Almost a year after the catastrophic Northern Rivers floods, a public meeting has been told that only 25 homes have been properly assessed for potential buybacks so far.
About 100 people attended the event at Woodburn, which was organised by the Northern Rivers Flood Action Group.
Tuesday afternoon's gathering was billed as a chance to hear from the Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation (NRRC).
About 150 questions that had been sent in prior to the event, which was hosted by former Lismore mayor Jenny Dowell.
"Everywhere you go there is frustration," she said.
"Not knowing what the future holds is normal after a huge, disastrous event like this.
"But the corporation has not helped, because they didn't come on board early enough and now communication is so poor."
'Up in the air'
The NRRC has been tasked with overseeing the region's recovery from the flood, which damaged thousands of homes on February 28 last year.
A funding pool of $700 million is available for buybacks, house raising and resilient refitting as part of the Resilient Homes Program announced three months ago.
About 2,000 homes were expected to be eligible for each category of assistance, but NRRC chief executive David Witherdin told the meeting 8,000 applications had already been received.
"We're certainly oversubscribed for that already," he said.
"Our focus has really been on those homes that are at highest risk and will be eligible for voluntary purchase."
Mr Witherdin said independent valuations had been done on about 25 homes.
"We hope to be in a position next week to be making the first offers for voluntary purchase," he said.
"We've got an enormous program of work ahead of us — we're underway with that and I think over the next few weeks and months things will really start to accelerate."
But Ms Dowell was not reassured.
"If you're only doing 25 now and you've got [thousands more], what's your time line here?" she said.
"It just seems unrealistic to think by the middle of the year that people will have some certainty.
"The figures just don't add up … there's still a lot up in the air."
'Living in shells'
Woodburn man Ken Morrison left the meeting in a pessimistic mood.
"People are frustrated because stuff is taking so long and they won't give you detailed information," he said.
"Nothing seems to have advanced from two months ago.
"They're struggling, we're struggling — the whole town's struggling.
"We're all living in shells, or we're living in tents or in sheds.
"No-one's living in their house, or if they are, they're squatting in a house with no walls, no water and no electricity."
Northern Rivers Flood Action Group president Tony Carusi said he could understand why people were frustrated.
"People are expecting things to have moved along quicker than what they have," he said.
"Hopefully we'll see some increased movement over the next few months."
Expressions of interest in a $100m scheme designed to identify flood-free land suitable for residential development in the region will close today.
The meeting was told more than 300 applications had been received for the Resilient Land Program.
About 50 per cent of them involved property in the Lismore area and the remainder were scattered across the region's other six local government areas.
