‘Worst house’ in City battle

Andrew Mathieson
A rat-infested vacant house allegedly used for drug dealing is at the centre of a council battle for control of dilapidated properties around Geelong.
City Hall has demanded that Victorian Government authorities hand over powers to seize the house, which councillors have labelled one of Geelong’s most neglected homes.
They said the neglect was so bad that the last tenant’s final meal was still sitting decomposed on a table inside the house five years later.
Ward councillor Stretch Kontelj said the property’s Melbourne owner had refused to take responsibility since the tenant deserted the Herne Hill house.
Neighbours had been complaining for years but the City had hit a wall trying to achieve a “reasonable solution” with the owner.
“The owner is evasive and hasn’t at all been responsive to council requests to tidy up, so various notices have been served over the years to secure the property but the notices have been ignored.”
Cr Kontelj regarded the property as one of Geelong’ most dilapidated residences and the worst he had seen in a decade on council.
Police had told him that after they arrested the last occupant over unpaid rent the house had become an unoccupied “drug den”.
“I’m concerned about the health and safety issues, the criminal activity that’s going on and the vermin that runs from the property, which is about to run out of control,” Cr Kontelj said.
“It’s decaying, it’s overgrown with bushes and trees and it’s falling into complete rack and ruin.
“We’re also concerned it could be set alight and danger other homes in the neighbourhood.”
Cr Kontelj said the Government should allow the City to compulsorily acquire similar abandoned and dilapidated properties.
The City could then sell the homes to help ease Geelong’s housing shortage, he said.
Councillors were lobbying Municipal Association of Victoria to seek council powers to claim abandoned buildings on private property.
Cr Barbara Abley said by-law officers had found examples of vermin infestation and other factors that “may prove unsafe for the public”.
“We’ve hit a brick wall because there is not very much we can do at all,” she said.
“At the moment, we don’t have the legal tools to do it.
“It’s not that we haven’t tried – we have tried every avenue.”