Is this Findon complex, just off Grange Rd South Australia’s worst housing block?

Black mould, syringes and decay. A apocalyptic looking housing block could be mistaken for a 1970s New York slum, but it is in fact a 2025 South Australia ‘ghetto’. See the pictures here.

People with disabilities and parents living with young children at a western suburbs housing block are calling on the state government to get them out immediately of what they call a violent, drug-riddled ghetto.

A warning in fluorescent orange on the wall next to the entrance to one of the buildings in the Findon complex, just off Grange Rd, immediately gives visitors a sense of the trouble within.

“Come back with a warrent (sic),” it says.

Anyone approaching the four-building complex might well think that it is an abandoned site good only for demolition, such is its state of decay.

The Findon housing block is considered by many to be worst public housing block in the state.

One of the three-storey buildings is completely boarded up, though Trust works have started to make it habitable again.

Another of the buildings which is tenanted smells of tobacco and dirt. It is covered in litter, debris and dried rat faeces.

Outside, there’s a burnt-out skip bin and a pile of about 30 used syringes.

It is home to at least a dozen people, some of whom have disabilities. Some are families with young children.

Across the pathway in another of the unit blocks, The Advertiser knocks on the door of a tenant called Lisa.

She tells us that she feels like she is living in a prison with no security guards.

Lisa says fights and overdoses happen regularly.

She says drug dealers live in the complex and warring groups are divided along racial lines. She feels so unsafe that she only leaves her black-mould-riddled unit twice a day to take her daughter, 7, who has autism, to school and to pick her up.

Outside there’s a burnt-out skip bin and a pile of about 30 used syringes.

Major damage witnessed inside the housing block.

The day The Advertiser visited, she had barricaded her door and was too scared to come out because someone had been trying to kick down it down.

“This is not a place for children or women,” she said.

This is Lisa’s first time living in public housing. She travelled overseas for a little while and rented privately for years, but when her landlord sold the property she was not able to secure another home because rents had skyrocketed.

“The other week I had to explain to my 7-year-old daughter, who had woken up from all the noise outside, why all police and ambulance were carrying a body outside her window at night. I just said the man was sick. How do I tell her it was a drug overdose?” she said.

Walking across a garden area between buildings, The Advertiser found at least 30 used syringes in a small plastic tab, with more scattered on the ground.

Heading up broken stairs, over litter and bloodied swabs, to the first floor of another building, The Advertiser knocked on another door.

A mother who opens it says this is surely “Adelaide’s worst housing block”.

She said one of her neighbours was usually very quiet, but every time the skip bin outside filled up, he came out in the middle of the night and set it on fire.

Graffiti demanding to come back “with a warrant.”

She said the communal laundry was permanently closed because every time a washing machines was installed it was stolen the next day.

And the laundry too kept getting set on fire, she added.

On the second floor of the same building lives a gregarious, petite woman with an intellectual disability. Her companion is her little dog she calls Princess.

She is finally getting moved out of the units after her support workers, over the course of a year, repeatedly wrote letters and sent photos of the state of the complex to the SA Housing Trust saying it was unfit for habitation.

She said it had also been a tough place to live over all of her 11 years there. But what made it completely unbearable over the past six months was a building-wide cockroach infestation, which made it impossible to cook in her otherwise spotless unit.

On a recent 36C day, she had no running water for more than 24 hours.

She opened her kitchen cupboards so The Advertiser could see what she deals with everyt day – cockroaches of all shapes and sizes scattering in every direction.

Syringes in a garden at Findon.

Rubbish scattered over the ground. Picture: Tim Joy

The same happens for every other cupboard and draw she opens. They are in the oven too, and even inside her fridge.

“I’ll have to throw out the fridge. I can’t cook here. I’ve been living off sandwiches,” she said.

Asked about moving to her new Trust unit in Edwardstown, she cried and said: “I can finally go outside and walk Princess.”

She said Trust staff can be helpful “but often they just don’t listen” and themselves didn’t feel safe.

“My SAHT worker last said to me she wouldn’t come out here any more unless she had police with her,” she said.

David Pearson, the CEO of Australian Alliance to End Homelessness, said people in social housing often needed much greater support than they were getting.

The Trust is redeveloping some of the complex, which residents welcome, though it has caused problems too.

Some say water has been turned off for up to three days at a time, during working hours, with no warning.

“I had to freshen up my little girl with baby wipes cause I couldn’t give her a shower before school for three days in a row,” Lisa said.

SA Housing Trust spokesman/woman said.

Originally published as Is this Findon complex, just off Grange Rd South Australia’s worst housing block?