DANGEROUSLY overcrowded flats filled with backpackers in inner Melbourne suburbs are spreading like ''cancer'', according to a fire safety inspector.   

The officer with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade's building inspection and compliance department said rogue landlords were buying two-bedroom flats in popular backpacker areas, such as St Kilda, and squeezing in up to 10 travellers at a time.

Disgruntled neighbours are then selling their flats, often to the same landlord, who crams in more backpackers. ''It's like a cancer, it just spreads throughout the building,'' the fire safety inspector said. ''We've seen whole groups of flats taken over so by the time we get a flat fire because they're overcrowded with drunken people … you've got flats with hundreds where you'd expect to find 20 people.'' 


30 properties are under investigation for acting as allegedly illegal hostels in the Glen Eira municipality alone.



Dozens of backpackers are living in four-bedroom houses in squalid conditions and being charged more than $90 a week.  Two men alleged to be running one of the hostels in Hotham Street, East St Kilda, where up to 45 people are living, were in charge of a similar property in the same street where a kitchen fire broke out in late 2009.

A firefighter who attended the scene said he was appalled to discover beds in every room except the kitchen and bathrooms of the two-storey house where power cords had been threaded through windows.   

Twenty-two backpackers were living at the address but when a council building surveyor and the MFB inspector arrived less than 12 hours later, the house had been cleared of its contents and residents.

''It [was] a life safety threat to all the people living there at the time,'' the firefighter said.

The property's owner and two managers were not investigated and fire officers believe the backpackers were simply moved to another nearby property.

They fear councils and the MFB lack the powers and resources needed to shut down highly sophisticated and well-financed operations behind some of the crooked hostels.

''I think the problem itself is a bit incessant, a bit like drugs, I don't know if you can ever get on top of it," the inspector said.

He said less-stringent building regulations applied to properties housing fewer than 12 people, making it difficult for councils to act. But he said a two-bedroom flat with 10 people was unsafe and firefighters were put at risk when entering homes that had become firetraps.   

''If it was a workplace it would be a health and safety issue," he said. "You've got overcrowding, you've got lack of sanitary facilities, all that sort of thing.''   

In the past three years the inspector has seen up to 40 flats and houses used as backpacker accommodation but said that was only a fraction of the number operating.

Comments



    If the councils and MFB do not have the right power to shut these illegal hostels down, what power does the police dept has?! They (police dept) are most likely to file a report for you and then do nothing and 10yr later when this issue spread like a virus and causing serious crime, a special task force(s) that cost 10 times more to operate will be established to counter the problem for the next 25yr! Big thumbs up to our govt.
    BC | melbourne - April 04, 2011, 8:09AM

I should also add. Having worked in the Backpacker Industry (nightwatch) down in Melbourne - the Hostels are practically like the Fairstar bugger Ship with much merriment and fornication left right and centre.
Ironically, while I worked looking after these people while they paid their $17 (then) a night in the Backpacker Hostels. I was living in a 1967 Dodge slant that I paid $167 a month to keep parked down in the old Hanger upon the Yarra River (near Heliport and Centra Hotel).
I had the biggest TV in the Southern Hemisphere (let alone in the back of my Dodge) compliments of the Crown Casino across the Yarra. I kept hygienically clean by membership with Swanston Street Baths (plus a few 'Apnea' laps) and ate out at various eat-outs.
I eventually got sacked (because the Manager was from Sydney and he hated guys from Mt Druitt and he found out via someone else) - so I just went down to the Casino and made $10,000 in two weeks.

ahhh life.

Quote:


But isn't that something YOU like ???

Its not about an increase in IMMIGRATION,
because we don't have a self-sufficient domestic population growth
(because Aussie girls are too busy working to buy chinese products, to have children.)

...its about Political Australia's INABILITY to accommodate such a large population. Dick Smith freaks at anything over 35 million, but Australia could support 200 million if needed.

If Australia doesn't increase a sense of population soon, via immigration or self-sustainability, then this country will fall into the Solarian rut of everyone becoming Hermaphrodites.

No offence - but these 'crowded' living conditions of over-flowing Backpacker Hostels and Boarding Houses is where the real sexual activity happens in this country. If we have a self-sustaining population growth ...its because of these places more than anything.

Won't matter if they all live in shoe-boxes.
180 million of them will be non-Anglo-Saxon I'm sure.