• Police escort council workers to affix signs giving tenants four days to move out of illegal and unsafe accommodation.

POLICE and Fremantle council workers moved on an illegally built rental complex at 5 Beach Street this week ordering all occupants out, after the building was found to be unsafe.

The maze-like, rubbish-filled interior of the building was described as “in a dangerous state and unfit for human occupation,” with unsafe stairs, no fire hydrants, no fire extinguishers in the common area, no smoke detection or alarm systems (disputed by the owner), no emergency lighting, and the only two exits being padlocked steel gates.

Owner Giacomino “Jack” Fazio, who rents out the small concrete rooms on the cheap, tried to appeal an earlier order at the state administrative tribunal but this week the council pressed ahead with the evictions.

No-one can stay in the building until extensive repairs are done and the property receives a certificate of occupation, which is unlikely given the extent of unauthorised works.

Mr Fazio had been previously prosecuted over illegal works at the site, being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and his company Able Lott Holdings is listed on the attorney-general’s website as the state’s second biggest fine defaulter.

Mr Fazio says he’s providing a service by taking in poor folk who’ve nowhere else to go. He reacted violently when the Herald attempted to take a picture of the building from the footpath.

Several supporters back his provision of small, cheap rooms, but the Herald also heard from tenants who’d felt they’d been taken advantage of, or who considered the Gumtree listing deceptive when showing up to find the place in near-ruins. Thursday morning Mr Fazio was spotted loading possessions into a trailer.

by DAVID BELL