Dear larchibald
This is exactly what has happened to my husband and I. We are almost eight years with leaks and mould and it has destroyed us emotionally, physically and financially. We are still leaking with mould and buckets filling up after four sets of orders from the tribunal. Millions of dollars have been wasted on lawyers and experts and works that have now failed. Works supervised by committee members who had no qualifications. We too are worse off than when we started even though we won every case.
We now have a compulsory manager and there is a dim light at the end of the long long tunnel. The Tribunal did not grant us the compulsory manager, we had tried three times to get one. The tribunal ignored our discomfort, our safety, the devaluing of our home and the fact that our building became a war zone, that the costs were escalating and that the OC had shown no real motivation to maintain the building to proper standards. We ended up with a bit of luck and a long story achieving our compulsory manager through a settlement agreement after our building went broke.
There are so many suffering individual owners out there. As individuals we have no political power and no one really cares. We do need to join together to lobby the government, OCN and the tribunal for changes in the protection of the individual owner in Strata. This of course won’t happen in my life time, there are no ‘votes’ in the individual owner. Of course you have your hands full with ill health and we are broken as well so where can one find the strength to keep on fighting? There needs to be an ‘advocate’ appointed for individuals in Strata, as strata is a vote system and fraud on the minority is rife when whole buildings gang up against spending money to maintain CP. The Commissioner has had his hands full with developers and only speaks to strata committees so you can’t get help from him either. I tried.
In this City of Sydney it is a disgrace innocent people paying taxes and levies and stamp duty live in unhealthy conditions for decades.
I truly believe that if people are experiencing leaks the works should be done immediately to Australian standards, not almost a decade later. Currently after orders are handed down partial lip service works are done by OC’s in order to appease the tribunal and win cases and avoid a compulsory manager. The lawyers know all the tricks to sway members.
If there is an argument over who is responsible for works, this argument can take place any way, but the works get done first, independently scoped and costed. When the OC is refusing to do works it is obvious they will not do the works properly and they have no fear of consequence or incentive to do so. There should be no “stays ” when it comes to water ingress and safety. Time extensions and stays are handed out like lollies at a pantomime in the tribunal. If an OC refuses to do the works then they should also lose the right to scope the works and choose trades as they generally do not act in good faith. Committees have too much power when it comes to major defects.
Owners should be able to withhold their levies for the areas of their homes which are deemed wet.
We are about to start the works for third time, all of the previous shoddy works have to be removed and there is 1.4 millions dollars of works to be redone apart from the wasted money on legals and previous works.
The tribunal does not self investigate, even if you want to make a complaint that complaint goes directly to the member who is hearing your case not an independent party.
You are welcome to contact us privately if you want to know how we managed to finally get a compulsory manager.
I wish you strength and resolution.
Whoopi
- This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by .