A group of Gold Coast residents are "living a nightmare" after being forced out of their homes having been exposed to asbestos from a neighbouring property.
Mark Rayner and his flatmate have moved three times in the past three weeks and there is no end in sight with another move scheduled at the end of the week.
He is one of several Mermaid Beach tenants displaced after the house next door to their Peerless Avenue unit complex had its asbestos roof pressure-washed by property maintenance company STO Group Australia on April 8.
"I'm not sleeping I'm so stressed," Mr Rayner said.
"Just not knowing what is going on and then there's also our health because it's an asbestos-related issue.
"It looked like a crime scene at the beginning; there were guys in orange suits and black and yellow tape all around the place."
Mr Rayner said the potentially cancer-causing dust came through his unit window and covered his balcony, contaminating the property and his belongings.
It is estimated that 4,000 Australians die each year from asbestos-related diseases.
Site not safe yet
The contamination was only picked up when a plumber visited the site and Mr Rayner reported the incident to WorkSafe Queensland on April 12.
A Workplace Health and Safety Queensland spokesperson said the organisation was investigating the incident and tenants would be allowed back once it was safe.
"Once the [licensed removal] contractor deems the area safe for return, residents will be informed," the spokesperson said.
STO Group Australia is paying for the decontamination, clean-up and relocation of the affected renters in the surrounding properties.
However, Mr Rayner said he had no certainty on where he would be living.
"We've been moved several times and they haven't put us in suitable accommodation, not like-for-like," he said.
At least five units in the complexes on either side had been affected and Mr Rayner said tenants were being moved into different temporary accommodation every week.
Mr Rayner said the aftermath had been a nightmare.
"Not just for me, lots of the other tenants too — we're all pretty much suffering from having to be moved constantly."
At one location he had to share a room with his flatmate and live without kitchen facilities, he said.
Company responds
In a statement, STO Group said it apologised for the inconvenience to tenants and it would comply with WorkSafe's investigation.
"We have arranged and covered the cost of people's alternative accommodation, the cost of remediation work, and offered to reimburse people for the cost of replacing items of personal property which could not be decontaminated," the statement said.
Residents, however, said attempts to contact the company to discuss the situation had been unsuccessful.
Displaced resident Jay Walton said he was more than $1,000 out of pocket due to travel costs and essentials as he continued to move his family of three from temporary accommodation.
"I feel like I've been treated as a second-rate citizen and my family's safety and comfort hasn't been thought about at all," he said.
"Like we've been directly put in … contaminated by asbestos which is a poisonous product and it's somebody else's problem. Like it's all just dumped on us to deal with it.
"It takes until the day before we are meant to be figuring out where we are staying, at the final hour they'll email us."
Tenants must still pay rent
The residents are still being forced to pay rent in the contaminated building despite not living there.
A spokesman for Performance Realty, the agency that manages Mr Rayner's and Mr Walton's units, said tenants had the option of being released from their leases without penalty.
The Gold Coast is second to Sydney for having the highest rents in the country and is in the middle of a housing and rental shortage.
The Rental Tenancy Authority said legally the tenants must still cover the rent.
There is still no timeline for the tenants to return to their homes.
A Gold Coast City Council spokesperson said public areas including the footpath around the affected properties were declared safe after decontamination on April 18.
Fines could be in the thousands
Griffith University dean of law Therese Wilson said fines imposed by courts for the mismanagement of asbestos could range from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
"Regardless of the law, I think this is really a situation where the most vulnerable people are bearing the brunt of a situation which is no fault of their own," she said.
"This is a situation where the contractor had some obligation to act more quickly and to ensure that the accommodation provided was more similar and appropriate to the accommodation from which these tenants have had to leave."