‘I feel very lucky’: After three months couch-surfing with four children, this Darwin mum has a home

Brooklyn Liddle knows a lot about real estate for a second grader.

The bubbly primary school student and her family have spent months without a home, but now all that has changed.

“The goodest thing about this home is that I have my own bedroom,” Brooklyn explains.

The youngest of four holds the purple keys to her new home.

As the only girl, she doesn’t have to share her new space with her siblings and excitedly talks through where the furniture and toys will go.

For parents Murray and Sarah Liddle the past months have been extremely difficult. Their relief at having a home again is palpable.

Brooklyn Liddle poses in her new family kitchen Source: NITV / Laetitia Lemke

Both parents work full time in community services helping people affected by domestic violence. They were shocked to find themselves in need of help.

“It’s just scary!” Sarah Liddle says.

“It’s a scary time trying to get a house through the rental market.”

The Liddle family from Alice Springs and Peppimenarti ran into trouble when the homeowner they were leasing from sold their Darwin rental.

“They gave us a month to move out,” Mrs Liddle says.

“In that time we just weren’t able to find anything.”

Surviving on the generosity of others

The Liddle family with three of their four children outside their new home Source: NITV / Laetitia Lemke

With four school aged children the family was thrust into a desperate situation.

They sought help from relatives. For the last three months they’ve been living with almost a dozen people in a three-bedroom Palmerston home.

The generosity of their extended family meant most of the family of six could stay together, but it was hard.

“It became stressful coming home … it throws you out of whack living in other people’s houses,” Murray Liddle says.

They say the home was so crowded they had to send their teenager away to boarding school.

The remaining siblings are now talking excitedly about what he’ll think of the new home when he returns for Easter.

“We just moved into our new house after living at our Aunty’s house for three months,” school student Bradley Liddle says.

“It was really squishy in there, there was not enough space, so it’s going to be way better in the new house.”

90 per cent of unhoused people in NT are First Nations

Bradley Liddle looks through his new home Source: NITV / Laetitia Lemke

The Liddle family are one of 42 to be accommodated as part of Yilli Rreung Aboriginal Corporation’s expanded housing program.

Funded with $20 million dollars in royalties from mining on Aboriginal land, the investment from the Aboriginal Benefits Account is expected to make a difference.

“We’ll be able to offer to our people the opportunity to move into these houses at a subsidised rental rate,” Yilli Rreung Housing Aboriginal Corporation’s Operation Manager, John Adams says.

Yilli has already purchased 16 of the 42 new homes to be rented to low-income first nations families in the greater Darwin area.

The funding is desperately needed according to the Territory’s peak body for affordable housing and homelessness. Figures from NT Shelter show about 2,600 families in the Greater Darwin Area are on housing wait lists.

Social housing waitlists are up to a decade long, creating pressure on the private market.

“We have seen waitlists in Darwin grow by 23 per cent over the last 3 years alone. 87 per cent of housing applicants identify as First Nations people,” NT Shelter CEO Peter McMillan says.

“For this reason alone, the focus on providing more housing for Aboriginal families is incredibly important.”

He says rates of homelessness in the NT are 12 times higher than any other state or territory, and almost 90 per cent of those affected are First Nations.

Yilli’s Operations Manager John Adams said there are also additional hurdles for first nation’s renters.

“Our people struggle to get into the rental market, there is some bias there, so this program will alleviate some of that for at least 40 families,” Mr Adams says.

That rings true for the Liddle family who felt stonewalled by the private rental market.

“It’s sad to think like that,” Sarah Liddle says.

“[Real estate agents] don’t really look at us, we don’t even get any response or email to say that we haven’t got the place.”

Murray Liddle stopped going into the inspections saying people were “perturbed by his appearance.”

Murray Liddle sits outside against the pink wall of his new house, He is wearing a green and yellow polo. Source: NITV / Laetitia Lemke

“They think that because I am Aboriginal I am unable to pay rent,” he suggests.

“We are a hard-working family and I just want to provide the best life for my kids.

“We just want an opportunity and that’s what Yilli has given us and we are very grateful.”

Mrs Liddle says Murray would send her in alone or with the children, “because I’m lighter skin,” she explains touching her forearm, “[and] maybe I’ll pass as a white person.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with painter Tony Wurramara in the community of Binjari in the Northern Territory Source: NITV / Laetitia Lemke

The Labor member for Solomon released a statement celebrating the expansion of Yilli Rreung’s housing stock.

He says the Commonwealth’s fast tracking of 100 new homes as part of the $50 Million Social Housing Accelerator payment will also help.

“Most of [these homes] will be located in Darwin and Palmerston – and made available to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Territorians,” Luke Gosling says.

The housing and homelessness sector has welcomed the federal support, but says more is needed.

With negotiations on a new national partnership underway the sector is hoping any agreement allocates funds to where they are needed most, saying that means basing funding on need rather than population.

For at least one family, the housing crisis is over.

“It’s somewhere we can hopefully make some memories and you know have some good times and just live a life that you know these young kids deserve,” Murray Liddles says.

Their subsidised rent is 419 a week for a four bedroom home in Moulden, giving them the opportunity to start saving for a house deposit.

“We’re so grateful… to have our own home again,” Sarah Liddle says.

“I feel very lucky.”

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