The head of the northern New South Wales flood recovery agency says his "first preference" for residents who accept a buyback offer from the state government is that they relocate their houses to higher ground.
About 100 residents turned out in Lismore today for the first in a series of public information sessions about the rollout of the Resilient Homes program.
The $800-million buyback and rebuilding scheme, announced a week ago, covers about 6,000 properties affected by floods and landslips in the Northern Rivers this year.
The owners of about 2,000 of those homes are expected to be offered buybacks at a pre-flood market value.
Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC) chief executive David Witherdin said the least preferred option would be for homes to be demolished after buybacks.
"All those homes that we can keep in the housing stock take the pressure off the supply, materials and building labour," he said.
"And I think most importantly [it] preserves the character of the areas as well, and really creates that circular economy in a sustainable sense."
Matchmaking 'challenge'
South Lismore resident Harper Dalton had questions about what land was available for residents to move their homes to.
"House relocation is the quickest, cheapest and most effective way to keep the community here, keep our community identity and get people into homes where they're safe," he said.
Mr Witherdin said the NRRC was working to identify suitable land for development.
More than 200 expressions of interest have been registered as part of the Resilient Land Program launched in late August.
They are still being assessed.
Mr Witherdin said the responsibility to organise a house relocation would lie with the home owner.
"The challenge of trying to be a matchmaker in terms of land swaps is beyond what we can do at this point in time, [although] I certainly won't rule it out," he said.
The NRRC's executive director of program delivery, Gareth James, said the program would be reviewed in two years and that more funding could be made available for further buybacks or resilience grants if required.
Individual property owners will be contacted and assigned case managers in the coming weeks to help them through the process.
High-risk properties will be prioritised.
Mr Witherdin said the NRRC would take responsibility for clearing and managing vacated land after the buybacks were completed.
Properties in high-risk flood areas will be rezoned so they cannot be used for residential building in the future.
'Another phase of limbo'
Mr Witherdin expected the first transactions for buybacks would be processed in February.
NRRC staff repeatedly told the crowd that individual circumstances and properties would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
For that reason and for privacy, Mr Withderin said the NRRC would not yet release maps of which streets or properties were likely to receive buyback offers.
Mr James also told the crowd that offers would be somewhat lower for those who had received insurance payouts.
Throughout the information session, the NRRC faced questions about whether people would receive extra funding or reimbursement if they had spent money restoring a property that was later bought back.
They were told that property assessments would be based on market values from mid-February 2022.
Mr Witherdin said the "fundamental focus" of the Resilient Homes scheme was mitigating risk.
"This program is unprecedented in terms of what's put forward," he said.
"But it's not possible to have funding available that gets everybody back to exactly where they were as if this flood never happened."
South Lismore resident Marcus Bebb, who is hoping for a buy back, said the session was, as he expected, "a dog's breakfast".
He said he knew the scheme would not "happen overnight", but he was still waiting for certainty about his future.
"We've just moved from one phase of limb to another phase of limbo," he said.
The NRRC will conduct more public information sessions across the Northern Rivers throughout November and December.
