Residents living in a social housing block are pleading with 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 northwest, is inundated with so much rubbish that piles of miscellaneous items and rubbish have now ended up on the front lawn.
The residents of the neighboring properties say the house has been in a shocking state for about three months. Some now have their own apartments infested with cockroaches and flies.
Neighbors told Daily Mail Australia that two men and a woman had been living in the house since December, but were not the named tenants.
Unit 4 in the Herring Road block, in Marsfield, northwest Sydney, is overrun with rubbish and rubbish
During Daily Mail Australia’s visit on Thursday, several items were seen at the front of the unit
Residents of neighboring units have expressed disgust at the condition of the unit
The waste left the communal walkway along the front of the blocks and the shared verandah at the back of the units cluttered.
Among the pile of rubbish were strollers, coats, a rope, children’s toys, boxes, buckets, a fan and garbage bags.
The words ‘thief’ and ‘junky’ were engraved on the front door.
One neighbour, who chose not to be identified, said social housing provider Link Wentworth, owner of the block of apartments, told them the mess should have been cleared by last Monday.
“Every morning you walk outside, the trash is bigger,” he said.
“They shouldn’t even be here, it’s a nightmare.”
Another neighbor who lives right next to Unit 4, Shahram Poursoltan, said the house had been in the state for months
Residents have been forced to put up with the shocking state of the social housing block
The man said the trio in Unit 4 were rarely seen, but they would often wake him up at night and take more items from their home.
He picks up groceries for his elderly neighbor and said the mess was a safety hazard for her.
“It’s cleared up a bit at the back, but if there’s a fire, who’s going to help her and what if I wasn’t there?” he said.
The man said he called Link Wentworth “the missing Link” because he claimed they weren’t responding to the mess accordingly.
“I am absolutely disgusted by the waste of taxpayer money,” he said.
‘A man from another department told me that he wakes up in the middle of the night with cockroaches crawling over him.
Several bicycles were seen chained to the rear of the unit
The words ‘thief’ and ‘junky’ were engraved on 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’s humiliating.”
The units are believed to be intended for only one person to live inside, the neighbors claimed.
The waste is easily visible from Herring Road, while the block of apartments is just a five-minute drive from the chic Macquarie Shopping Centre.
Another neighbor who lives right next to Unit 4, Shahram Poursoltan, suspected that the people inside might have mental health problems.
Mr Poursoltan, who is not originally from Australia, has lived on the block for two years and is trying to grow his own fruit and vegetable patch, despite the constant mess in his house.
“They drink and smoke a lot,” he said. “They’re friendly, but all Australians are friendly.”
The neighbor on the other side, who moved in around the same time as Unit 4’s, said the trio had promised to clean up the mess.
“But they never do,” he said. ‘I can no longer enjoy sitting outside, I now have cockroaches and flies.’
2GB’s Ben Fordham said there are currently more than 2,400 vacant cafes in NSW.
The waste can be seen from the street
“Some of these are empty for a reason, because there are plans to bulldoze them and build new ones, but for the rest we need to bring people in as tenants,” he said Thursday.
Fordham described the Marsfield unit as a “shocker” surrounded by a “great wall of trash.”
“We need to get people off the waiting list and into housing,” he said.
“So get the squatters out and bring in the cleaners.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Link Wentworth for comment.
The average wait for those on the social housing waiting list is 25 months, while those on the priority list still face a three-month wait, 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 listed as priorities.