Hundreds of Aboriginal people, including many children, chronic disease patients and DV survivors are facing forced relocation from Yilli Short Stay Accommodation (YiSSA), an Aboriginal community-controlled housing complex in Darwin for people suffering homelessness.
The NT Country Liberal Party (CLP) government is refusing to extend funding for a lease over the complex and has told residents they will need to relocate to a cheaper facility at Batchelor, more than 100 kilometres out of Darwin.
This takes families away from the schools and other essential services they rely on and could push many back into homelessness.
Rose, a YiSSA resident leading the campaign said: “We need places like this to support our children, our sick people, those of us doing a small amount of casual work… What will happen to my sister-in-law, my aunty, others that are renal patients? There will not be any transport.
“This is what the CLP is doing to First Nations people—killing us, destroying us.”
The Indigenous homelessness rate in the NT of 1865 per 10,000 people is more than 50 times the national non-Indigenous rate of 35 per 10,000.
These horrific numbers are getting worse. And under new draconian Child Protection laws passed by the CLP in July, many more Aboriginal children face forced removal from their families due to lack of safe accommodation.
The CLP has seemingly endless funds to lock up Aboriginal people, committing in August to build a new private prison with 1200 beds at a cost of more than $1 billion.
In contrast, the entire site hosting YiSSA could be purchased for just $6.5 million. The Commonwealth has already offered to front half of this cost, a proposal rejected by the CLP as “a waste of hard-earned tax-payers money”.
The campaign group Justice Not Jails (JNJ) is demanding the Commonwealth purchase the site outright and intervene to stop the evictions. More than 4000 people have signed the JNJ petition.
A rally of 250 people against the evictions took place on Wednesday 7 October as Solidarity went to press and residents and supporters have vowed to resist any attempt at forced eviction, scheduled in coming days.
By Paddy Gibson
