NEWS Housing demand surges
THE waitlist for NT public housing continues to grow despite 168 new dwellings being created since September 1, 2016.
Department of Housing and Community Development chief executive Jamie Chalker told a parliamentary estimates hearing on Thursday that as of March 31 there were 3710 applicants on the urban waiting list, an increase of 67 on the previous reporting period.
“The important part to highlight is that from 31 March, 2017 to 31 March, 2018 we actually had 50 more tenancies,” he said.
“We have more assets in the field … but we are not seeing a diminishment in our waiting list. The waiting list, to a certain degree, is beyond our control.”
The executives of the department were also grilled over the publicly available information on wait times.
Mr Chalker said that of the 3710 applicants 346 were “deferred”.
“About 223 are incarcerated, so they are currently accommodated,” he said
“We do have a program of reviewing that waitlist and contacting people on the waitlist on a regular basis to confirm that they are still in the Territory. When we first did that a few years ago the waitlist actually dropped by about 20 per cent.
“The waitlist includes 414 transfer applicants.”
After Katherine MLA Sandra Nelson pointed out that these varying figures could be misleading to the public, deputy chief executive Jim Bamber conceded that the communication around this
“We have more assets … but we are not seeing a diminishment in our waiting list”
JAMIE CHALKER could be improved. “You just mentioned that on the waitlist there was 360 that do not live here anymore, 220 are incarcerated, 180 do not really need public housing anymore. There is no breakdown of that on the website,” she said.
“As an average Joe looking at the waitlist, I am thinking there are 3000 people waiting to get into public housing, that are disadvantaged and sleeping it rough. But in reality that is not the case. Maybe we need to work on that website to give the real picture.”
Mr Bamber said she had a point.
“We provide wait times just to give people who are on the waitlist a broad indication of the average wait time,” he said.
“But you are right, maybe if we provided more information about the categories of people on the waitlist that might help manage expectation but also to manage community understanding of that waitlist.”
The 168 new dwellings, delivered under the joint NT and Australian Government funded National Partnership Agreement on Remote Housing, is in addition to the 117 created under the Territory’s Room to Breathe program.