Sustainable Indigenous housing in regional and remote Australia

Abstract

A new report released today, undertaken by researchers from University of Sydney, University of Adelaide and University of Tasmania examines the sustainability of Indigenous housing in regional and remote Australia. The research explores how housing stock can be maintained at high levels over time while considering the impacts of climate change and ensuring positive health and wellbeing outcomes for householders.

The report finds that current regional and remote Indigenous housing stock is unable to provide consistently healthy and comfortable indoor environments. Operating and maintenance costs are three times greater for remote housing than in capital cities, so developing strategies to reduce these costs is a key goal. The adoption of life-cycle costing (LCC) frameworks offer potential to reduce expensive responsive repair work while guaranteeing amenity to householders.

This report also finds attention to climate change is not yet a feature of Indigenous housing and infrastructure agreements, with inadequate funding and attention paid to climate preparedness in new builds, refurbishments and retrofit programs. This is despite the impact of extreme temperature on both householder wellbeing and health hardware.