Forget flammable cladding and crumbling walls, it’s the little things in strata that really get people het up.
And it’s one of those multifaceted culture clashes where there’s no obvious right or wrong that has had the Forum humming this week.
The great debate is about shoes – specifically, footwear left outside apartment doors in shared lift lobbies.
At the risk of repeating myself, I’ve come across this once before when a city slicker couple moved into a brand new apartment block where some of their immediate neighbours were of S.E. Asian origin and the others were downsizing farmers who’d come straight from the bush.
They were from very different backgrounds but one thing they had in common was the habit of taking their shoes off at the front door and leaving them there.
Our friends were outraged and used concerns about fire safety to have the offending footwear removed to the other side of the front doors.
But was it such a big deal? Our Flatchatters have hopped into the debate HERE on the Forum.
Also on the Forum:
Can we pass the “no-show” charges for failure to let fire safety inspectors into apartments on to the residents? That’s HERE.
Does the amount in the Capital Works (sinking) Fund have to match what has been estimated in the forward plan? That’s HERE.
How do we make sure the compulsorily appointed strata manager isn’t lining his mates’ pockets with inflated maintenance contracts? That’s HERE.
Are AGM decisions valid if the notice of the meeting went out late? That’s HERE.
There are plenty more questions and lots of different answers on the Flat Chat Forum. Don’t forget to ‘favourite’ or ‘subscribe’ to the topics you are interested in, to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
A former neighbour liked to toss their full rubbish bags outside their door – on the basis that the content was too unsavoury to be stored within the unit until they could muster the effort to take the bags down to the bins. My approach was to knock and politely ask them if they had forgotten about the bags – only to be told by the large male within that they were bags full of baby nappies and I couldn’t expect them to keep them within the unit. It did get unpleasant with me saying that if they were bags of soiled nappies, they were effectively saying it was not good enough for them to be kept within the unit for them to smell, but it was okay for every other resident passing that doorway to be exposed to the offending bags. Same goes for shoes; if they stink or are considered unclean, keep them within the unit or set up an airing place on your balcony – some former cultural norms have to be forgone when it comes to strata living, for the sake of fairness for others.
This is now being discussed in the Flat Chat Forum
I had neighbours – 100% Aussie urban background- who liked to leave their shoes outside their unit door, probably for the rest of us to enjoy the sight they themselves could not stand. Otherwise they would have taken those shoes inside their unit. My objections are the sight and the hygiene of it (what next, dirty washing? rubbish on the way to the outside bins?) and the general fact that if these people should use common property for their own benefit (keeping their dirty shoes away from their presumably pristine unit? why else would you store shoes outside?), how about the rest of the residents? Should we store some of our personal items on the landing as well?
A resident used to spray the shoes with water to discourage the practice.