NT public housing tenants told 'three strikes' and you're out

Northern Territory public housing tenants will be evicted if they receive three strikes for anti-social behaviour under a new policy beginning today.

The three strikes system replaces a red card scheme in which tenants could be evicted if they accumulated six demerit points.

Under the new three strikes rule, "minor" anti-social behaviour breaches attract one strike, "moderate" breaches two and three strikes can be handed down for "significant" breaches.

Existing demerit points will be converted to strikes, with one demerit point equivalent to one strike.

NT Housing Minister Steve Edgington said if a tenant received three strikes, including via a single breach, they would now be evicted.

"Three strikes could be the result of serious anti-social behaviour where people may be threatened, the property may be damaged," he said.

"Ongoing repeated anti-social behaviour could lead to three strikes and immediate action taken towards removing that tenant from their home."

Mr Edgington said the NT government had acted on concerns raised by neighbours of public housing tenants, particularly in the Darwin region.

"All we're expecting is pay your rent, look after your home and be a good neighbour," he told 105.7 ABC Darwin.

"What we're doing is clamping down on those that are causing distraction, sometimes violent behaviour, noise complaints, graffiti, ongoing anti-social behaviour."

He also said tenants could respond to allegations before being reprimanded.

"There'll be an opportunity for the tenant to not only respond to the complaint, but to provide any information which may or may not differ from the allegations being made," he said.

"Procedural fairness is a big part of this policy.

"It needs to be investigated and from there, we'll issue a strike if that's the outcome of the investigation."

Termination proceedings are progressed by the Housing Department in the NT Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

CLP 'racially controlling' Aboriginal people

Responding to the policy announcement today, Labor opposition MLA Chansey Paech accused the Country Liberal Party (CLP) government of attempting to "racially control" Aboriginal people for its "own benefit".

"That's to win votes," he said.

"They're not targeting any problem, they're just moving the problem on."

Mr Paech said the government's new three strikes policy was one of several that would overwhelmingly impact Indigenous people, including the recent closure of Darwin's YiSSA homelessness shelter.

"Look at the decisions the CLP government [is] rolling out every day," he said.

"They closed down YiSSA — predominantly Aboriginal.

"They're evicting public housing tenants — predominantly Aboriginal.

"They're stalling on the remote housing program — predominantly Aboriginal people."

Mr Paech said tenants needed to be better supported, instead of evicted.

"We can do the work to help them have a home for their families, not kick them out onto the streets where guess what — kicking people out and making them homeless doesn't address the homelessness problem in the Territory.

"It makes it worse."

A spokesperson for Mr Edgington said public housing policy applied to every tenant equally.

Northern suburbs hotspot

Doreen Dyer built her home in the northern Darwin suburb of Karama in 1981, when the area was first developed.

Karama and nearby Malak have long had pockets of high-density social housing, but Ms Dyer said in the past 10 years, the anti-social behaviour problem had deteriorated.

"We had issues with fighting and arguing and coming up into the court to go through the walkway at the end of the court," she said.

"Yards unkempt, houses that have been damaged and windows boarded up and generally, it's affecting the whole neighbourhood, particularly with anyone wanting to sell."

Ms Dyer said it was tough to see how the suburb had changed over the years.

"When you have pride in your own place and have the long-term knowledge of the suburb and how great it was, it used to be a young family suburb, and it ran sort of fairly normally, as you'd expect," she said.

"It hurts you to think that it's been allowed to deteriorate to that degree."

Ms Dyer said often it was visitors, not tenants themselves, that were causing problems.

"Often those visitors get abusive and try and climb over the high gates and cause a lot of issues," she said.

A former Labor voter until the last NT election when she backed an independent candidate, Ms Dyer said she supported the CLP's three strikes policy.

"Hopefully it means that tenants that have caused issues don't necessarily get kicked out, that they actually take advantage of the first strike and do something about the behaviour that's affecting the neighbourhood," she said.

"I don't want to see people lose their home, but I don't think that we can keep on keeping on with behaviour in public housing that seems to have been accepted as it's just Karama, it's just Malak.

"Everybody deserves to live a peaceful life in their own home."