Ian Horsham said the two-year legal battle to launch his 86sqm houseboat — an out-of-the-box solution for holidays after the closure of the Cromwell Holiday Park — had broken him.
He had now listed the houseboat for sale after a Land Information New Zealand (Linz) rehearing last month resulted in his application for a mooring licence being declined and he needed to move it off the property on which it was being stored, he said.
Mr Horsham has been fighting the Central Otago District Council (CODC) and Linz since 2022 for permission to launch his houseboat on Lake Dunstan in a small cove near Pisa Moorings and Lowburn.
That is after the two years he spent working through consents and application processes.
Ownership of the lake bed lies with Linz, while the CODC is responsible for the lake surface, requiring both authorities to grant permission.
In July 2021 the district council granted Mr Horsham resource consent, but in March 2022, days prior to transporting the houseboat from Southland, he was issued a court injunction preventing its launch.
At the same time Linz said Mr Horsham had not been issued a mooring licence to install the four moorings he had placed on the lake bed.
Since then he has been fighting both Linz and the CODC to get the permission he says was granted.
The whole ordeal had been a "real nightmare", Mr Horsham said.
"If I’d known this right from the word go I’d never have gone ahead with it." he said.
"It really, really ripped my guts out, my heart out, all that hard work and from the word go they gave me consent to do it and I walk away with nothing now."
The houseboat had cost about $80,000 to build — plus the hours it took to build it — as well as $20,000 in consent and legal fees.
Now he was having to pay for it to sit in a yard on a truck until he could sell it.
"I want to walk away from it now. It hurts so much. They’ve treated me like rubbish."
Linz acting head of Crown property James Holborow said last month the Commissioner for Crown Lands declined Mr Horsham’s application for a mooring licence under section 75 of the Land Act.
Considering the land’s status, the fact there were no moorings for private vessels on the Crown land bed of Lake Dunstan, and other potential uses, the Commissioner concluded allowing a houseboat to be moored at this location was not in the public interest.
