Residents on an island off south-east Queensland are set to have essential services like power, gas and water cut off indefinitely over claims of unpaid body corporate levies.
Couran Cove Island Resort, on South Stradbroke Island, is home to a mixture of permanent residents and holiday home owners who are obliged to pay levies to their body corporate to access the services that are otherwise commercially unavailable.
In a letter to residents last Friday, the service provider said it was "commercially unviable" to continue servicing the properties in light of $12 million it claimed is owed in arrears, through levies.
The loss of services means it will make properties, like the one owned by Karen Angel and her husband Mick, unliveable.
"We're in the middle of this huge game of Monopoly between the creditor and the debtor," Ms Angel said.
"We're basically being used as the board pieces, and it's difficult because, you know, they are doing it in the midst of a major national rental crisis.
"Where are people going to go?"
The couple live on the island part-time and pay about $10,000 in body corporate rates annually, which include levies for the utility services.
She said the decision by the service provide was particularly unfair to residents, and will leave some homeless.
"There's lots of elderly, there's disabled people, there's sick people, so you know, it's a real concern about where they're going to go and what they're going to do," Ms Angel said.
"One person said, you know, maybe she's going to be living in a tent somewhere.
"That's the uncertainty of what they're putting people through."
The services are set to be cut off at 10am on Wednesday.
