Instead of being invisible, it's time for unit buyers to become front and centre in the building industry.

When I first read about the Opal Towers disaster on Christmas Day back in 2018, I was devasted for those owners. Along with that concern came an underlying trepidation that we were only just witnessing the beginning of a dreadful saga, highlighting a systemic problem in the building industry.

Those fears came true.

Who could forgot the shocking images of exposed panelling, massive cracks and the dramatic footage of residents being evacuated from the building and scrambling to put important belonging into cars, not knowing when it would be safe to return home, or if indeed they would be able to?

It’s not a situation you thought you would ever see in Australia. And yet in the proceeding 12 months we have seen more evacuations of buildings out at Mascot and Zetland, and know for certain that there are others which we have not been told about. Each one of these buildings provides a perfect example of just how skewed this industry has become in favour of cashing up developers at the expense of residents and owners.

Mascot Tower, as I mentioned, is another appalling situation that has left hundreds of residents in limbo. In fact, they are still yet to be able to return to their homes after being evacuated in June 2019 due to safety concerns arising from cracking in the building.

This has turned into a situation where there is a building full of owners facing bankruptcy, and a repair bill of $50 million which is rivalling the construction one.  

Owners in Mascot Towers are in a position where they have no insurer or builder or developer to help carry to burden of the crisis.

They cannot afford to fund the special levies to remediate the building.

Apartments in the building are unsellable and because apartments in the building are unsellable banks won’t lend any more money to the owners to assist in remediation.

Can you image the stress and mental anguish some of these owners are going through?

What these three situations (and believe me there are countless more we are yet to hear about) point to is the truth that Strata consumers have been invisible to Government for generations.

The consumer is not front and centre of an off-the-plan buy, with protections only available for developers.

And it is well and truly time this changes. In fact we should go further than that.

In the case of the Mascot Towers situation, there is no safety net for consumers.  Systemic failure of the building industry to deliver the building code means Government has a public duty to bail out these people.

One ethical road out of town for all concerned is for the NSW government to purchase all lots within Mascot Tower; remediate the building and then use the building as low cost social housing.

This is a solution that solves more than one problem for the NSW Government.

After all this is just as much a mess of their own making over consecutive governments, from both sides of the political spectrum who have put too much power in the hands of developers, bungled up building insurance, failed to regulate and oversee the building industry and who have been wilfully blind to the strata consumer, who are left enormously exposed.

Instead of being invisible, it's time for unit buyers to become front and centre of government concern.