July 1 was the official first day for the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation. Not that the corporation has been lying idle since CEO David Witherdin was announced as the man to head the Northern Rivers rebuild on April 19.

It has been a 'foot to the floor' two and a half months so the Lismore App had a chat with Mr Witherdin to find out what progress has been made especially on the housing front.

There is a lot of information to cover so we have split this into a two-part story.

Part I will deal with the Flood Property Assessment Program and Temporary Housing while Part II looks at the future including land release and medium-density and social housing.

Part I: What have you achieved in the first ten weeks?

"It has been a fast and furious time where the time has gone very quickly although the days have been long," Mr Witherdin began.

"Most of that has been about listening. Listening to people, understanding, trying to get an appreciation for local context, local ideas and opportunities and all those things that make difference."

Of course, Mr Witherdin's scope of work is much larger than just Lismore as it encompasses all of the Northern Rivers so it is spending time with all the General Managers of the various councils and a range of stakeholders right across the community.

"They have been really insightful and valuable. It is really important to have those foundational relationships set up right at the get-go."

"In addition to that, working closely with all the government agencies that are responsible for delivery of reconstruction. Our major focus over the last six weeks has been setting up what's called the Infrastructure Coordination Office. That's a key component of the NRRC."

"In that role, we have a single point of overview of all of NSW's Government Delivery Agencies in the seven LGA's and of all of those reconstruction projects."

"So, we've got a master list compiled of all of those, so on top of that, we apply a prioritisation process because the amount of work that needs to be done far exceeds the availability of contractors, trades and materials. It was already a very tight market before the floods, now it's even more compounded by the fact that South East Queensland was taken out."

"We bring all the players together every two weeks so we can make sure that the most important projects are done first in terms of reconstruction so different agencies don't compete against each other with limited resources."

Mr Witherdin said the process was also important because it allowed them to allocate work to local companies thus driving the economic recovery as well.

One of the priorities has been wastewater transportation along with temporary accommodation.

In terms of temporary accommodation, Wollongbar is virtually complete with work underway at SCU's Crawford Road, East Lismore land where the Norther Rivers Football Academy was located.

"We're now at a point where we have more modules coming than what we have space to accommodate them, which is a good problem to have but we do need to solve that space issue as a priority as well.

"We need to look at other opportunities as well. It is not all about the villages, take Woodburn as an example, the best short-term outcome there has been to provide people with caravans they can locate at their own home."

"The other thing we are really trying to progress really quickly is even just a temporary refit of people's homes. So, I think there will be announcements in the future around that.

Another priority for the NRRC is a Resilient Homes type program. This is community engagement for those with flood-affected properties to assess their interest in a voluntary purchase, house raising, resilient rebuilding and the potential for a land-swap type arrangement. To progress these sort of conversations, Mr Witherden is encouraging homeowners to register for and take part in the Flood Property Assessment Program which has been running for about eight weeks.

"It enables landholders to get a free structural assessment undertaken of their home and a detailed scope of work report prepared around what needs to be done to get that back to a habitable state with some cost estimates. When the home is severely or structurally damaged they can then opt-in to get it demolished at the cost of the NSW Government."

"We've had more than 3,500 people opt-in and we've undertaken more than 1,500 assessments. We're getting through about 200 assessments a week and people still have the opportunity to connect."

"What we're expecting in a couple of weeks for those people that have registered is more to expressions of interest process. It is really important to understand what their intentions are and then we can match that up with the data sets like where their floor levels are and their risk profile based on what that level is and what previous flood modelling tells us about the risk of that location in terms of high-velocity water."

"I expect, in August that we'll move into funding those opportunities."

Mr Witherdin has spent many days discussing the Queensland Reconstruction Authority and their flood recovery situation and is expecting the scenario to be similar to their Resilient Homes Fund which is $741 million co-funded with the federal government.

"Clearly, that's what people are looking for, in terms of certainty. Hey, I don't want to repair my place if it's a candidate for voluntary purchase. So, I think, very quickly we need to understand what their interests and what their intentions are and then we need to support that with guidelines. By August, I think we should be able to move at a significant pace."

"People who haven't engaged in the Flood Property Assessment to date, I would really encourage them to take that up. It is a no-obligation engagement at no cost. The details for that are on the Service NSW website."

The Flood Property Assessment program is a critical first step for the majority of owners to move forward. It unlocks the door to the expression of interest process moving to funding and implementing the solution.

In terms of the valuation of your property, how will the guidelines work?

"The general principle around that is always trying to put people back in the position they would be in pre-flood. Those guidelines are yet to be finalised but that is certainly the approach taken in all the other jurisdictions that I've reviewed."

"You work through an independent valuation process to arrive at a result that usually comes from negotiation and mutual agreement. What we're talking about will be a voluntary purchase program, there is no talk of a compulsory purchase type program at all."

"If you look at Grantham in Queensland, they went down the pathway of a land swap. Not everybody opted-in, a few stayed behind but the ones who stayed behind got severely impacted again by this most recent flood event and my understanding is, they have all opted to go now."

"What we would do is work with the community so they would understand the risk around where they are because the Voluntary Purchase Program's focus is around mitigating the risk to human life in those high hazard areas. It certainly doesn't apply to those areas up above, what you would call the 1-in-100 sort of line. It is generally those places that are deep in the flood plain that get hit quite regularly not just by nuisance events but by high-risk events and we know that they will need to evacuate."

"For me, that low-hanging fruit, we need to get on with and get on with quite quickly. That's not just Lismore, that's parts of the other LGA's where there has been a long-standing Voluntary Purchase Program in place but administered by the state government but it had a very meagre amount of funding for it. Here is the opportunity to get a real step-change in that space."

When residents do opt to participate in a Voluntary Purchase Program, the land on where the house sits gets reclassified so that it cannot be redeveloped, a crucial point for the future. The NRRC then works to get the best opportunity to activate that land whether it's for recreational use, bio-diversity or any other range of uses that can be used in the floodplain.

"Clearly, if you have some landholders there that don't want to opt-in, that will constrain that and I think we just have to work with that sensitively."

"In terms of what we do with it and how we repurpose it, the community has to be at the centre of that and we really have to embrace their ideas. I think there are some pretty exciting things we can do. How much is needed for land swaps and redevelopment will stem from that EOI (expression of interest) process, we want to work through that, gauge people's interest and set the next big steps for us.

"Coupled with that, it was already a very tight housing market pre-floods and a very tight social housing market so in terms of any solutions we would move forward on, we really want to make the most of that integrated approach because we have the opportunity to really re-set quite a few things here, so we don't want to just build back better because of floods, that's why we're here but if we can achieve some really critical outcomes as part of it, that will absolutely be front of mind for us."

In Part II, Mr Withirdin expands on medium-density and social housing for Lismore's future as well as land release and how it works.