Residents living in a social housing block are calling for authorities to intervene after residents of one unit turned the property into a rubbish dump.
Unit 4 at the Herring Road block in Marsfield, in Sydney’s north-west, is inundated with so much rubbish that piles of miscellaneous items and rubbish have now spilled onto the front garden.
Residents living in neighboring units say the house has been in its shocking state for about three months, with some now having their own apartments ravaged by cockroaches and flies.
Neighbors told Daily Mail Australia that two men and a woman had been living in the home since December – but they were not the named tenants.
Unit 4 at the Herring Road block in Marsfield in Sydney’s North West is flooded with rubbish and rubbish
Various items are seen spread out in front of the unit when Daily Mail Australia visited on Thursday
Residents of neighboring units have expressed their disgust at the condition of the unit
The debris littered the common walkway along the front of the blocks as well as the common porch at the back of the units.
Among the pile of junk were prams, jackets, a rope, children’s toys, boxes, buckets, a fan and garbage bags.
The front door had the words ‘thief’ and ‘junky’ engraved on it.
A neighbour, who chose not to be identified, said they were told by housing provider Link Wentworth, who owns the block of flats, that the mess should be cleaned up by last Monday.
“Every morning when you go out, the trash is bigger,” he said.
‘They shouldn’t even be here, it’s a nightmare.’
Another neighbor who lives directly next to Unit 4, Shahram Poursoltan said the home had been in its condition for months
The residents have been forced to come to terms with the shocking state of the social housing block
The man said the trio inside Unit 4 were rarely seen, but they often woke him up at night and removed several items from their home.
He collects groceries for his elderly neighbor and said the mess was a safety hazard for her.
‘The back has been cleaned up a bit – but if there’s a fire, who’s going to help her out, and what if I wasn’t here?’ he said.
The man said he referred to Link Wentworth as “the missing link” because he claimed they did not respond to clutter accordingly.
“I am absolutely disgusted by the waste of taxpayers’ money,” he said.
‘A man in another unit told me he wakes up in the middle of the night with cockroaches crawling on him.
Several bicycles were seen chained to the back of the unit
The words ‘thief’ and ‘junky’ were seen engraved in the front door
“It’s not nice to live here. A group of guys drove by and abused me from the car because they saw the trash and thought it was me.
‘It is embarrassing.’
The units are reportedly intended to have only one person living inside, neighbors claimed.
The waste can easily be seen from Herring Road, with the block of units just a five-minute drive away from the posh Macquarie Shopping Centre.
Another neighbor who lives directly next to Unit 4, Shahram Poursoltan, suspects that those in there may have mental health issues.
Sir. Poursoltan, who is not originally from Australia, has lived on the block for two years and tries to grow his own fruit and vegetable patch despite the constant mess that invades his home.
“They drink and smoke a lot,” he said. ‘They are friendly, but all Australians are friendly.’
The neighbor across the street, who moved in around the same time as those in Unit 4, said the trio had promised to clean up the mess.
“But they never do,” he said. ‘I can’t enjoy sitting outside anymore, I’ve got cockroaches and flies now.’
2GB’s Ben Fordham said there were more than 2,400 vacant public houses right now across NSW.
The waste can be seen from the street
“Some of these are empty for a reason because there are plans to raze them and build new ones, but for the rest we have to get people in as tenants,” he said Thursday.
Fordham described the unit at Marsfield as a ‘chocker’ that was surrounded by a ‘great wall of rubbish’.
“We need to move people off the waiting list and into a home,” he said.
‘Then get the squatters out and get the cleaners in.’
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Link Wentworth for comment.
The average waiting time for those on the social housing waiting list is 25 months, while those on the priority list still have to wait three months, according to the NSW Government’s Department of Communities and Justice.
As of January this year, there are 57,000 people in NSW on the social housing waiting list, with 8,500 of them listed as priority.