The community is banding together to help elderly Greek couple, Nitsa and Spiros Tzavellas, who are being forced to sell their home of 50 years in Earlwood and face potential bankruptcy after their body corporate voted for exorbitant upgrades to their building which they cannot afford.
A GoFund Me campaign was first launched by their nephew Anthony on Sunday night in response to an article by The Sydney Morning Herald by Caitlin Fitzsimmons detailing the Tzavellas’ dire situation.
“The couple are under unbearable levels of stress and would appreciate any donation to help them save their home at Earlwood they have lived at for 50 years,” Anthony wrote on the GoFund Me page.
“No donation is too small, let’s all get-together and save Nitsa and Spiro.”
So far, over $12,000 has been raised of a $60,000 goal. Many donators have sympathised with the elderly Greek couple and wished them all the best.
“Strata is impossibly hard at the best of times, and soul-depleting at its worst. I hope that there can be a happy outcome at the end of this terrible suffering,” one donator wrote.
Nitsa and Spiros, pensioners aged 78 and 81 respectively, were first caught up in the strata saga in 2019 when their body corporate voted to upgrade the building’s old windows and raise a special levy to pay for it.
The cost allocated to the Tzavellas’ apartment was $18,234.17, according to the SMH. Court documents show the couple paid instalments of $466 a fortnight for much of 2020 and 2021.
After seeking legal advice, they were advised to stop payments and were then abandoned by their solicitor, racking up further expenses they had no way of paying and adding to their worry.
“I’m very stressed, I’ve lost a lot of weight and my husband is very sick, and he’s very worried too,” Nitsa told the newspaper in an interview.
The couple are now desperately trying to sell their three-bedroom flat before a deadline of mid-August when bankruptcy hearings will resume in court.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald.
