Hollie Rizzotto and her young child in the unsafe complex where Hollie feels trapped. Despite the Housing Appeals Committee ruling that the mother and child should be moved out of the Warrawong complex, the department has once again rejected her application.
It has been a hellish two years for single mother Hollie Rizzotto. I cry myself to sleep at night. How bad does it have to get here? Why can't they see this is no place for children to live? Ms Rizzotto was first declined a transfer in February - a year on, she's still trapped in hell. When she signed the lease in , she had no idea she was walking into a drug haven.
Housing NSW pointed out the freshly painted walls, new kitchen and carpet but was silent about the drug dens, the prostitutes, the domestic violence. With a baby to take care of, the then year-old was desperate for a place to live and so with rose-coloured glasses, she immediately accepted the unit - the first property she had been shown by Housing NSW.
Used syringes under a window near Hollie Rizzotto's front door pictured in December. In the hallway, outside her front door, is a steady stream of seedy characters, many of them high on drugs and out of control. In the beginning, Ms Rizzotto was constantly offered free drugs from her neighbours. But after three months of trying to push drugs on her, they finally got the message to leave her alone. There are rises and troughs in crime - depending on who lives there and who gets out of jail.
Sometimes it's quiet in the ghetto and sometimes it's so bad, it's like living in the middle of a violent television drama. Police with batons and dogs break down doors, sheriffs evict residents for not paying their rent, junkies bang on doors and scream abuse and death threats. Regardless of how hot it is, the young mum will not open her windows after sunset. In December, the hallway was so putrid, the railing had blood smears and the stairs were caked with cockroach faeces and also what appeared to be dog faeces.
