For the past three months, Denise Lowe and her 15-year-old son, Josh Byrne, have been living in limbo, sharing a 3x3-metre room in a youth camp on the NSW Far North Coast.
The mother and son have been moved between evacuation centres and emergency accommodation since the February flood swallowed their Coraki rental property.
It left them with few belongings and nowhere to live.
Ms Lowe said the managers of the Evans Head youth camp had worked tirelessly for months to provide shelter for many of the region's flood victims, but the facilities were never built for extended stays.
"It's emergency accommodation and it's very hard to rebuild your life from here," she said.
Ms Lowe said she had applied for a temporary pod at Wollongbar multiple times.
She said an administrative error meant they were only assigned a one-bedroom pod and would have to wait for a two-bedroom structure.
"At the moment, we're just in a sort of weird limbo where we're trying to run a normal life … but from here," Ms Lowe said.
Temporary accommodation a 'complex' beast
The state's Flood Recovery Minister, Stephanie Cooke, defended the rollout of temporary pod accommodation across the Northern Rivers.
"It's never been done before — certainly not on this scale — and in response to an unprecedented disaster where the need for housing was great coming into it and even greater now coming out of it," she said.
The $350-million package announced in April promised up to 2,000 pods.
So far about two dozen have been installed at a site in Wollongbar, where about 50 people are living.
Ms Cooke said each site was unique and had to be individually worked through with local councils, residents, and contractors.
She said the saturated landscape and ongoing wet weather had also led to delays.
"That's not to make excuses but just to reassure the community that we are actually making progress."
Ms Cooke said the Wollongbar pod site would be complete by the end of the month and there would be "real acceleration" across other sites in the weeks ahead.
Lee and Mike face a different kind of limbo
In North Lismore, Lee and Mike Try are facing a different kind of limbo.
The pair narrowly escaped the record-breaking February flood, after being forced to clamber into the attic and then smash their way out through a side wall when floodwater started to come through the ceiling.
The recently refurbished house is now an uninhabitable shell, and the long-time locals are living in a caravan parked in front of their property.
"We can't go forward with anything with the house until we find out what's going on with the council and the state government as to what they're going to do to help us."
Ms Try said the house had been insured for decades, but recent policy changes left them no longer covered for flood damage.
They have lodged a formal complaint with the Australian Financial Complains Authority, which has received about 230 complaints relating to the February and March floods in Northern NSW.
Government authorities, including the newly formed Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation, are yet to release any details about potential buybacks or land swaps.
An independent inquiry into the causes, preparedness, response, and recovery from this year's catastrophic flood was due to deliver an interim report at the end of June.
It has since been postponed and the inquiry will now deliver a single report at the end of July.
Ms Try said house prices in North Lismore had plummeted from half a million dollars to $150,000–$200,000 post-flood, so selling up and buying elsewhere was not an option.
"People are just taking whatever they can get for them," she said.
"Where are we going to go? Without putting the money in, we've just got to walk away from it and we just can't afford to walk away from it.
Mr Try said she felt fortunate to have a caravan to live in.
"But we're out in the street," she said.
"We feel for the people who are copping it down there [in Sydney] now, but we're still hurting and we're going to be displaced, out of our homes, for a long time to come."
