North Shore homeowners say Auckland Council's buyout process must move faster after they were told some homes won't be categorised until the end of March.
Meanwhile, the latest figures show 125 Auckland families are still accessing temporary accommodation support, and the true number of displaced residents is thought to be even higher.
Julie Armstrong hasn't stepped foot in her Northcote home since Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall in February.
So, Newshub sent our drone in instead. A gaping hole in the roof means it's exposed to the elements. Toys are caked in black mould, bedrooms are covered in green slime. The family home is deserted.
"When we left the house, we left without anything - not even a teaspoon. And we've had to rebuild absolutely everything," Armstrong told Newshub.
"I don't have my baby photos. I don't know what to tell my children, because I don't have any answers and I can't give them any answers."
Armstrong and her family are among Auckland's displaced residents - those still without a permanent home after the January floods, which are still fresh in their minds.
"The neighbour came screaming up from the back property and I could hear chainsaws in the background, I thought that's a really strange time for people to be chainsawing something," Armstrong told Newshub.
"And she said, 'you've got to get out, the bank's gone, the trees are falling on our house, and you're about to go down the hill'."
Then Cyclone Gabrielle hit.
"This big tree above us, on the council land, had a limb growing over the house. [It] fell on the top of the house and made a hole in the roof. So during Cyclone Gabrielle, and the next few months, it just constantly rained through the house," Armstrong said.
Now she and her family, like countless others in Auckland and countrywide, are stuck in the system.
They have a smashed-up home and are dealing with insurers and council, desperate for progress so they can move on.
The home is held in a trust so they aren't eligible for temporary accommodation support.
"So you have duel-mortgage, rent, water rates that you have to pay on two properties," Armstrong said.
"We don't know where we're going to live, what we're going to do. And we aren't going to know that until we're categorised."
She, like so many others, has a message for the powers that be: "The process needs to move faster."
Auckland Council's group recovery manager Mat Tucker told Newshub resources are tight.
"It's a simple fact that we don't have the resources to get to everybody at once. All of New Zealand now is competing for geotechnical engineers, flooding engineers," he said.
"I dearly wish I had a magic wand to make this all go away tomorrow, or this afternoon, but I'm afraid I don't."
About 400 homes have been categorised and there could be up to 1500 more.
A mammoth task ahead, but for those without a permanent home it can't happen soon enough.
