New rules to govern NT public housing tenants to be introduced on August 1

PUBLIC housing tenants will have to comply with strict new rules or face being turfed out of their homes

Chantelle Ayres and her daughter are sick of the occupants of the housing commision property next door who keep them up all night. PICTURE: Ivan Rachman

PUBLIC housing tenants will have to comply with strict new rules or face being turfed out of their homes.

Under the new policy, to be brought into effect August 1, all new Northern Territory public housing tenants will complete a six-month probationary period. It also introduces a “red card rule”, under which tenants who receive six demerit points will be evicted.

That’s half the amount of demerit points currently afforded to rowdy tenants.

The number of complaints made to police related to public housing homes surged 15 per cent in the past year. There were 6214 incidents reported to police between July 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015 and 7155 in the same period this year.

Karama mother Chantelle Ayres said she and her neighbours had collectively called police about 1000 times in relation to a public housing home on their street.

Elderly neighbours are too frightened to walk outside their homes and residents are kept up all through the night with constant parties and fighting.

Ms Ayres said while she considered herself a patient person, with compassion for people trapped in the cycle of poverty, she’d reached the end of her tether.

“I’m pretty resilient and understanding, but my fuse has worn out and I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said.

In one harrowing incident, her five-year-old niece was almost hit in the head by a wine bottle tossed over the fence by one of the tenants.

Ms Ayres said she feared reprisal from her neighbours in going public with her concerns but wouldn’t be bullied into silence.

“We’re all worried about the consequences. Everyone else has shied away from saying anything but I’m just sick of it,” she said.

Being kept up until the early hours has taken a toll on her family.

“The kids wouldn’t go to school because they’d be too tired. I wouldn’t go to work — I’d have to call my boss and say ‘it’s happened again, I’ve been up all night’,” she said.

Chief Minister Adam Giles said the Territory Government was taking a “carrot/stick” approach to dealing with the “small proportion” of public housing tenants who did the wrong thing.

“We don’t want to see people kicked out on to the street, but we want them to behave like normal tenants,” Mr Giles said.

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