The dark problem with the new season of The Block
The latest season of Channel Nine’s highest rating show The Block could be trouble as the new house is located near a St Kilda street locals say is plagued with dangerous behaviour.
This year’s season sees contestants renovating former halfway house the Gatwick Hotel, located right near here radio host Kate Langbroek was assaulted by a “crazed” man.
Filming of The Block began last month as contestants work to transform the building, dubbed 'Hell Hotel', into luxury apartments.
Channel Nine purchased the Gatwick last year for $10 million, and council plans show the series plans to build eight apartments and add an extra fourth level to the building.
But locals says Little Grey Street in St Kilda has turned into a dangerous area plagued by drug users and anti-social behaviour since the closure of nearby Gatwick.
A maintenance company, who had been servicing the street for the past decades, has stopped, with a contractor telling the Herald Sun the “last straw” came when one of his staff members was abused by “a nutter running up and down with a syringe in his arm”.
“We do a lot of work in and around the city... but we've never had an issue, ever - but we did in Little Grey St. They're just off their nut and running out of control,” he said.
“I've seen almost every little back nook and cranny around the city during my job but I've never seen anything like this... The violence is really troubling and my drivers feel physically unsafe there.”
Radio personality Kate, who was attacked at her St Kilda home last Friday, blamed the escalating crime on the notorious boarding house The Regal.
“There's drug dealing blatantly in the street. There's a trail of zombies going up there to get their drugs or whatever,” Kate, who lives a street from the boarding house, told Nine's Today show on Thursday.
Kate said she was recently walking her children to school when a man attacked another with a “Glasgow kiss”.
“He was walking around the corner with his headphones in and he got headbutted in broad daylight. It's crazy,” she told The Age.
According to the Herald Sun, one local resident described how a drug addict injecting herself threatening to “squirt blood” on her, while another reported a sex worker exposing herself to a 12-year-old boy.
The rising crime rate has prompted calls to close the 49-room boarding house.
Kate said the government has been unable to solve the problem.
“As I said to our local member Martin Foley, the vulnerable now are normal people who are trying to walk their kids to school through this hell hole that is of your creation,” she said. “You have done this to our neighbourhood where people are trying to live lives.”
She added: “My taxes are supporting this guy who is trying to kick my front door in, and my taxes are paying for the cops to come to try and sort him out, and then my taxes are paying judges and magistrates who are letting them out. It is not right.”
On Wednesday she tweeted to Mr Foley: 'Thanks for your call yesterday. This is the bruise I sustained trying to keep that 'vulnerable' resident from kicking our front door in on Friday night.