Resident of Erksineville's Star Printery ordered to leave by her doctor

A breast cancer patient living in an apartment building at the centre of a NSW Supreme Court battle over alleged defects has been ordered by her doctor to get out of the block because of the risk to her health.

Many of the apartments in the troubled Star Printery in Erskineville have damp and mould problems and an oncologist is worried that mould spores could prove deadly for Lyn Pearce as she recovers from surgery.

“It’s just devastating,” says Ms Pearce, 58, who’s staying with her son in the six-year-old building. “My oncologist saw the pictures of the apartment with its mould, and said he didn’t want me living there and that I should move out for the sake of my health.

“But it’s simply not as easy as that. Where can I go? This is my home. I’m having further surgery in January but I don’t know what to do.”

The developer of the building, DeiCorp Construction Pty Ltd, is fighting the owners’ case in court, saying that the million-dollar defects are the fault of the residents. The company has claimed that problems have been caused by a lack of maintenance and recently changed its name to the company’s ACN number.

But when DeiCorp spokeswoman Jessica Rippon, the company’s commercial and legal consultant, was told about Ms Pearce’s dilemma and the letter from Professor of cancer medicine Martin Tattersall urging her to leave “because of the risk of infection from the environment”, she said, “I have no comment. No comment.”

DeiCorp is the developer which also has the contract to rebuild Redfern’s Aboriginal heartland the Block, and different offshoots of the company with similar names and the same directors are developing other residential projects throughout Sydney.

Meanwhile, the angry apartment-owners at the Star Printery are ramping up their campaign to “name and shame” the developer, writing to various members of the NSW Parliament urging them to investigate.

The owners of the four-level 46-apartment block have accused the developer-builder of work that’s left decking in communal areas subsiding and dangerous to walk across with rotting joists, and damp problems throughout the apartments with holes in ceilings.

Airline pilot David Mugford says he was away from home when his partner noticed a huge damp patch spreading across the ceiling. “That turned into the entire kitchen ceiling,” he says. “And then the whole ceiling came down in the middle of the night.

“It sounds very dramatic, but it’s a problem that almost every single apartment is experiencing at the moment as the bathtubs haven’t been put in properly and the recess fills up over time with water and it has to find a way out. In my case, its way out was when the ceiling caved in.”

Ms Rippon previously said that problems with the decking were a result of residents blocking the drains. An independent expert report commissioned by the owners stated that part of the problem was that there was little, or no, drainage installed originally.  

In addition, Ms Rippon said the company name change was a standard accountancy procedure for a company that hadn’t been active for a while, even though the same company was awarded the contract to build, in partnership with the Aboriginal Housing Company (AHC), the $70 million Pemulwuy Project on 10,000 sq m of land in Redfern. Work is expected to start in February 2016. 

No one else from DeiCorp was available for comment.

Mr Mugford, 38, said he’d been forced himself to tear off the skirting board around his walls after the water seeping in left hundreds of insects crawling out of the space. “They were tiny black flies and spiders, the kind of creatures who love to live in rotting, damp timbers,” he said.

“It’s awful that the developers seem to be able to continue to work on other projects with impunity when they’ve left our building in such a mess.”

DeiCorp is contesting the claims and the case will return to court in March next year.

Meanwhile, Ms Pearce has moved from her bedroom to another room she says is marginally less affected by damp problems. “I worry about my health but also about kids who live in similar conditions in the building,” she said. “It’s heart-breaking.”

Since the publication of this article, developer Deicorp has settled the legal action for a confidential sum, believed to be $500,000. A series of special levies from owners has been helping fund the rest of the defect rectification work which one resident, not bound by any confidentiality contract, says will end up at around $1.3 million more.