Aboriginal community housing 1970-present
Since the 1970s, dedicated housing for Aboriginal people has been owned and/or managed by Aboriginal community housing providers. The sector faced a number of challenges and in 1998 the Aboriginal Housing Office was established. One of its roles is to support and regulate the sector.
Aboriginal community housing is owned and/or managed by Aboriginal community housing providers, including Local Aboriginal Land Councils, and rented to community members, usually at a subsidised cost (). Aboriginal community housing providers are usually not-for-profit or volunteer organisations that exclusively serve Aboriginal communities (). They may provide a range of housing services including crisis accommodation, transitional housing, social housing, and home-ownership programs ().
In the mid 1970s, Aboriginal community organisations were increasingly established to own and manage housing (). The policies and programs behind this were generally Commonwealth government initiatives (), in particular the Community Housing and Infrastructure Program which began in 1982 ().
It has been estimated that 7500 homes were purchased between 1971 and 1988 across Australia through Commonwealth grants to Aboriginal community organisations (). There has been criticism that this occurred without any plan, strategy or policy ‘on the proliferation and location of these new Aboriginal community organisations’ ().
After Local Aboriginal Land Councils were established across NSW in 1983, housing gradually became part of the business of many of those Councils. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW) gave Aboriginal Land Councils the function ‘to acquire, construct, upgrade or extend residential accommodation for Aboriginal persons in its area’ (). This included former reserves and the housing on them (see SUB0305 for more information about housing on reserves).
In the 1990s, Local Aboriginal Land Councils and other Aboriginal housing organisations also started to own and manage dwellings acquired under the Housing Aboriginal Communities Program, which was funded under the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. No recurrent funding was provided to the managing organisations ().
The Aboriginal community housing sector faced a number of challenges including the small size of many of the organisations, allocating properties in small communities, rent setting, backlogs in maintenance and refusal to pay rent in some circumstances (, , ). Further, Local Aboriginal Land Councils managing housing on former reserves inherited housing in a very poor state (see SUB0305).
However, it has been observed that in Indigenous specific housing, ‘policies, practices, organisational values and staff were informed by and adapted to align with Indigenous values and cultural norms and were generally more flexible and personal’ ().
At a state level, the NSW Government released a Housing Policy Green Paper in December 1995 which said addressing self-determination ‘by increasing options for [Aboriginal people] to manage their own programs and services’ was a key priority and foreshadowed the possible establishment of an ‘Indigenous Housing Agency’ ().
In 1998, the Aboriginal Housing Office (AHO) was established (see SUB0282). One of the objects of the Aboriginal Housing Act 1998 (NSW) was to ‘ensure that registered Aboriginal housing organisations are accountable, effective and skilled in the delivery of Aboriginal housing programs and services’ (). To do this, the law required Aboriginal housing organisations to register with the AHO to ‘be eligible for funding… [and] to receive assistance such as training and support in undertaking their property and tenancy management functions’ ().
In 2006, changes were made to the Aboriginal Land Rights Act to introduce the concept of ‘community benefits schemes’, and to set out some specific requirements for community benefits schemes for social housing (). This included a requirement that the NSW Aboriginal Land Council must approve these schemes and could only approve them if satisfied that the income would be sufficient to meet the expenses. It also included the ability for Aboriginal Land Councils to use the services of another housing provider.
At this time, Land Councils owned ‘around 2,500 social housing homes, spread across over 110 land councils’ (). When introducing the amendments, the Minister acknowledged ‘A major cause of financial problems for many Aboriginal land councils is their provision of social housing’ ().
In 2008, Australian Governments agreed to enter the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing (NPARIH) (). One of the ‘outputs’ from the Agreement was said to be ‘robust and standardised tenancy management of all remote Indigenous housing that ensures rent collection, asset protection and governance arrangements consistent with public housing standards’ (). Where Aboriginal Community Housing Providers were funded, governments ‘imposed more stringent conditions in relation to professionalism and sustainable tenancy management’ ().
In NSW, the Build and Grow Aboriginal Community Housing Strategy was the AHO’s strategy for the Aboriginal Community Housing Sector following the NPARIH. It introduced a new ‘state-wide standard for Aboriginal housing and tenancy management’ (), including an ‘expanded, more thorough registration system’ known as the ‘Provider Assessment and Registration System’, or PARS. Aboriginal community housing providers had to be registered under that system to be eligible for maintenance work on their houses and to receive operating subsidies. To receive maintenance funding, providers that did not meet the registration requirements had to headlease their properties to the AHO who would then sub-lease the houses to an eligible provider who would rent the houses to the tenant ().
The new assessment standards were rigorous and aligned with the standards required of non-Aboriginal community housing providers. They have been described as ‘hard to achieve and maintain for many smaller Aboriginal housing entities, especially land councils’ (). From 2012, the NSW Aboriginal Land Council introduced an approval process for its approval of social housing schemes run by Land Councils ().
In 2015, the AHO released a new corporate plan which proposed that all NSW Aboriginal housing organisations must register under the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH) (). This was a system that commenced in 2013 for mainstream community housing providers across four Australian states (including NSW) and the territories (). In return, the AHO promised the transfer of homes, newly built dwellings and funding for home ownership packages ().
In 2019, the AHO’s new 10 year strategy Strong Family, Strong Communities began (). One of its four ‘pillars’ is ‘Growing the Sector’. The implementation plan recognises that Aboriginal providers are ‘best placed to deliver culturally appropriate services to their communities’. It aimed to transfer the management of up to 1500 AHO properties to the Aboriginal Community Housing sector to build scale ().
From 2021, certain providers registered under the NRSCH, or the ‘NSW Local Scheme’ (an alternative scheme that accommodated Land Councils who could not register under the National Scheme due to technical requirements () were finally transferred management of AHO homes, as was originally envisaged when the AHO was established in 1998. From 2021-22, 1440 tenancies were transferred to Aboriginal community housing providers ().
An independent Aboriginal housing peak body was established in 2020. The NSW Aboriginal Community Housing Industry Association’s purpose includes to develop and support policy which promotes a more just housing system for Aboriginal people and support the development of best practice in the provision of housing for Aboriginal people ().
The law and policy in this subject is accurate as of 1 April 2024.