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The residents of Mascot Towers will see their rental assistance stretch into 2023 under an expansion of the support offered for the building’s beleaguered inhabitants.
An assistance package from the NSW government for those who currently own and once lived in Sydney’s Mascot Towers has been extended through 30 June 2023, just as the funding was set to wrap up at the end of this month.
The deadline had previously been pushed back to 30 June 2022, from 31 March 2022. NSW Fair Trading Minister Eleni Petinos commented at that time that it would be the final extension of the program.
This latest extension comes just as the residents reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement with Aland Developments, the developer of the neighbouring building, which they allege caused catastrophic damage to their homes.
All residents were ordered to evacuate the 132-unit building on 14 June 2019, after engineers discovered alarming cracks in the basement, raising concerns of major structural defects.
The government’s support package covers $220 per night for owners of a one-bedroom apartment, $300 per night for a two-bedroom apartment, and 400 per night for a three-bedroom apartment.
To apply for the compensation, residents must show proof of the accommodation costs they have incurred, as well as documentation that the apartment is the place where they normally reside.
The assistance package is available to both tenants and owner-occupiers who lived at Mascot Towers up until they were forced to evacuate.
Tenants can obtain the assistance, provided they continue to repay their normal rent to their landlord. If they receive rent relief from the landlord, that offset is deducted from the tenant’s nightly government package.
Owner-occupiers, meanwhile, are eligible for assistance but must agree to repay it if they later receive compensation from insurance or some other means. It is unclear at this stage how the settlement with Aland Developments will affect the payments.
Following the recent litigation, the owners’ corporation for the building has announced that it is moving to dissolve the strata scheme so that the building might be sold as a development site.
The troubled history of Mascot Towers, alongside a similar set of circumstances that befell the residents of western Sydney’s Opal Tower, has been described as a “wake-up call” for Australian building regulators and the construction industry at large, particularly following the tragic collapse of Champlain Towers South in Miami in June 2021, which resulted in the deaths of 98 residents.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
