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Up to 150 residents at a Darwin homeless shelter will be relocated 100 kilometres south to Batchelor after the site's owner and the Northern Territory and federal governments could not agree on a funding arrangement.
Rose Laynbalaynba says she will struggle to attend her job at Charles Darwin University if she has to relocate to Batchelor when the YiSSA facility closes.
The Northern Territory government has announced residents at a Darwin homeless shelter will be moved south to Batchelor after negotiations over the site's future failed to reach a resolution. Some residents affected by the move say they will struggle to access jobs and services from outside the NT capital. The government says the new facility will be ready for residents to move in when the Darwin facility closes on October 11.
Up to 150 people in transitional accommodation in Darwin will be relocated 100 kilometres south to the regional town of Batchelor when the Batten Road homeless shelter in Marrara closes next month. Northern Territory Children and Families Minister Robyn Cahill today announced the new facility would be stood up alongside emergency evacuation accommodation by October 11.
Ms Cahill said the decision to relocate the residents had come after negotiations with the owner of the YiSSA site in Darwin, Ausco , stalled amid a failed $3.5 million Commonwealth intervention. Speaking to the media in Batchelor this morning, Ms Cahill said a number of options had been explored but the site was "the best option" that was available before AusCo's lease ended.
Robyn Cahill says many of the 230 adults and 150 children who had been living at the YiSSA facility have already been transitioned out. Ms Cahill said the government had been working to transition as many of the roughly 380 people who had been staying at YiSSA into alternative accommodation ahead of the move.
"There are a number of other people who have been on the housing list for quite some time but the work hadn’t been done to progress that," she said. "We’ve been able to actually get people on the housing list, into appropriate housing accommodation, we’ve got around 30 people who we’ve relocated back to their country, which is fantastic.
"We’ve got support from other community service providers who have a better arrangement for some of the people who need additional support in that facility and the we are left with around about 100 people that we’re still working with to see what their long-term prospect will be. "So for those people, they’ll be able to come to the new facility and we’ll continue to work with them to find their long-term permanent accommodation solution.
"Rose Laynbalaynba said she had been living at the Darwin shelter with her children for about two-and-a-half years while working as a language and culture lecturer at Charles Darwin University. The new facility will sit alongside an up evacuation centre that was stood up for residents affected by devastating flooding in the region earlier this year.
"Batchelor is too far for these residents staying at YiSSA," she said. "We need appointments to see the Centrelink, some of us have a job that is part time work. But Ms Cahill said the Darwin facility was never intended to house people who were medically vulnerable and anyone requiring dialysis would "have accommodation provided to them close to where they get those services".
"We have been working very closely with the Department of Health to understand why people who weren’t necessarily the people who Batten Road was intended to assist were accommodated there and we’ve basically discovered that the Health Department weren’t made aware that those people needed that assistance," she said. "These people are assessed for their suitability, they know what is required of them and anyone who needs to be close to medical services will be managed through the normal patient travel and Department of Health services system. "
Robyn Cahill Homeless Shelter Yissa Move Closure Funding Medical Appointments Jobs Services
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