Housing and homelessness

The Northern Territory Government is currently developing the Northern Territory Community Housing Growth Strategy 2021-2030.

The Salvation Army welcomes the efforts by the Northern Territory Government to grow community housing via additional income streams, tax benefits and exemptions, subsidies, access to targeted financing vehicles and other service delivery and social outcomes, as an important component of the overall housing and homelessness response.

The Salvation Army’s contribution acknowledges the unique and complex factors that contextualise the development and delivery of housing and other services in the Northern Territory. These factors include the unique demographic profile, geographic size, remoteness, as well as the critical historic and cultural realities experienced by Indigenous individuals and communities living in the Territory.

Our response:

• Highlights some of the objectives, principles and actions required to enable and deliver growth in community housing in the Northern Territory.
• States that housing must be designed and delivered in a way that reflective of the needs of different people, and responsive to the changes in these needs.
• Identifies actions that will enable people to access community housing, sustain their tenancies and move between different options based on their particular needs.
• Identifies capability gaps across the system that must be considered to enable the growth of the sector in the Northern Territory.
• Highlights issues that need to be considered in the planning and implementation of the Northern Territory Community Housing Growth Strategy.

We recommend that the growth of community housing will require much more than title or management transfers and access to national revenue streams to affect meaningful change in social housing in the short to medium term. Substantial direct government investment, similar to the commitment in Victoria, as well as access to land, changes to local planning laws, inclusionary zoning and the development of partnerships across government, business and communities must all be assessed and measured for their role in ensuring access to appropriate, affordable housing.

The Salvation Army is continuing our advocacy efforts to support community members with a lived experience of homelessness in the Northern Territory and the rest of Australia to gain access to appropriate and affordable housing.