ABC News has been contacted by residents in at least three other social housing complexes in Sydney who say they've reported suspected gas leaks that have never been investigated. Tenants say there's a litany of other potentially dangerous maintenance issues which are also going unaddressed.
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00:00 Andrew Grant is no stranger to the issues raised by the Whelan Home explosion.
00:07 It was very familiar. It struck a chord with me straight away.
00:12 There's an obvious smell of gas coming from townhouses that are part of his social housing complex in Redfern,
00:18 and he says he's been noticing it for eight months.
00:21 As far as I know, no one's actually come out and had a look at it.
00:25 I have taken two representatives of Land and Housing Corporation to that property as part of a walk around,
00:33 but they weren't particularly concerned about it.
00:36 But that's not the only potentially dangerous problem going unaddressed at this complex.
00:41 The lift call button, which Andrew relies on to get to his top floor apartment,
00:45 is held together with electric tape and breaks regularly.
00:48 I get stuck on the ground floor and I can't get back into my unit,
00:53 or I get stuck in my unit and I can't get out of the building.
00:57 Andrew has muscular dystrophy and has been asking for more than two years to get it fixed.
01:02 There's also been no hot water in the building for eight days.
01:06 There are 15 units in my building, three people in wheelchairs,
01:11 a lot of people, some people in their 90s, and it's winter.
01:17 The roof is finally being fixed after years of complaints.
01:21 My roof leaked for eight years.
01:24 If you are following up on a maintenance request reported previously...
01:28 The government agency responsible, Homes NSW, says there have been nearly 25,000 urgent maintenance requests this financial year
01:35 and acknowledges response times have deteriorated.
01:38 Maintenance calls are not being responded to quickly enough, call outs are not happening quickly enough,
01:43 work isn't being done quickly enough.
01:45 The Minister blames the outsourcing of social housing maintenance
01:48 and says it should improve from July when the government brings it back in-house.
01:52 Mentally it wears you down and all you've got to do to break someone is take away their hope.
01:58 After the ABC contacted Homes NSW about the hot water issue in Andrew's building,
02:03 it's now promising it will be resolved tomorrow.
02:06 Alright.
02:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]