NT Government announce a ten year plan to address public housing

Public housing waitlists in the NT could be reduced under ambitious new plans. Read more here.

PUBLIC housing waitlists could reduce under the Territory Government’s new ten-year plan.

According to the government’s own data, there were 3,022 applications for public housing as of December 2021, with some families averaging 6-8 years for a home, including those on priority lists.

However under the Northern Territory Community Housing Growth Strategy 22-32, more than 2000 public housing properties will be given to housing providers across the Territory.

The Government is calling for immediate expressions of interest from community organisations for the management of 500 new homes in Darwin and Palmerston. They have also committed to release an additional 250 properties in both Alice Springs and Greater Darwin into the 2023/24 financial year.

The public housing strategy will include a $22.3m for the next two financial years, however the publicly available strategy document does not include costings or funding provisions beyond 2024.

Furthermore, the plan only shows a five-year timeline of scoped works.

Urban Housing Minister Kate Worden at the Northern Territory Community Housing Growth Strategy launch. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

Urban Housing Minister Kate Worden said the strategy had included a year-and-a-half of consultation with the community housing sector.

“We’ve been working with the sector (on the strategy)...well before my time. So this has been coming for a while, the sector has been patient,” she said.

Ms Worden’s comments follow a scathing opinion piece written by Somerville Community Services chief executive Lawson Broad last August.

“Community housing will save the government money, increase funding to the Northern Territory, grow housing supply, stimulate construction, create jobs, and provide better housing options,” he said.

“Despite the obvious benefits and the simple task of making it happen, we haven’t moved a step forward in almost five years.”

Nearly, nine months after Mr Broad’s comments, the Labor government has released a plan to do exactly that: increase supply through the construction of new homes and provide community service providers the opportunity to manage and allocate them.

“We’ll be providing a capital grant for the each of the packages as they go out.” Ms Worden said.

“So it’s not a savings exercise. It’s actually about improving the outcome for tenants and improving the supports that tenants can have.”

Under previous agreements public housing has been predominantly managed by the Northern Territory government but the new agreement will see a major shift to community based organisations.

NT Shelter chief executive Peter McMillian said it was an important “transformation”.

“It’s an important transformation in the way that housing is done in the Northern Territory with up to 40 per cent over the next five years being managed by registered community housing providers - professional organisations with demonstrated experience to provide high quality, tenancy and maintenance services for housing,” he said.

Mr McMillian also said the sector was working to upskill providers in preparation for the increased volume in work managing properties.

Urban Housing Strategy

Aboriginal Housing NT chair Leeanne Caton welcomed the announcement.

“We’re very excited about this because we’ve been waiting for some time; we’ve been gearing up 112 directors for Aboriginal community housing providers around the Northern Territory,” she said.

“And we have been putting a lot of work into encouraging those Aboriginal community housing providers to get nationally registered so that they’re prepared for when stock transfers started occurring.”