Indigenous Home Ownership Panel Discussion

Tom Calma

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner

Royal Australian Institute of Architects
Which way? Directions in Indigenous Housing Conference

Alice Springs, 27 October 2007

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Arrernte people – the traditional owners of the land we are meeting on today and by paying my respects to their ancestors.

I also want to congratulate the Indigenous Housing Taskforce of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) for their initiative to organise this conference on Indigenous housing need.

As in the area of Indigenous health, if we are to ‘close the gaps’ and make sure that Indigenous people enjoy the same basic right to adequate housing as most other Australians – then we need to bring entire sectors together to get things happening.

Let me now turn to the human right to adequate housing
The right to adequate housing is a basic right that many Indigenous Australians do not enjoy.

But it is a human right contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Australia has ratified and is legally bound to implement.

One of the legal obligations on the Australian Government is to regularly report to the UN Expert Committee that oversees government implementation of this international law. And that Committee has said that the right to adequate housing ‘should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity’.^[1]

It has emphasised that the right to housing is linked to other fundamental rights such as the right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health, employment, education and the right to not be discriminated against on the basis of race.

The UN Committee has stated that the right to adequate housing should be irrespective of income or access to economic resources. This means governments must take particular actions to make sure disadvantaged groups are accorded ‘full and sustainable access to adequate housing resources’.^[2] We too should have access to safe drinking water, sanitation, energy sources, privacy and space, and adequate location with regard to work and basic infrastructure.

The UN Committee specifies that housing should be ‘culturally adequate’. And by this, the Committee means that:

‘...the way housing is constructed, the building materials used and the policies supporting these must appropriately enable the expression of cultural identity and diversity of housing’.^[3]

And these cultural dimensions to the right to housing should not be sacrificed in the name of ‘modernisation’ or to accommodate ‘technological improvements’. Rather there is an onus on governments to ensure housing options cater to particular cultural needs, as well as modern design standards – the two are not mutually exclusive goals.

One further aspect of the right to adequate housing is the right to have legal security of tenure, and legal protection against forced eviction, regardless of whether a person is renting, an owner-occupier or living in emergency housing. And I will come back to this point shortly.

I therefore want to congratulate the Royal Australian Institute of Architects on your policy on Indigenous housing – because it incorporates all of these aspects of the basic human right to adequate housing. It is an essential tool to guide your work and ensure that you are meeting the minimum world best practice standards when it comes to Indigenous human rights.

Your work in this regard is very timely given the crisis in Indigenous housing in Australia.

So what is the Australian Government’s position on this? I will not elaborate but refer you to this slide.

The extent of the housing crisis I refer to was the subject of a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Miloon Kothari, following his officially sanctioned visit to Australia in mid 2006. The Rapporteur wrote of being ‘particularly disturbed by the adverse housing conditions in the Indigenous communities he visited ....[i]n both urban and rural areas in all states.’ It was the lack of affordable and culturally appropriate housing, the lack of appropriate support services, the significant levels of poverty and the underlying discrimination that he saw which led him to sum up the situation as a ‘severe housing crisis’ that is likely to worsen in coming years as a result of the rapid rate of population growth in Indigenous communities.^[4].

In 2006, my Native Title Report focused on the Australian Government’s policies to promote economic development on Indigenous-owned land – which is now a little over 20% of the Australian land mass.

In the course of that analysis I looked at Indigenous housing and home ownership for Indigenous Australians who are in a position to achieve these goals. Let me say at the outset that I support Indigenous home ownership and economic development, but I outlined some of the potential pitfalls of building houses to sell to Indigenous people where there are no housing markets and limited employment options. In instances such as these where Indigenous people are borrowing a large percentage of the house cost; if not the total, they may ultimately be struggling with a debt burden that they cannot service over time, and because of the non-existent housing market, they may never realise any profit from the housing asset.

Under these circumstances, there is also risk for lenders such as Indigenous Business Australia. Lending in instances of negative equity create unstable economic conditions as we have seen with sub-prime mortgages in the United States. I have some concerns for my fellow Indigenous Australians – one of the most vulnerable groups in the Australian population – being encouraged to take on increased levels of debt.

To better understand the predicament we need to understand the profile of Indigenous home owners

Indigenous Australians can and do buy our own homes, but those of us who are able to do it, fit the same profile as non-Indigenous home owners. In its 1996 Evaluation of the Home Ownership Program, the Office of Evaluation and Audit observed that the ‘profile of the Indigenous home owner is quite similar to non-Indigenous home owner in Australia,’exhibiting many of the demographic characteristics of their non-Indigenous counterparts including geographic location, employment status and income level. And this profile has not changed in the ten years since the report was released.

In contrast, Indigenous Australians living in remote communities are one of the most disadvantaged groups on every social indicator.

Only a minority of these communities are located in resource-rich areas with well-developed governance structures, and have experience in negotiating agreements, or the capacity to leverage economic opportunities.

The majority of remote communities are located in desert or marginal areas where there is limited or no development potential. They battle with low rates of employment, poor levels of education, and remoteness from basic public services. This means that there is a real risk that if people default on mortgage repayments, they will slip into worse poverty. Given that we are starting to see mortgage defaults amongst the mainstream ‘battlers’ – we cannot pretend remote Indigenous home owners would be any different.

As Robert Knapp indicated yesterday, a compounding housing problem and expense in remote areas is high maintenance costs due to exposure to extreme weather conditions, construction problems, and the fact that contractors and equipment have to be transported into these areas.

With these matters in mind, the question must therefore be asked: if home ownership on its own will not serve as a model, what is the key to prosperity - and to improved housing for Indigenous people in remote areas?

I think the answers are well summarised in the RAIA policy on Indigenous housing – so I won’t reiterate them in the limited time today. But I will highlight a few issues and for your reference I will display a couple of slides that will describe principles of a human rights based approach to engagement.

A pertinent question yesterday was why many people are living on the outside of their houses – on their verandas or in basic structures like we saw in the Utopia clips? I wonder if there is some kind of design flaw that can be addressed? It is imperative that we ask people why they bring their mattresses out of the house for sleeping.

Have you also seen the houses in the top end with the crosses on them or lines painted around them with no inhabitants? We know someone has died in these houses and they can’t be inhabited. I’m sure most of us wonder what could be done to preserve the asset especially if it was a purchaser occupied residence.

The answer obviously is consultation with local people to ensure that housing design meets local needs and that owner loans are not foreclosed.

One aspect of RAIA’s Indigenous housing policy that I would also like to emphasis – because it should be part of any future initiatives to overcome Indigenous disadvantage – is the need to employ local people to ‘keep houses working’.

Overcrowding is a problem in remote, regional and urban Australia. The Steering Committee for Government Service Provision reported that Indigenous people in the community housing sector are 5.6 times more likely to live in overcrowded houses than the non-Indigenous population. The reason for this may partly lie in the cultural situation and obligations of many Indigenous families, with research such the Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission’s ‘Finding a Place’ report identifying that too often, ‘Aboriginal families become de facto emergency housing providers for family and friends as the result of the lack of adequate housing stock’.

Not only can the resulting overcrowding in houses lead to serious health problems and the increased possibility of abuse situations occurring, but it can also lead to ongoing problems relating to tenancy eligibility. Breach of tenancy agreements by overcrowding, and resulting anti-social behaviour complaints by neighbours can also be lasting strikes on the record of Indigenous people’s tenancy records, which can lead to them being moved down the list in the allocation of public housing. Although this form of discrimination is, in most cases, indirect, it can still lead to a disproportionate number of Indigenous families waiting much longer than they should for adequate and suitable housing. Again sustained and appropriate consultation with local communities and planning will go a long way to alleviating some of these problems.

The RAIA Indigenous housing policy acknowledges that houses need to be;

Better designed with the inclusion of more bedrooms and bathrooms to meet the needs of larger Indigenous families, and
They need to be lasting and durable in order to be an investment that does not require constant service maintenance and upkeep.

The Australian Housing and Research Institute’s report Indigenous Access to Mainstream Public and Community Housing identified that Indigenous community housing; if properly managed, plays a unique role in maintaining cultural identity. This will be the challenge for the mainstream housing sector. In particular, community housing that meets the need of Indigenous clients requires appropriate service delivery mechanisms, realistic debt management processes, appropriate training for staff and volunteers in the community housing sector, and the establishment and maintenance of links with the local community and with support services.

I therefore want to express my support for the reference in the RAIA policy on Indigenous housing for the need for there to be mandatory curriculum content on Indigenous cultural awareness in all accredited tertiary architectural, building and planning courses.

This awareness of the historical and contemporary reasons for entrenched Indigenous disadvantage is critical if the architects and planners of tomorrow are to understand their Indigenous clients, have the capacity to better meet our needs, and have us work along side you as professional peers.

I cannot emphasise enough how important the leadership of professional bodies like RAIA is to drive this kind of change in our institutions of learning and in the political arena. It takes real commitment and determination to convince many of the powers that be that they have a responsibility to help overcome Indigenous disadvantage – and that changing curricula and changing mindsets are the keys to changing attitudes and opening up new opportunities for national reconciliation.

So in conclusion, as I outlined at the beginning of this speech, the fundamental intersection between housing and quality of life for Indigenous people means that all of you, in your professional lives, can and must continue to take steps that will improve the lives of Indigenous people in your area of work.

If we follow the principles outlined in a human rights approach to engagement, if we follow the principles of free, prior and informed consent (slide 8), if we continue to provide affordable and durable public and community housing and if we provide the capacity for affordable home loans for those who have an inclination to purchase a home – then we will assist Indigenous people to realise “their Australian dream”.

I hope that in doing so, we will collectively contribute to a growing sense of optimism among both black and white Australians that there can be social justice and reconciliation in our lifetime. Slide 9

Thank you

^[1] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 4: The right to adequate housing, Sixth Session, 13 December 1991, Para 7.
^[2] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 4: The right to adequate housing, Sixth Session, 13 December 1991, Para 8(e).
^[3] Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 4: The right to adequate housing, Sixth Session, 13 December 1991, Para 8(g).
^[4] Kothari, M. Report of the Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, Mission to Australia, 31 July – 15 August 2006, Addendum, Fourth Session of the Human Rights Council, A/HRC/4/18/Add.2, 11 May 2007, para.85.