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Inside Story: This Orange unit flooded in 1999, and it's been empty ever since
August 6, 2023
By Peter Holmes
A first floor unit in the block at 124 Margaret Street, north of the Orange CBD, has sat empty for 24 years after it flooded in 1999.
It is one of two units in the rundown block owned by Sydney businessman Elie Doueihi and an Orange-based relative, who did not want to be named. Both units are empty due to water damage.
“I wouldn’t live in them, so I wouldn’t rent them to anyone,” Doueihi told The Orange News Examiner.
“Nobody believes this is happening here. Where are we - Afghanistan?”
He says the investments have cost him and his relative hundreds of thousands of dollars - in lost rent, strata fees, council rates and legal costs.
Doueihi and the relative bought the first floor unit in the early 1990s. It was rented out until 1999, when Doueihi said an accident with a hot water system in the flat above caused his unit to flood.
He says the damage was never rectified. The exact reasons for this are unclear.
Doueihi says it was not his responsibility to fix the property - including installing new carpets, and repairing window frames and lights - as it was a matter for the owners’ corporation.
“What happened, it came in through the windows and through light fittings," he said.
"Because it’s a strata problem, I’m not allowed to fix it - they wouldn’t authorise me to fix it, and a builder can’t fix it without permission from strata.”
He said he was told 24 years ago by the owners’ corporation: “Don’t worry, we’ll look after it.”
The company that looks after the building in 2023 on behalf of the owners’ corporation - Bathurst Strata Management - said it was not authorised by owners to talk to the media.
Contact was attempted unsuccessfully with another company that was believed to have looked after strata management in the past.
Bathurst Strata Management said it would pass The Orange News Examiner’s details to the owners corporation, however no contact was made.
Doueihi said he stopped paying strata levies when the repairs were not undertaken, and that the matter ended up in court. The dispute over the unit has dragged on for decades.
The upshot is that the two-bedroom property has sat idle for all that time. And the water hasn’t stopped. Doueihi and his relative say the most recent water damage was during rains about three months ago.
“Every time it rains I get water dripping from windows all over the place,” Doueihi said.
When The Orange News Examiner visited the first-floor unit with Doueihi’s relative, it was a grim portrait of domestic despair. A bath sat on the floor of the kitchen. In the living room a lounge had mushrooms growing on it. Dead mushrooms littered the floor.
“You should’ve seen it before, they were everywhere,” the co-owner says.
At its worst, the water was four inches deep, he says. He sends a photo of somebody sloshing about the unit. The kitchen is a mess. The bathroom is worse.
The watermarks on the walls remain. The carpet has been ruined, and there is damage to some of the woodwork around the window frames.
A double bed is in position in one of the bedrooms. It has been there since the first flood.
The second unit is on a different floor and is in better shape, but still not fit for inhabiting.
Again, the water damage is evident - in the ceiling, walls, window frames and carpet.
There is a hole the size of a small dinner plate under the kitchen sink where water has caused the wood to rot. Doueihi says the unit has been empty for six or seven years.
In the second unit, also a two-bedroom, carpet has been ripped up. There is water damage around window frames and stains on the concrete floor.
The relative points to where a small horseshoe bar used to be. It was stolen.
He says both units have been broken into numerous times over the years, and that there was now nothing worth taking: the oven in one is too old and bulky, and the lounge setting in the other - complete with mushrooms - is less than worthless.
The decades have taken a heavy toll on what are known to some as the Jan Gra apartments at 124 Margaret Street.
One local told The Orange News Examiner that the person who built the block - long since deceased - named it after shortened versions of his children’s names.
The block is not only run down and desperately in need of an overhaul, but also potentially unsafe.
Externally, the asphalt entrance and parking areas are home to multiple potholes.
Some are more than a metre across, and look like little craters.
Doueihi says he has seen people trip in the potholes, which have been there for years and are often full of brown water.
At the rear of the building are piles of household junk including furniture, a car door and a cabinet. Lounges appear to be positioned for gatherings.
The outside guest toilet is full of junk and completely inaccessible to anyone needing to spend a penny. Near its entrance is a used syringe.
The casing on a light at the back of the building has melted - the co-owner says it’s the result of people starting a fire.
Racks of fuse boxes are hidden behind unlocked doors. Another box of wiring has no covering at all.
Internally, the carpet on the staircases is faded and torn. There is bubbled paint on sections of the ceiling.
Another section of ceiling at the top of a stairwell has been covered over with board, but it has come away to reveal exposed screws and holes in the ceiling.
A piece of serrated metal from a sign protrudes from a wall. Windows are cracked.
The handful of what were once communal laundries are either near-empty - save for what looks like the original sink - or piled with stuff around the sink.
There are no washing machines, except for in one top floor communal laundry. The co-owner tells me it is privately owned.
…..
The Orange News Examiner recently published a story about a unit in the block at Margaret Street selling for just $95,000.
The story was about whether buying such a low-priced property was a sound investment after factoring in council fees ($1,856 annually, or $35.70 a week), strata levies ($3,332 annually, or $64.07 a week) and previous growth.
Central West to get share of $9.1 million in flood relief; MP Gee says it'll be "spread pretty thin"
The story received more than 100 comments across local Facebook pages. Some remembered their time at the Jan Gra apartments fondly. Others, not so much. Here are some of the comments, lightly edited.
“I looked at one, it has strata, sinking and normal council rates. I'd rather pay for a house.”
“I’m in unit [redacted] and it's a great place to live - nice and warm and cosy concrete walls so it’s soundproof.”
“Good luck.”
“I know a few people who lived in the units and not one had anything nice to say about the place. Sad really - I’m sure most people who live there are good people.”
“The point of those flats was [as] cheap housing for at-risk people. Where will the at-risk people live now?”
“As a previous tenant of the flats, you couldn’t pay me enough to move back in there.”
“Used to be so scared going in there to get the cricket ball back.”
“The place is riddled with mould. The place needs to be demolished and a new building put in its place for all the existing good residents. And it's not sound proof! Also I know someone who had their unit broken into and they were robbed at knifepoint!”
“Graffiti, smashed windows, torn carpet. Strata fees galore … Place is a ghetto.”
“Same block 25 years ago - $42,000.”
“$95,000 to sleep with one eye open for the whole time you live there.”
“You couldn’t pay me $95,000 to stay there.”
“When I first moved to Orange, in 1978, to work in the Orange Base Hospital, after a short stint living in the nurses quarters, I started renting a unit in this block of apartments. My flat was on the second floor and I loved living there, the block was called Jan Gra then. I moved back to Sydney for a while, and then I came back to Orange with my husband and three daughters … I worked in a couple of Aged Care homes here, and then I started working as a district nurse, and lo and behold, I had a patient who lived in the same block of units. When I saw the condition of the units, I was horrified; it was so run down and dirty … the floor coverings hadn’t been changed from when I first moved in. The stairs were filthy and the whole place stank like urine. I was quite upset actually. I think the whole place should be bulldozed and new housing built in its place.”
“I’d love to buy my old apartment! So many good memories.”
“It needs to be bulldozed.”
“If I had the $$ I would definitely buy my old apartment and rent it out to my son.”
“Lived across the road when I was very young. I'm surprised they are still there.”
“Some people have no choice, for example: foster children who get rejected from the other 35-45 rentals they applied for, and being there is better than sleeping on the street.”
“My son and his family lived in these units … people have to start their life somewhere.”
“It was one of my first units I rented and unfortunately was not the best or safest place. Although I met some pretty good people. Need not to judge somebody by their situation in life. Sometimes it's their only place to go. Give a helping hand. Somebody might need it.”
“These flats have a reputation, sure. But some lovely people do live here! They're all run down and the place could do with a revamp.”
“Not with black mould that doesn’t get treated on the pipes.”
“There's lots of work that needs to be done.”
A Heritage house on 1,838 sqm block and close to the Orange CBD sold for $810,000. Is there a catch?
“I last went there about two years ago, the place is trashed, walls kicked in, mould growing everywhere and it f*cking stinks too.”
“I was in this building 37 years ago and it’s gotten worse.”
“Last year my friend got bashed badly - stole his key and car.”
“Miserable, depressing and smelly. I thought these would be pulled down by now.”
“I lived at number 2 for a while around 19/ 18 years ago. It was a really good one back then.”
….
Elie Doueihi rues the day 30 years ago that he and his relative bought into the block at 124 Margaret Street. If he could, he'd wipe his hands of the “investment” and walk away. But he and his relative are stuck.
He said a local real estate agent told him the units would not sell without being completely renovated. That would cost them many tens of thousands of dollars. Probably more.
They are not prepared to throw more money into what has been a losing proposition, particularly as they don’t think they should have to.
Doueihi says he is a busy man and simply doesn’t have time to continually focus on the Orange units. His business interests are elsewhere. But it’s like a stone in his shoe.
He hasn’t given up hope of achieving what he sees as a fair outcome. He mentions more legal action, or possibly a visit to NCAT (NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal), a body that can make binding rulings without the need for all parties having to run expensive court cases.
…….
What is the future for 124 Margaret Street? Without comment from the owners’ corporation on how strata is spent and where it sees the block heading over the next five to 10 years, it is difficult to say.
Data shows low capital growth on units there when compared to the rest of the city, which could lessen the enthusiasm of owners to spend money on bringing the property up to spec. However the alternative is to let it just slowly fall into complete disrepair.
Accommodation at the lower end of the socio-economic scale is required all over the country, and Orange is no different.
For some 124 Margaret Street is better than the alternatives, which may include sleeping rough.
Some will argue that it is what it is, and it’s better than nothing; others will say that tenants and owners deserve better than open fuse box cabinets, crumbling ceilings, decades-old carpet, mould, a needle, potholes and scattered junk.
The Orange Residents & Ratepayers Association recently raised the matter with Orange City Council CEO David Waddell.
Waddell told The Orange News Examiner that council can only become involved if there is a clear and immediate risk to people’s health and safety, and this generally pertains to common areas of the property.
As with every other property in the city, what goes on behind the closed doors of each flat is really none of its business.
Board coming apart from a hole in the ceiling, tatty carpet, potholes in the parking areas, peeling paint, communal laundries with no washing machines, water damage, a needle on the ground - these are matters for the tenants and the owners to address via bodies such as NCAT.
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