The head of the peak body representing Alice Springs town camps has called for their 40-year leases with the government to be torn up just five years after they were signed, saying residents have been left without homes or essential amenities for months at a time.

The affordable housing corporation that acts as a medium between tenants and government said the NT government’s public housing department, Territory Housing, was failing in its obligations to keep the public housing residents in safe and hygienic housing.

The chief executive of the Tangentyere Council peak body, Walter Shaw, told Guardian Australia the original agreement was a “farce”. He said the council had identified several possible serious breaches by the government but declined to detail them, citing current legal action.

The town camps, whose residents are from particular central Australian language groups, are enclosed Aboriginal housing communities on the edge of Alice Springs, with a history of violence and poverty.

In 2009 the federal government moved to take control of the camps, leading to 15 signing leases in return for $150m in funding for housing and social services under the Alice Springs transformation plan (ASTP).

“We should do away with the leases,” Shaw said. “We’ve lived long enough under the sublease agreement … It’s meeting its frailty point.”



Guardian Australia visited four of Alice Springs’ town camps with Shaw: Larapinta Valley, Trucking Yards, Walpiri and Mount Nancy.



Mount Nancy, where Shaw lives, has a mixed standard of houses, but has not had streetlighting for 15 years. Rubbish overflows from wheelie bins at Walpiri, and a building refurbished by Tangentyere sits empty at Trucking Yards, waiting for operational funding so a new community and childcare centre can open. “Two years ago it was a shell, with homeless people living in it,” Shaw said.

Larapinta and Trucking Yards do not meet subdivision standards to warrant all municipal services from the Alice Springs council, according to Shaw, despite the presence of streetlights and paved roads with kerbing.

“In a real world, they would look like any small suburban area of Alice Springs,” Shaw said.

“The three town camps that have been upgraded to the extent where there are footpaths, electricity, roading and kerbing, they don’t even qualify to be up to subdivision standard.”

Shaw pointed to the numerous services and enterprises of Tangentyere council as evidence it and the housing associations were capable of taking back full control. The council, which received more than $16.6m in government and private funding in 2012-13, currently has partial responsibility for some services, such as rubbish collection.

The council’s Alice Springs offices are a hub of services for the community, including aged care, laundry, an industrial kitchen to prepare meals, a bank branch, centrelink office, and an employment assistance and training centre. Enterprises including an art studio and gallery, and a construction company with a focus on local Indigenous employment, are also on site.

Indigenous housing programs in the NT have been fraught with controversy, mismanagement and poor costing. In 2012 it was revealed most of the 85 houses built in town camps since the agreement needed repairs due to poor construction.

The chief executive of the Central Australian Affordable Housing Company, Sally Langton, said the relationship between her organisation and the NT government was mired in red tape.

“I find the process to be very bureaucratic, very slow, very frustrating, and particularly frustrating for the people in the town camps,” she said.

Langton said it could take “months on months” for a potential resident to receive approval for a house, leaving the house empty and someone potentially homeless in the meantime. In the four years to 2012 waiting times for a one-bedroom dwelling for an elderly resident increased by 411% to 46 months.

The response times and workmanship of repairs by Territory Housing and its contractors were “completely disgraceful”, Langton said, listing plumbing, stoves, and air conditioning among items regularly left unfixed for months.

Under the residents’ tenancy agreement with Territory Housing “the landlord has a set of obligations … to keep the property maintained and in good order and not a health and safety risk,” Langton said.

“But there’s no evidence that they’re complying with that part of the legislation.”

CAAHC is also responsible for chasing up rent arrears and rebate forms from tenants, but an estimated 85% of letters do not make it to residents because postal services are inadequate.

The NT department of housing said it had improved the management of contracts for tenancies and stepped up staff training.

But Langton said CAAHC had received no real response to its inquiries from Territory Housing, despite repeated follow ups from some residents.

The NT minister for housing, Bess Price, said the ASTP had “delivered long lasting improvements in town camps” and pointed to about $5m in community investment.

“The Northern Territory government continues to work with the Australian government to enhance service delivery across town camps to ensure residents have access to services and opportunities that are available to residents of other suburbs of Alice Springs,” she said.

Greg Roche, head of the statutory body overseeing township leasing, said he had been aware of complaints for some time, and in his view “the issue of service provision cannot be fully addressed until the Northern Territory government puts in place longer term arrangements to clarify its role in relation to the Alice Springs town camps.”

In June the NT government announced a review into housing policies, including examining affordable housing initiatives, social housing demands and how the government can “better work in partnership with community housing providers”.