LEAKY CONDOS—NEW ZEALAND STYLE

by Silvia McFadyen-Jones

Traveling can offer one many opportunities: getting away from your daily routine; stepping from winter to spring or broadening your social perspective. And then there is the "busman's holiday" option.

My trip to New Zealand in November/December 2002 turned out to be the latter. To renew my acquaintance with kiwi-land, I picked up the national paper, the New Zealand Herald (Nov.25, 2002) and was astounded to see the front page headline: "MP UNWISE ON HOUSE ROT". The extensive front-page article and a full-page follow-up accused New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark of not being truthful about the full extent of the leaky building crisis in New Zealand.

Angry homeowners and professional building consultants alike pointed out that the prime minister "had shown supreme arrogance in dismissing the citizen's concerns and underestimating the size of the problem".

Helen Clark was quoted as saying that the Herald was "banging on and beating-up an issue of no substance".

One of the reported consequences of the house rot was identified as "toxic mould" that is proving to be a serious health hazard, the paper said. When the press featured this story, the only statement the New Zealand government offered was that they fully recognized the seriousness of the issue for the individuals affected by this.

Under public pressure, the government-appointed Building Industry Authority (BIA) admitted that the leaky building crisis could cost the country up to $240 million.

Now the public demanded an account of how this money was to be spent. So, on December 3, 2002 the Herald reported that the BIA spent $65,000 in six months for advice from public relations consultants (the spin doctors) about how to deal with the media over the leaky building crisis. A furious housing spokesperson was reported as saying: the money had been spent to cover up the rotting homes crisis. But the public has not been fooled by the $65,000 public relations exercise. "What the homeowners want is solutions, not the 'butt covering' that we are seeing".

Then, on January 6, 2003 a Herald story under the headline: "Toxic rot in homes linked to sickness" revealed what the tenants living in the leaky homes had reported all along. According this article "scientists have confirmed the mould growing in water damaged homes in New Zealand is dangerous to humans and may also affect animals". Based on the research in Columbia University, Denmark's Technical University and the Institute of Hygiene and Medicine in Germany, the toxin producing fungus (stachybotrys) has been linked to serious illnesses and death in the United States, reports the Herald.

This fungus emits toxic gases, which can even permeate minute cracks in wallpaper. When disturbed, the fungus tends to send out spores, which expose people to dangerous levels of toxin.

Furthermore, samples taken by New Zealand microbiologists from toxic-mould-riddled homes in Auckland indicate that the population of fungi examined is turning out to be more complex than originally thought. This is raising concerns that builders making repairs to rotting homes are also at high risk when exposed to these conditions. However, the Herald's sources say that further investigation of these more complex New Zealand moulds by Hort Research and Landcare Research companies of New Zealand is on hold while applications for more funding is made to the New Zealand Government.

So let's add deja-vu to our travel experiences. Yes, it all seems like something already experienced, something tediously familiar to a visitor from BC.

But here the parallel ends. It was the organized public outcry in response to our leaky condo crisis that caused the B.C. Government to establish the original Barrett Commission (1998) inquiry into the quality of residential construction. The Barrett report prompted the development and adoption of the Homeowner Protection Act and the Strata Property Act, two important pieces of legislation to strengthen consumer protection for buyers of new homes and improving the quality of residential (condominium) construction in B.C. Let us trust that the recommendations for action by all three levels of government: the building industry; the various professions and the not-for-profit community organizations like Pacific Condomium Association will strengthen consumer protection and restore confidence in the condominium construction industry in B.C.

Silvia McFadyn-Jones is our Association Membership chair.