DISTRAUGHT residents of a Bondi Junction apartment block left uninhabitable for at least six months after a gas explosion are considering a class action to fight for compensation.

The 300-plus owners and tenants of Eastgate Towers, who have been homeless for 11 days, were told late yesterday they would not be going home for at least six months and were no longer allowed in for short periods to collect clothes or emergency supplies.

The decision was made at a three-hour meeting between the building's insurance assessor and strata manager, and left residents in shock last night. One man said legal action was inevitable.

"My life is in there, everything I possess apart from my car and the clothes I have on is in there," another tenant, Wayne Baffsky, said.

Mr Baffsky, a barrister, said he and another resident would engage a solicitor to help them and other residents seek compensation for the costs of being homeless.

Another resident, who did not want to be named, said he had taken legal advice and was "seriously considering" launching a class action to retrieve some money from the building's insurer, Chubb.

It also emerged that the strata managers, Dynamic Property Services, managed another, smaller apartment block that was badly damaged in a fire in a top-floor unit in September last year.

The incident at Homebush Bay, which was ruled an accident , left the lift unusable and took six months to repair, according to an apartment owner who contacted the Herald.

"[Dynamic Property Services] gave owners or residents virtually zero communication within the past six months of what was happening," said the man, who did not want his name published.

Dynamic Property's general manager, Wally Patterson, said most residents of the eight-floor Homebush building were out for a short amount of time.

"But that was handled directly by the assessors; we weren't involved with any of that," Mr Patterson said.