Beating the drum for strata votes

This week we offer you a podcast with all the bells and whistles – more accurately, it’s drums and gongs, as we take a brief detour to listen in on the community group that hilariously drowned out Sue’s latest talk on her books. On more serious issues, this week’s Podcast covers three contentious areas of apartment living and the first two concern apartment blocks that have been rendered uninhabitable – although for very different reasons. First up, we look at a block in Queensland which has suffered terminal damage from floods in the past few years but owners can’t access funds available through a buy-back scheme because of archaic Body Corporate laws. Then we look at the pre-NSW election political bidding war surrounding the Mascot Towers building in Sydney, in which Labor is offering to provide loans and guarantees to fix the apartments while the Liberals, slamming that plan, have launched an inquiry into what is needed to fix the block. Are the two plans mutually exclusive? We don’t think so. In fact, we’re calling for a radical approach that would achieve the best possible fix in the shortest possible time. Or will it all be forgotten as soon as the last vote is counted? And finally we plug into another pre-election sales pitch – this time to get strata residents easier access to electric vehicle charging … and why some apartment blocks just don’t want to know. And Jimmy's environmentally responsible reason for not buying an electric car even though he really wants one. That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap. ____________________________________________________ Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia. Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website. Send comments and questions to [email protected]. Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website. Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai. Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.