‘It’s not the 19th century’: tenants in new social housing block in Victoria say they go weeks without flushing toilets

Lisa Dillon pays $574 a fortnight for a one-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband. She says over Christmas the toilets in her building did not flush for three weeks. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

Tenants in one of Victoria’s newest community housing blocks say they have gone weeks without being able to flush their toilets and months without being able to get a signal for TV, while their concerns over cracks in the building have gone unaddressed.

The $140m development in Dunlop Avenue in Ascot Value is the first development to open from the government’s Public Housing Renewal Program – now known as the Big Housing Build – and was heralded as the “most advanced” social housing project in the state when it was completed in March last year.