‘The mind boggles’: federal envoy blasts NT housing decision

Speaking at the Australian Homelessness Conference in Darwin last Thursday, Burns said the 2021 census had identified about 13,000 people experiencing homelessness in the NT. The Territory recorded a homelessness rate of 564 people per 10,000 residents, compared with 48 nationally – almost 12 times the national rate.  Burns said the chronic shortage of social and affordable housing in the NT desperately needed to be addressed.

Burns criticised the Territory government for not having yet engaged with the federal government’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), which is dedicated to building socially affordable housing, and he said “the mind boggles” at the NT government’s plan to move YiSSA, a major crisis housing service and accommodation facility, from Darwin to Batchelor, 100 km away. 

“At 30 June, the NT government had recorded almost 6,500 applications for social housing when they only had 225 vacant social housing dwellings,” Burns told the conference. “It takes people around eight to ten years to get into social housing, and priority applicants have to wait between four and six years. There is a real lack of affordable housing. 

“The rental market here is absolutely stretched, and in March there was not one available property in the Territory that someone on either Job Seeker, Youth Allowance, the DSP, or the Age Pension, or even, frankly, on the minimum wage would have been able to afford.

“There is a chronic lack of social and affordable homes right here in the Territory, and that’s not a blame statement,” he said. “That is a fact, and it is the responsibility of all of us to try and do something about it. And we might not be able to fix it in one go, but we do have an opportunity to do more, and I think that we all should.

“If you've got this picture across the Territory of not enough homes, of frankly an underutilisation of the federal government's housing program, it really boggles the mind that you would take away the largest crisis housing service in the country in YiSSA. It boggles the mind. It is bad public policy to move YiSSA 100 kilometres away to Batchelor,” Burns said.

“I was speaking to a doctor this morning, and she's helping treat some of the patients who are at YiSSA who are accessing dialysis services. If you are accessing dialysis, it’s roughly three times a week, and it’s a few hours every single time you need to access it. How on earth is someone going to travel that 100 kilometres back to Darwin to access dialysis services? And it’s not like they are there waiting for people on Sunday in order for this to happen.

“All this is going to do is reduce the amount of already overcrowded and pressurised housing that we’ve got here in the Territory for an option that, frankly, is just about out of mind and out of sight, which is not housing policy. It's cruel.”

Perhaps mindful that the Northern Territory government was a sponsor of the conference, and acknowledging that the Territory planned to build youth foyers in Alice Springs and Darwin, Burns said his observations were aimed at encouraging local leaders to return to negotiations with the federal government on solving the lack of social housing.

“I don't paint this picture to play politics,” he said. “On the contrary, what I’m saying to the Northern Territory government is it doesn't have to be this way. It’s not good public policy. It’s more expensive what you’re doing. Let’s pause this decision. Let’s work together and find a better option, because people rely on YiSSA. It is a good service. The staff do an incredible job, and there is a better way that we can all work together that won’t cost Territorians $18 million to move people out of sight and out of mind. 

“I would say to the Northern Territory government, we have $3.5 million on the table. That is a far more economic opportunity and far cheaper option for a government under real financial pressure to be able to continue accessing and running the services that are currently happening at YiSSA. 

“You don’t need to make this decision. What you can do is sit down to pause the decision during the wet season for six months and come back to the negotiating table, and work with us on finding ways that we can continue this service running here in Darwin. Because the alternative is to spend $18 million in Batchelor for homes that aren’t ready, for a lack of health services that don’t exist in that town, and for people to be put in worse circumstance,” he said.