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The Insurance Council of Australia has implored flood-affected residents in NSW's Northern Rivers to think about their safety when faced with the prospect of selling up and moving to higher ground.
Key points:
- $800 million in buyback funding is available for flood-affected houses in the Northern Rivers
- The Insurance Council of Australia wants people to consider their future safety when considering buyback offers
- Lismore's mayor says new housing estates must be fast-tracked to secure housing supply
An $800 million Resilient Homes program, jointly funded by the federal and NSW governments, was announced last week.
About 2,000 houses from across the region are covered under the scheme.
Home owners in the most at-risk areas will have the chance to sell their properties at pre-flood prices, while others will be offered funding to raise or retrofit their homes with more flood-resistant materials.
Figures from the National Emergency Management Agency show 1,337 homes in the Northern Rivers were destroyed or severely damaged during this year's February floods.
Of those, more than 600 were in the Lismore LGA, 332 in the Richmond Valley and 250 in the Tweed Shire.
At least 5,000 residential properties across the region suffered minor-to-moderate damage.
Safety should be first priority
Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall said those offered a buyback deal should think about their future in the face of increasingly severe weather events.
"You never get ahead if you are losing everything every five years," he said.
"Even the mental trauma of these events should be enough to get people to think, 'where can I move that is safe and secure?'
"Making sure that we can live in a home that is safe and secure and can withstand the perils around us should always be our first choice."
Lismore's mayor said there was plenty of work to be done in the wake of last week's historic announcement.
Steve Krieg said it was vital those people offered a government buyback had somewhere to move to in the same area.
He said there had been more than 80 expressions of interest lodged since a Resilient Land Program was launched at the start of September, which was designed to identify flood-free properties of at least 2 hectares that would be appropriate for residential development.
Cr Krieg said the challenge now would be to fast-track the approval process.
"We actually have to have the master planning and the vision of Lismore right so that people don't just take the money and move to the Gold Coast," he said.
"We want to keep our people here.
"They're our workforce, they're the people that want to live in Lismore, so we've got to provide an option for them."
Community workshops starting soon
The head of the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation David Witherdin said a series of community workshops would begin later this week to advise residents of their options.
"Voluntary purchase will absolutely be appropriate in those really high-risk circumstances, because what we're trying to do is really eliminate that future risk to life," he said.
"There is a whole suite of options there, but it is a risk-based assessment.
"We will step people through that and the intention is to make that easy, give people a thorough understanding of what their risk is and what options may be appropriate to them."