Mascot Towers owners each face up to $14k a month repair bill

Just when Mascot Towers owners thought it couldn’t get any worse. They will now be slugged up to $14,000 each a month for nine months to repair the crippled building. FIND OUT WHY

• 25-storey tower site shut down over certification issues
• Mascot Towers residents to receive extended emergency package

Owners at Mascot Towers, which was evacuated in June over serious structural defects, face bills of up to $14,000 a month to pay for repairs to the blighted high rise.

From October 1, owners at the apartment buildings in Mascot, will start to pay for the first round of remediation works to fix the defects, after they were urgently evacuated from the building in June.

Now, a group of owners has told The Daily Telegraph about how their lives have been plunged into chaos while they grapple with the fallout from the crisis.

The building was emptied on the orders of emergency services on a cold winter night in June, with some residents having five minutes to grab belongings, only to be left outside on the pavement clutching their children.

Owners are facing an uncertain future, huge bills, possible bankruptcy — and the dashing of their dreams for the future. And next month they will have to start paying massive monthly bills — in addition to mortgages and strata fees — for remediation works to fix the defects that led to them being out on the street. Some owners will have to find up to $14,000 a month for nine months, depending on the size of their apartment.

Residents at Mascot Towers face huge repair bills - leaving them uncertain where they will find the money to pay.

Now infamous, Mascot Towers, along with Opal Tower at Sydney Olympic Park, have become synonymous with all the ills plaguing the NSW building industry after decades of deregulation by successive governments and a failure by our elected representatives to act on the warnings given in reports they themselves have commissioned.

At Mascot Towers, residents were ordered out when emergency services feared for the building’s integrity. Amid gut-wrenching warnings that it might collapse, panicked residents grabbed a few things, threw them into bags and fled, some under the watchful eye of police sent to empty the building.

Jimmy Ye, 34, and his wife, Brenda, had a few minutes to grab what they needed for them and their then three month old daughter, Charlotte.

“It was so quick we didn’t even have time to take her bassinet. She slept in a suitcase at my parents’ house that night,” he said.

“Brenda is very stressed, this is our first baby, we’re living in a small one bedroom apartment when we thought we had a home to bring up our family in. But now we just do not know what will happen,” he said.

For Kasumi Kitano and her husband, Thomas Deakin, their decision to buy at Mascot Towers in 2009 was a dream come true. The apartment was light-filled and comfortable and the perfect place to raise a family. But now, they are stressed and with no certainty in their lives, unable to plan, unable to sell their home and living in temporary accommodation, sharing a bed with their three year-old, James.

Upset and desperate residents of Mascot Towers, Kasumi Kitano with her husband Thomas Deakin and Angel Chen, outside their building in Mascot. Picture:Justin Lloyd

The couple had worked hard to buy their home outright, saving every penny they could to pay off their mortgage and to start their family. They decided Kasumi would be a stay-at-home mum and spend James’ first, precious years with him.

That idyll is now gone. Kasumi has had to return to work, put their son in full-time childcare and the couple will have to pay $8,300 a month for remediation works, in addition to strata levies of around $2,000 a quarter — and childcare fees.

Quietly-spoken and petite, Kasumi blinks back tears as she describes the turn their lives have taken. She was getting James ready for bed when the couple received an email saying there was a problem with the building and, while they didn’t need to move out, they needed to remove their car from the basement. They took it to a friend’s house but by the time the returned, the advice had changed. They found themselves on the pavement with a few clothes, a tired and crying child, throwing themselves on the mercy of friends for a roof over their heads.

“When we came back, the police wouldn’t let us back in. We were cold, it was winter and we had nothing. I was very upset,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Thomas adds: “We begged them to let us back in — they were just doing their jobs. We only had the clothes we stood up in. We were eventually let in and had a few minutes to grab a few things.

NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler told the Building Standards inquiry the Mascot Towers builder didn’t now how to read construction plans.

“James was tired and confused and crying.”

Kasumi adds: “We thought we had a home. I wasn’t working full time so I could look after my son. Now I have no choice, I’ve had to find a full time job. I feel very stressed and sad. I wanted to spend those early years with James — it’s a precious time and I wanted to put my full energy into him. ”

They have been living in a one bedroom serviced apartment since the end of June, living in fear of the bills that are to come. No bank will lend them money as their biggest asset is blighted — and because a bank has turned them down, the refusal counts against their credit rating.

“It gives me a headache every day,” Kasumi says. “I had a home and now I have nothing.”

For Angel Chen, 34, who bought a two-bedroom apartment in 2014, the crisis had meant they have had to put their plans for a family on hold. She was in shock when she took a call from a friend telling her she had to evacuate and anger has given way to a terrifed resignation.

“We had wanted a family, but we can’t do that now. We don’t know if we will be able to afford it,” she says. “We have no idea what the future will bring.”

Four of the five companies involved in building Mascot Towers have shut down — although many of the directors and shareholders continue to be involved in a range of projects in Sydney — and cannot be pursued for remedy.

In the parliamentary inquiry into building standards, the building commissioner David Chandler said Mascot Towers was “poorly built” and the engineering design “poor”.

“I’m quite certain that the builder didn’t know how to read any construction plans, because the faults that are in that building are simply someone who didn’t pay any attention to them,” he said.

“The control joints and cracking and stuff that’s in there is fixable, but it’s going to take a lot of work to fix.

“So there’s a builder there that was operating that really shouldn’t have been in the space doing it, they didn’t have the capability, (and) they certainly didn’t know how to read a construction drawing.”

For now residents’ accommodation is funded by the state government, but they do not know how long that will last.

“We really appreciate the help the government has given us’” Angel says. “But it’s not my home.”

Originally published as Mascot Towers owners each face up to $14k a month repair bill