Ben and Dino’s home was ‘pristine’. Then the ceiling tore apart from the wall

When Ben Pierpoint and Dino Dimitriadis moved into a refurbished semi-detached house next to an old warehouse in Marrickville two years ago, the renters thought the picture-perfect home was “pristine”.

One year in, small hairline cracks emerged on the once-unblemished walls, which they assumed was just normal wear and tear. But overnight on July 22 this year, Pierpoint’s wall completely tore away from the ceiling, creating a massive crack as the house sank by six centimetres.

“I looked up at the roof in my bedroom, and there was quite a significant gap from where the wall disconnected from the ceiling,” Pierpoint said.

The housemates informed their landlord, and an engineer’s assessment concluded that the tilted house was no longer safe to live in.

Pierpoint was in a routine work meeting the next day when Dimitriadis called and said they had fewer than 24 hours to pack their belongings and evacuate.

“I’ve lived in lots of shit Sydney share-houses when I was younger – I didn’t really care. But nothing like this,” he said.

“As a renter, it takes away your sense of security – even if you’re living in a fine place, what’s going to happen if something unexpected happens? It made us super-vulnerable in a way that we just weren’t before.”

Next door is a construction site. A run-down warehouse on the site was demolished, and a 10-metre deep hole has been dug for a basement car park. A four-storey motel with a cafe and restaurant will emerge.

The pair questioned whether the excavation had caused a seepage failure, meaning the ground on their side of the building’s sheet piles – which provide support and water resistance – had sunk, causing their walls to detach from the ceilings.

Compensation claims were lodged with the owner’s insurance company, but they were refused on the basis that the gaping cracks were just normal wear and tear.

Pierpoint said the “traumatic” ordeal had forced them to spend thousands of dollars on removalists, storage units and temporary accommodation, and made them take time off work. Both are couch-surfing with friends and have no idea where they could end up next week.

The housemates reached out to their landlord, NSW Fair Trading, the Inner West Council and the Building Commission, but they were told the same thing each time: that nobody had any legal responsibility to support or financially compensate them.

“The Residential Tenancies Act governs the relationship between landlords and tenants. It does not cover relationships with third parties,” a NSW Fair Trading spokesperson said in a statement to this masthead.

The home owner declined to speak to the Herald. The developer next door declined to answer this masthead’s questions.

Pierpoint and Dimitriadis are frustrated at the lack of a clear compensation pathway for evicted tenants and said their situation highlights an obvious gap in tenancy laws.

Under NSW’s Residential Tenancies Act, landlords have a legal duty to provide a safe home. However, if it becomes uninhabitable and unsafe to live in, they can terminate the lease with immediate notice.

This means renters such as Pierpoint and Dimitriadis are left bearing the financial burden. They want to be fairly compensated, but their only options involve pursuing a costly and complex legal fight against either their landlord or a third party who may have been responsible for the damages.

Another possible pathway is for them to file a dispute at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), which is often a time-consuming and formal process with steep fees.

Tenants Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said the costs of pursuing legal action often outstrips the actual amount people seek to be compensated.

“Just a filing fee alone could start at $500, and that’s before you hire a solicitor – there might be many people who wouldn’t pursue it because of the high costs and risk of not being successful,” he said.

Pierpoint and Dimitriadis said situations such as their own would only “get worse and worse, unless something changes”.

They have urged the government to amend tenancy laws so that renters have a safety net if they are evicted for safety reasons in situations out of their control.

“Or, forcing the landlord’s insurance to cover those costs – but we all know insurance companies will do anything to not have to pay anything,” Pierpoint said.

“I’ll work it out – I’m just taking it day by day. If we didn’t have the financial means to move that quickly, our stuff would just be on the street. If we didn’t have community and friends around us, we would actually be homeless.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.