policy and advocacy
“Our connection to country is an umbilical cord”
Mark Yingiya Guyula MLA
There are approximately 100 in the Northern Territory
Remote Aboriginal communities
First emerging in the 1970s, there are now 43 town camps in the Territory
Homelessness
Homelessness in the Northern Territory is unlike anywhere else. In some ways it is harder to see because, as Neil Willmet (CEO of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Queensland) said at our 2023 conference that ‘Overcrowding is homelessness’.
Around Australia, 11% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in crowded housing. More than half (56%) of Aboriginal Territorians do.
Severely overcrowded housing is just one manifestation of homelessness in the Territory. Another is the phenomenon of ‘long grassers’: Aboriginal people living in green areas of Darwin. Perhaps they came for family or health reasons and then became stuck, with no money to return. One solution is to practice a longstanding cultural tradition and camp outdoors. It might be consistent with culture; but this is also, unequivocally, homelessness.
How bad is it?
According to the national census, between 2016 and 2021, the homelessness rate among Aboriginal Territorians dropped by 6.1%. Per capita the NT has more homeless people than anywhere else in Australia – and almost all homeless people here are Aboriginal. So it’s good to know that homelessness has declined a little. But among people over 55 years old, homelessness grew by 13.4%.
What should we do?
Homelessness is a sign of a broken housing system and clearly, the system fails Aboriginal Territorians more than anyone else in Australia. A market-based approach to housing will never fix homelessness. Of course, homeless people need services to support them, but ultimately we need to transform the system so that Aboriginal people have the kind of home they want.
A good first step for AHNT is to help raise awareness and understanding of homelessness. In 2024 the Council to Homeless Persons‘ Parity magazine will focus for the first time on the Northern Territory. AHNT is supporting that issue by sharing the call for papers and encouraging contributions.
Image credit: Letter from 1964 recommending Mr Limerick Jangala and his family be allocated a Housing Commission home. National Archives of Australia, E155, 1958/27, p33
Land tenure
Aboriginal Territorians won land rights in 1976
Since the Commonwealth Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA), land tenure arrangements in the Northern Territory are unique. The ALRA is legal recognition of the Aboriginal system of land custody, and enables groups to win freehold title to their traditional lands (if and only if those lands are vacant Crown lands). Former reserves became Aboriginal lands overnight. Over time, about half of all land in the Northern Territory returned to Aboriginal hands.
Land that is subject to the ALRA is inalienable. In other words it cannot be bought, sold or transferred. It can only be leased.
Land rights ≠ building rights
Aboriginal people wanting to build on Aboriginal land – even their own ancestral land – must apply, through the land council, for a lease under section 19 of the ALRA. It takes a long time because all of the traditional owners must agree. For traditional owners wanting to build a home, the process is strange. It’s your land yet you need permission to build; and if your application succeeds, you must enter a lease with the land trust whose job it is to represent you and your mob.
Section 19 leases are also used to gain government investment in infrastructure for essential services. If the lease is for more than 40 years, the Commonwealth Minister for Indigenous Affairs must also approve.
Homelands housing
ALRA strengthened the homelands movement. Once people had successfully reclaimed land, they could settle on it and begin to build infrastructure. But even beyond the requisite lease, there are obstacles to building housing on homelands:
- As well as an s.19 lease and money to build, you need to ensure access to supplies of water and power, and a way to dispose of waste, including sewage. If the homeland has those systems in place, they may be at capacity.
- Given how stretched homelands service providers tend to be, it will likely be reluctant to add your dwelling to its roster for services, maintenance and repairs – unless or until the NT Government has recognised and agreed to fund your dwelling.
AHNT is working with land councils and both governments to consider ways Aboriginal people could be empowered to build housing on their ancestral lands without lengthy delays and with no erosion of land rights. Alternative governance models such as community land trusts may indicate a way forward.
Townships and township leasing
In 2006, the Australian Government amended the ALRA to include section 19A, which created the ‘township lease’ – like a section 19 lease but over an entire community.
By default the lessor is the (Commonwealth) Executive Director of Township Leasing (EDTL). In 2017 an alternative ‘community entity model’ (CEM) became available, which allowed an Aboriginal corporation to hold the township lease. A community may enter into a township lease under the default model and later change to a CEM.
Under a township lease, the head lessee (either the EDTL or the Aboriginal corporation) grants subleases to tenants and each party has clear responsibilities. For example, tenants must pay a commercial rent. Community residents can apply to buy or build a new house in the township through a long-term sublease, and they can use that sublease to obtain a loan. Subleases are transferrable to someone else – unlike with a s.19 lease, where if you want to transfer your lease, you must return to the land council.
The EDTL can also sublease to the NT Government so that the NT Government can provide housing, infrastructure and essential services. They have done this in communities on the Tiwi Islands, the Groote archipelago and in Mutijulu (though the latter is subject to a land trust).
Remote communities
Most remote communities are on land held under ALRA. Around 71 remote communities – 65 on the mainland and 6 island communities – are eligible to enter into a township lease. Since the Intervention in 2007, remote communities all exist under a lease between the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments. That means it’s easier to invest in housing in remote communities; but it also means that land rights have been compromised.
Town camps & Community living areas
Town camps
In Alice Springs, title for each of the 17 town camps is held by a housing association under a perpetual lease (either a special-purpose lease under the Special Purposes Leases Act (NT) 1953 or a Crown lease under the Crown Lands Act (NT) 1992.
Community living areas
Of the 100+ community living areas (CLAs) in the NT, 12 have housing leases. It’s the NT Government that administers CLAs and grants housing leases.
Always more need than supply
Thousands of Aboriginal people across NT homelands live in a near-invisible housing crisis. (We don’t actually know how many people live on homelands. It could be 10,000 but it could be many more.) We do know that:
- there are many more residents than houses to shelter them
- there has been no funding for new houses for a decade
- what housing does exist is dilapidated, energy intensive to run, and in many cases beyond economic repair.
To ensure AHNT has an accurate view of existing homelands infrastructure and housing – and a good understanding of the need for new housing and improved services – our engagement officers regularly travel to visit homelands. We also devote a full day of our annual conference to presentations and discussion of homelands. And we are lobbying hard to have homelands included in the next funding agreement for remote housing.
Essential services
Water and sanitation
Everyone has the right to water, sanitation & clean energy, even in the tropical Top End, but especially in Central Australia, many Aboriginal people lack reliable access to clean drinking water.
The NT Government provides water to the four urban centres and 73 remote communities. For community living areas and homelands, there is usually a bore, which may be run on mains power, solar or a diesel generator. Some remote locations also have rainwater tanks.
Power
Energy security is a major issue for Aboriginal Territorians, in solar hotspots such as the Barkly.
In public housing, there are limited programs converting electricity systems to solar, or to include rooftop solar panels as part of any standard new build.
Various organisations are working hard in the Territory demonstrating the possibilities of clean energy in homelands, townships and in public housing. The below video is a beautiful example, focused on the Borroloola solar communities project.
Aboriginal housing in Aboriginal hands
The core of our work and the very vision of our founders is ‘Aboriginal housing in Aboriginal hands’. ‘Building the community-controlled sector’ is also one of four priority reforms in the whole-of-government plan for Closing the Gap.
Aboriginal people have made their own homes for millenia and they continued to do so after colonisation. It is only very recently that Aboriginal housing has been conceived and constructed for Aboriginal people.It is, refreshingly, only now that we can find innovative examples of Aboriginal people designing and building their own houses.
Community organisations are building up their capability and their capacity. AHNT believes that community housing providers are strengthened when they register and comply with the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH).
For their part, government agencies need to relinquish control – and funding – to enable the community sector to grow strong – a challenge for organisations whose purpose is to govern.
We continue to work towards a new Indigenous housing authority to govern the system. For now, we are contributing to research and modelling to gain an understanding of the possibilities.
Aboriginal-led design and construction
- In collaboration with traditional owners and homelands service providers, we support Aboriginal-led design and construction of housing using local materials and labour. See Homeland communities designing and building for themselves (PDF, 14mb) – architect Paul Haar’s presentation to AHNT directors in July 2023.
- Wilya Janta is a collaboration between Warumungu people and allies working to design and build houses fit for both culture and climate .
