contact information and them unwilling to speak to her, it’s been difficult establishing communication.
She asked Auckland Council and Auckland Transport for help, and her query was passed between them with a promise of investigation.
Then she got a notice that Watercare would be shutting service to her property from 10pm to 3am to connect a new pipe to the existing main.
“I got no problem with it and am happy for my water to be shut down,” Chow said. “However… the work started to create excessive noise and vibration.”
With a work assessment the next hour and extremely noisy work going on through the night 3m from her bed, Chow was in tears and calling noise control. The noise eventually ended at 3am.
She contacted Watercare to find out why the work couldn’t have been done at some other time, and waited 17 days for a reply. Eventually, the water organisation came back to apologise for the noise, pointing to the proximity of a local primary school to justify their choice of timing.
“Pipe construction and installation work was carried out during the day,” a Watercare representative wrote to Chow via email.
“Unfortunately for connection of a new pipe to existing main this has to be carried out after hours as the school will be affected due to a water shutdown.”
Chow questioned why this work couldn’t be done on a weekend, or at least with prior warning of noise levels.
Watercare said it had failed to file the requisite noise management plan, and it would reiterate the need for this at future meetings with contractors.
Later in August, metal plates were laid down to bridge the hole at the foot of her driveway, which Chow felt unsafe having to navigate in her car but had little choice.
She noticed digger use within the boundary of her property, and within a few days a third of her front lawn had been dug up. She tried to speak directly with the developers on August 18, but said they turned away from her and spoke to their contractors in Chinese, saying “Get the work done as soon as possible and put the grass back after work, even people from council come to investigate, they won’t see anything.”
The same week, underground cable damage from the construction work left her property without power on two evenings.
A few weeks after the power outages, blocked drains by the construction area led to flooding on Swan Crescent after heavy rain, which the council said it would refer to its team leader building inspector.
“I don’t understand how they can get consent for building houses,” she said.
Auckland Council, however, said it has closed Chow’s complaint as boundary concerns and blocked access are civil matters that must be resolved between the complainant and the developer.
As of the beginning of this week, half of Chow’s lawn was damaged and the developers were unwilling to negotiate.
“The developers basically do whatever they like to my property,” Chow said. “What can I do? I can act like an angry mid-age woman and keep writing/calling to city council every day, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”
She said she engaged the developers and asked them to communicate with her before undertaking work that would affect her, but they told her they didn’t have her phone number.
She pointed to her nearby mailbox, and one of the developers said “I haven’t written a letter for a long time”.
Stephen Hang of Haian Homes Limited said the council had been out to the site to inspect it several times, and he had made attempts to communicate with the neighbours and smooth things over.
"We are trying our best to minimise the dispute," he said. "We are doing everything by the books and everything goes through the proper procedure."
He said while contractors had made mistakes with the lawn and breaking the power line while digging, they were doing as much as they could to rectify the issue.
"We do understand where she is coming from, but we should put ourselves in each other's boots," he said.
But on top of disputes with the developers themselves, Chow felt she had been brushed off by Auckland Council.
“I have not heard from anyone from the council at all,” she wrote to them earlier this week.
“It is not an unreasonable demand to ask for a contact person, right? I really want to believe the council is doing their job; however, I am in a completely dark hole…”
Dee Matavesi lives in the unit behind Chow’s, and she said the lack of notification before the disruption was what really bothered her.
“It’s been a very tough month for us,” she said. “The worst part is we were not told about this before.”
She said when they questioned the developers on the disruptions, they showed their consent and went on with the job.
“Council didn’t even have our back,” she said. “A little bit of consideration and notification is all we want. It was chaos.”
Matavesi said there was no use complaining if council won’t help, and wondered how far issues like this extend across the city.
“We don’t know how many people are going through the same thing right now,” she said.
