Despite many years of investment and policies to increase and improve remote Aboriginal housing, the community of Tennant Creek continue to experience insufficient and substandard public housing. Infectious diseases linked to poor housing and overcrowding are chronically present and are being exacerbated by increasingly hot weather; and housing layouts restrict cultural practice. Newly constructed public houses continue to be built without community engagement or in response to the local environmental conditions. Improved community housing delivery models are urgent for remote Australia.
Community leaders of Wilya Janta (Standing Strong) in Tennant Creek are driving innovation in climate adaptation through the adoption of Indigenous-led design processes, to show how to cost-effectively build culturally and climate appropriate homes. The aim of this project – Coming home, Making home, Valuing home: A health and wellbeing evidence-base for Aboriginal cultural and climate appropriate community-designed homes – is to comprehensively evaluate the feasibility of this scalable community housing design model to contribute to the evidence-base of Indigenous-led adaptations that are greatly needed to help address our changing climate.
