Litchfield Court public housing complex a hot-spot for anti-social behaviour

It’s been likened to the worst kind of slumland ghetto: people having drunken sex in public view, smeared excrement on the walls, rubbish strewn through the common area and occupants on violent drug and alcohol-fuelled benders

One of Litchfield Court's busier areas, where locals and vagrants party and fight into the early hours. PICTURE: Justin Kennedy

It’s been likened to the worst kind of slumland ghetto: people having drunken sex in public view, smeared excrement on the walls, rubbish strewn through the common area and occupants on violent drug and alcohol-fuelled benders.

It’s not a scene from a Quentin Tarantino flick.

Litchfield Court resident Lynne Angeles's has to cover her mouth due to the stench that lingers throughout her house and complex. PICTURE: Justin Kennedy

You’ll find this action played out much closer to home — the Litchfield Court public housing complex in Nightcliff, home to about 200 low-income Darwin residents.

And it has been a thorn in the side of consecutive NT Governments as far back as 2008, when residents were already likening it to a “battlezone”.

It is high-density living close to takeaway alcohol outlets, leaving the majority of residents who do the right thing dealing with the inevitable fallout each day.

Darwin great-grandmother of one and grandmother of seven, Lynne Angeles, is one of the residents and she’s had a gutful.

“It’s not good at all right now,” Ms Angeles, 66, told the NT News.

“There can be up to 15 or 16 people living in one tiny one bedroom flat so overcrowding is a real issue. Then there are the problems with people getting drunk, violent and leaving filth lying around everywhere for others to clean.

“They come here to drink and then everything just flows from there .. they defecate in the bin bays and spread it along the wall ... these people that live here I prefer to clean out a pigsty.

“And don’t get me started on the public sex. The other day in the bin bay I could hear this boom boom boom and I look out and they were having a screw. I call it nooky corner.

“I find knickers, jocks, used condoms – I’ve got to go buy gloves to pick them up.”

Ms Angeles says she has taken on the unofficial role of bin bay and common area cleaner at the complex for the past 23 years.

She says maintenance requests aren’t always followed through, including a ripped up concrete footpath that makes many of the senior residents vulnerable to falls.

An abandoned car has made its home in Litchfield Court for six years. PICTURE: Justin Kennedy

Her neighbour points to an abandoned, semi-stripped vehicle that has sat idle in the complex car park for the past six years filled with empty alcohol boxes and other rubbish.

Ms Angeles has lived at the complex for almost 30 years and says she cannot recall it being so bad.

She now sleeps with a crow bar beside her bed.

“Just the yelling, screaming, fighting.. The other day I was hosing my garden and there was a bloke walking around with a knife. I didn’t bother calling cops.

“I settled him down.”

She believes the violence is fuelled by increased drug use at the complex.

“I have learnt you can pick the drug dealers .. especially with ice. I had a bloke knock on my door once and offer me $1000 a week to sell ice from my back door.

“He said ‘you got the best place to sell drugs from’, and I said to him ‘You’re dreaming’.”

While the complex is home to about 168 permanent residents, the reality is that many more people stay there illegally.

Another elderly resident, who did not wish to be named, said many drinkers and drug users did not live at the complex, but often congregated in the common area.

“I had a woman out there before drinking chardonnay from a coke bottle and asking me if I wanted to join her.

“I asked her where she was from and she said she had come over from The Narrows to drink here.

“They all roll back here in mini buses and taxis and just getting dropped at common area – this is a transit area here. And it’s not just one or two – nine will get of one minibus and just sit there.

“It’s like a derelict place – it’s getting like Kurringal ... nah actually it’s worse than Kurringal.”

Calls to pull down Fannie Bay’s notorious Kurringal Flats public housing complex began years before it was demolished last year to make way for a new residential development in the upmarket suburb.

The site had once been described as one of the most troubled public housing complexes in Darwin.

It followed the redevelopment of another notorious hot spot for anti-social behaviour - Wirrina flats in Parap.

Its demolition in 2008 to make way for a mixed public/private housing development was a centrepiece for the then-Labor Government’s election campaign.

At the time then Labor Government Housing Minister Rob Knight conceded that high-density social housing complexes had not worked, adding that they’d caused a lot of problems “with people of a very low socio-economic level and with other special needs”.

The bin bay, where people sometimes defacate and have sex. PICTURE: Justin Kennedy

The NT Government says there are no plans for the redevlopment of Litchfield Court.

While social services organisations say evidence suggests the public housing best model is the private/public mix, they warn that with 2183 people on public housing wait lists any dropping of government stock would further impact low-income earners.

Unlike Kurringal and Wirrina, the Litchfield Court complex is well off a main road so anti-social behaviour can have a compounding effect for residents.

A mere 500m down the road sits John Stokes Square, another Nightcliff public housing complex fraught with similar issues.

Businesses and residents in the local area say much of the anti-social behaviour in the suburb flows from both estates. It’s an issue police are not unfamiliar with and they have targeted the area in raids and set up anti-social taskforces in recent weeks. Whether or not it is enough to effect change remains to be seen.

The NT News attempted to speak to Housing Minister Bess Price numerous times but was told she was unavailable.

Territory Housing says Public Housing Safety Officers patrol the complex.

It said it took all instances of anti-social behaviour seriously, adding it outsources rubbish and maintenance services.

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