This week’s podcast takes a look at an area of strata life where strata managers could be breaking the law … because apartment-owning clients want them to.
We’re talking about email addresses which, if they are part of your strata scheme’s records, should be available for inspection to all owners.
But many owners – and a fair few tenants – don’t want their email addresses to be available to their neighbours or other owners.
Why? Is it a case of simply not wanting to know what’s going on, so we don’t have to make difficult choices?
Block nuisances
Is it about not being hassled by the obsessive serial emailers who just won’t let up once they get their teeth into a topic?
As JimmyT says, it’s very easy to block nuisance email addresses. So is this more about strata committees not wanting anyone but themselves to be able to contact owners en masse, in case an alternative view of issues is too widely canvassed?
By the way, when your strata manager or secretary cites privacy laws as a reason for not passing on strata information, there’s a 99 per cent chance they are talking through a hole on their strata hat.
Ask them which laws they mean, specifically, and how they are supposed to be applied and then point them at these notes from our friends Lookup Strata and Amanda Farmer.
Radio posers
Then we move on to last week’s session with James Valentine on ABC 702’s Afternoons.
Generously, James opened the session with a clip from our Hyperbole Towers podcom then we got down to the serious business of listeners’ calls.
First up was one about who pays when a council-owned tree’s roots invade a strata schemes drainpipes? The answer is not as simple as you might think.
Then there’s the scheme where a general meeting agreed to spend money on much-needed and long overdue repairs, only for 6 of the 30 owners to demand that the work be halted because they don’t agree with it.
There’s the woman who’s 30-year-old flat is badly affected by mould and the strata committee says it’s not their problem. Is it? And what can they do if it is?
Finally there’s the mum whose strata committee won’t let her put a safety cushion on common property so her daughter can practice gymnastics. However, the majority of owners are in favour – what should she do?
Hey Martha!
In this week’s Hey Marthas, Jimmy highlights the good news for Victorian strata owners where a two-year extension has been granted for claims against builders who installed combustible cladding.
Plus there’s some relief for locked-down residents with apartment renovators told they can only work if the whole block is empty, not just their apartment.
And Sue explains why she used to hit her legs with a badminton racquet until they bled. Not as weird as it sounds!
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