KIRSTY Nitto’s life was thrown into chaos after a fire ripped through a Maxwell Avenue unit complex on Friday night, three days after she moved in.
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The 24-year-old lived in the unit next to that of teenager Jacob Donovan, who also lost everything in the fire, and her future was now in the hands of Housing NSW.
“I don’t know where they’ll put me, I don’t know how long it will take,” she said.
Police suspect the fire was deliberately lit and are investigating the incident.
The fire gutted Ms Nitto’s home and left her with nothing.
Her next home could be anywhere in the region, as far as Molong or even Bathurst, she said she would have to go “wherever they can find me something”.
She said she will stay with her father in Blayney until housing is found.
Ms Nitto said she was frightened and depressed, and nervous about where she might be placed because she had been forced to move out of her previous address in Blayney after teenagers, who lived in the same social housing complex, threatened and bullied her.
She said it was because she had a disability.
“The [Maxwell Avenue] place was nice ... it was bigger and my brother had put a curtain up which separated the bed from the living area,” she said.
“It was really good.
“But now I’m scared.”
Ms Nitto’s father, Leo Nitto, is also a victim of arson and was forced to leave a property in Blayney after it was torched in March.
He said he was eternally grateful his younger son had decided to stay a few nights in his daughter’s new accommodation, to help her settle in, because it was the 15-year-old who alerted Kirsty to the to the fire and called triple-0.
A spokesperson for the department of Family and Community Services said priority housing was granted to people who had an urgent need, those who were homeless or at risk of homelessness, people with urgent medical conditions, the elderly, people with disabilities or people with a mental illness.
Ms Nitto hopes it is somewhere where people are more tolerant of those with disabilities.
nicole.kuter@fairfaxmedia.com.au