I wasn’t aware of this story until it was in the Age, but for years I’ve wondered how the owner of the cars and trucks abandoned around Fitzroy and Kerr streets could get away with using public streets for his private dump. Now it seems he is also a landlord from hell. I wish I’d heard about the protest and picket – I would have participated. It’s good to hear that it was successful.
It’s even more difficult to believe that he has been repeatedly prosecuted and fined by local and state governments for 5 years, he has refused to pay and yet he has not been arrested and jailed. This is inexcusable and suggests that the City of Yarra and the Magistrate’s Court and the state government are all incompetent bureaucratic cowards.
Sociopaths like Frank Cassar rely on the likelihood that most people are too nice to stand up to people like him. Join the Facebook group. Speak up. Demand that the government uphold the law. At the moment they look like the biggest spineless cowards in the world.
This is one of those rare occasions where histrionic journalism actually has a purpose, as this video shows.
10 March 2011 at 7:46 am
and I thought that the cars and junk were a long-term street art project . . .
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10 March 2011 at 12:13 pm
Mr Cassar also owns a large house on Barkly St North Fitzroy and he parks his old cars in the driveway (no doubt to the inconvienience of his tenants) and out the front on the street. Last year the Sherrifs Dept seized the house, changed the locks and evicted the tenants because of Mr Cassar’s refusal to pay court fines. Amongst the tenants made homeless was a woman with a disabled child. Cassar now has the house back.
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10 March 2011 at 2:04 pm
Another example of bureaucratic madness! By all means legally seize the property but making those people homeless is inexcusable. People who are failed by the state should be able to sue it for damages. The state routinely fails to meet its legal obligations to those it claims to represent.
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10 March 2011 at 3:36 pm
I do actually know some people who lived in a house of his in Argyle St and I have to say it was possibly one of the worst houses I’ve ever seen.
Apparently there was a condition on the lease that they were not allowed to light candles so dangerous was the house!
The kitchen floor was cobbled stones… obviously he’d knocked down a wall and extended it to a crappy and shoddy second hand kitchen but didn’t feel the need to put down flooring. Nor did he feel the need to give them a back door!
They were evicted a fortnight ago and on the last night I went round to say goodbye I could see a bucket collecting rain leaking through the roof.
When I look up there was a massive hole in the ceiling, you could see right into the batts. In the middle of this hole is a lightglobe dangling by the cord with water running off the end of the globe.
I once lived in a mice infested bedsit in London and I thought that was the worst housing I’d ever seen. But they trumped me on that one!
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10 March 2011 at 9:07 pm
Ross,
Go to Taplin Street and you will see the same thing with junk cars and unregistered cars. City Of Yarra allows this to happen and only acts when there is public attention.
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23 February 2012 at 1:01 pm
Epitaph for this blog.
RIP Frank.
Frank Cassar passed away on Friday, October 14, 2011, aged 60.
He was one of a kind. A Fitzroy original. His legacy lives on:
Reference:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/estate-in-legal-row-as-tenants-seek-bond-cash/story-fn7x8me2-1226177618395
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23 February 2012 at 2:36 pm
Good riddance to this loser pest.
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9 July 2012 at 5:37 pm
Are you kidding me have you seen the damages tenants do to rental homes and don’t have to pay back a cent you can always find a landlord but can never find a tenant. Tenants are such low life people who simply do not have a care in the world for the house they are living in as its not there’s. i have been n renting homes out to tenants for over 6 years now and can certainly come to terms with why Frank was the way he was. We need more landlords like do. this man around so that way most tenants won’t take advantage of the system, like they Think about its called the TENANTS union for a reason, Tenants they are almost as bad as dole blugers. The goverment wont even help our hospitals out or fix up our roads up and you think they need to be helping Yarra city . Please bigger proublems out there in our world then a few old cars being left around. WAKE UP AUSTRALIA !!!
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10 July 2012 at 9:39 am
Whilst I agree that there are many scum tenants, statements like: “Tenants they are almost as bad as dole blugers” amount to nothing more than generalisations.
What does this mean? It just doesn’t make sense:
“Think about its called the TENANTS union for a reason”
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10 July 2012 at 11:16 am
I allow the raving nutters’ comments to go through sometimes for our amusement.
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9 July 2012 at 5:43 pm
what i also can not come to terms with is the fact that i believe tenants get to view or do a walk though of the property and yet still CHOOSE to move into it after what they have seen it only becomes a hole after they have stayed there. Dont like the look of it at inspection SIMPLE do not move in i am sure Frank Cassar didnt change them over night.
Brian this man couldnt have been to much of a loser with the amount of houses this mans portfoilo holds. Good on him i say.
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9 July 2012 at 7:40 pm
So wealth makes you good? What utter twaddle. Cassar was (thanfully he’s dead now) a serial pest and psychopath who abused and misled many people and who wasted significant amounts of Yarra ratepayers’ money due to the things he did to waste the time of council. Goof riddance.
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