One evening, just hours after paying rent, Emma — whose name has been changed for privacy and security reasons — and her housemate were made homeless.
It began with a disagreement with their head tenant, acting as their landlord, over the cause of a stain in their share house in Palmerston, a satellite city of Darwin.
“He [became] very abusive and disrespectful to us, and that evening he came barging into our rooms asking us to leave,” she said.
Emma says she and her housemate left their rental property out of concern for their safety. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)
Emma locked herself in the bathroom and called the police.
When police arrived, they explained Emma and her housemate were entitled to a certain number of days to leave the property, but there was little else they could do.
Due to the perceived danger, Emma and her housemate chose to leave immediately.
“The fact that he seemed completely unfazed by [the] police presence really shook us up, and we left out of concern for our own safety,” she said.
A note Emma’s former housemate was given by the head tenant, instructing them to vacate the rental. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)
While nearly 50 per cent of people living in the Northern Territory are renters, according to Darwin Community Legal Service (DCLS) data, legal services and affordable housing bodies say the territory has the worst rental laws in the country.
Alongside WA, the NT is one of just two jurisdictions in Australia in which no-grounds evictions are still legal.
The Northern Territory is also the only jurisdiction in which landlords can issue more than one rent increase in a year.
It also lacks an independent bond board and minimum standards for the condition of rental houses.
Melisa Coveney says renters can be shocked to find their lease terminated without notice in the NT, where no-grounds evictions are legal. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)
DCLS principal lawyer Melisa Coveney said tenancy disputes made up about 40 per cent of appointments with the organisation.
“Because of the current housing crisis, a lot of people are forced into insecure accommodation such as share houses or boarding and lodging arrangements,” she said.
“Because it’s become more common now, they need to have adequate protections in place, and at the moment those protections are not adequate.”
Greater Darwin a ‘landlord’s market’
With some of the highest rents and the lowest house prices of any capital city in the country, property specialists say renting in Darwin is tricky enough without factoring in rental protections.
New data from Domain shows as of September, the average rental price for a house in Darwin was $720 per week, second only to Sydney, with interstate investors believed to be driving much of the demand.
The data also shows the vacancy rate in the NT capital has dropped to just 0.4 per cent.
Nicola Powell says landlords in Darwin “definitely have the upper hand”. (ABC News: Jack Ailwood)
Meanwhile, Domain chief researcher Nicola Powell said Darwin house prices had continued to surge in recent years, despite stagnating in some other capital cities.
“When we look at the vacancy rate in Darwin over the last 12 months, it’s pretty much halved over that period of time,” she said.
“Landlords definitely have the upper hand. It’s a landlord’s market.”
NT Shelter chief executive Annie Taylor said the flip side of a landlord’s market was an inaccessible rental landscape for tenants, especially for those who face no-grounds evictions or back-to-back rent increases.
Annie Taylor says minimum standards for heating and cooling are particularly important in the NT due to its climate. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)
“It’s an incredibly tough time to be a renter in the Northern Territory,” she said.
“We know there are people in the Northern Territory who leave because renting is just too tough, particularly with those low levels of renter protections, the worst in the country.”
Roadmap forward already laid out
Ms Taylor said while the NT was lagging on rental protections, policies such as National Cabinet’s Better Deal for Renters, established in 2023, provided a clear way forward.
The deal lays out nine rental provisions that can be implemented by state and territory governments, in the hope of achieving a nationally consistent policy.
In the two years since the policy was introduced, only four of the nine provisions have been implemented in the NT.
Ms Taylor said some of the provisions that go beyond rental security, such as establishing minimum standards for rental properties, were just as vital to renters in the territory as elsewhere.
Annie Taylor says the type of housing available in the NT should include more social and affordable options. (ABC News: Michael Franchi)
“In other jurisdictions there’s minimum standards for heating and cooling, which is really important in the Northern Territory when you think about our climate,” she said.
Ms Taylor said the NT government needed to be smart about the type of housing available.
NT’s rising cost of living pushing families into housing stress
“We really need to be rapidly increasing the supply of social and affordable housing in the Territory to really alleviate some of those pressures on the private rental market but also on the social housing waitlist, which in our urban centres is up to 10 years,” she said.
For tenants like Emma and her former housemate, such reforms can’t come soon enough.
“I know there are laws and processes like through NTCAT, but all of those processes take a long time, and when you’re in a vulnerable situation you don’t have that kind of time,” she said.
“I feel like there need to be laws and regulations in place that protect tenants just as much as they protect landlords.”
The NT government did not respond to a request for comment.
