Seventy-seven melbourne apartment owners couldn’t have imagined that the innocuous ping of a new email landing in their inboxes would herald the disaster that would leave many of them on the brink of financial ruin.
“IMPORTANT”, said the email – sent by their strata firm in March 2020 – which in hindsight was not an exaggeration.
Lot owners located in the inner suburb of West Footscray learned that combustible cladding had been installed in their four-storey building complex, which meant a barbecue or cigarette on the balcony could turn the block into a deadly inferno. When the block was built, this type of cladding was not illegal.
This turned out to be the first of many serious defects which came to light in the years after residents moved into the block from 2014.
Several independent building reports found the builder, Shangri-La Construction, had carried out inadequate waterproofing, causing some residents to experience waterfalls in their lounge rooms, resulting in rampant black mould and rendering some properties too dangerous to live in.
Residents had begun a lawsuit against Shangri-La Construction when the building company went into liquidation at the end of March.
This has left apartment owners with no way to…
