Remote Indigenous housing and home ownership

Until recently, most housing in remote Indigenous communities in Australia has been provided through a community housing model which has been funded by governments under a variety of different programs. This has altered significantly in the period since 2007, when the Australia Government began implementing a shift from community housing to mainstream public housing. This has been accompanied – particularly in larger communities – by a formalisation of the legal and tenure arrangements for tenancy management.

On a much smaller scale, the Australian Government has also recently taken steps towards the introduction of home ownership in remote Indigenous communities. This reform is most advanced in the Tiwi Islands of the Northern Territory, but the number of participants remains small.

Both reforms gives rise to several  legal and policy issues, connected primarily to the cultural context of those communities, their remote location and the interaction between new housing management policies and the legacy of earlier approaches. This project aims to produce better informed research with respect to several of these issues.