Housing and childcare
The shortage of housing and childcare in regional and remote communities undermines safety, wellbeing and access to justice, and contributes to the community legal sector workforce crisis.
Regional and remote housing crisis
Regional and remote communities are facing a worsening housing crisis.
Rental vacancy rates are hitting record-lows while rent prices are rapidly increasing. Public housing is limited or non-existent in regional and remote areas, and in remote and very remote communities is often very poorly maintained.
Housing diversity is lacking, with a dominance of detached housing, which limits options for households on single- or lower incomes.
Government approaches to housing are city-centric and generally fail to address the needs of regional and remote people and communities.
For people who live in regional and remote areas, this means that it can be hard – or even impossible – to find a home to live in, let alone one that is affordable.
The appalling housing conditions in remote communities are confronting and, frankly, a national disgrace.
Respected Elders who are frail and have limited mobility are being forced from their homes because severe plumbing and electrical faults have made them unsafe to live in. Despite repeated reports, repairs are delayed or poorly completed, with little accountability for substandard work.
One Elder we spoke to had moved out of her home for five months, waiting for works to be completed and during that time was still paying rent (we will open a file to pursue compensation).
Community members are understandably frustrated and have lost confidence in the current maintenance system. Meaningful reform is urgently needed to ensure repairs are timely, of an acceptable standard, and genuinely improve living conditions.
Hannah Lethlean, Senior Solicitor, Kimberley Community Legal Service
Housing overcrowding in remote NT communities remains among the worst in the country. As at September 2021, 54 per cent of houses in remote Indigenous communities in the NT were considered overcrowded, and more recent figures show over half of all remote community homes remain overcrowded today, with 97.6 per cent of people living in severely overcrowded dwellings being Aboriginal. While government investment has increased housing supply in recent years, the scale of the shortfall means overcrowding continues to directly undermine health, safety and wellbeing in these communities.
Research into family violence and housing has found regional and remote locations suffer from acute shortages in crisis, transitional and long-term housing, resulting in Indigenous women and children escaping family violence being turned away from safe houses that are already at capacity. There is no safe house for women and no women’s centre in this community, services that other remote communities do have access to.
Tully McIntyre, Women’s Safety and Support Officer, Central Australian Women’s Legal Service
Shortages of early childhood education and care in regional and remote communities.
Early childhood education and care options tend to be limited and expensive in regional and remote communities.
Some of the reasons for this are high operational costs, workforce shortages, and infrastructure gaps.
In fact, regional and remote early childhood education and care providers face many of the same challenges as do regional and remote community legal centres.
A lack of available or affordable childcare contributes to the gender pay gap and can heighten risk factors for domestic and family violence through leaving victim-survivors isolated at home caring for children.
Access to early childhood education and care drops sharply with remoteness. National research has found remote and outer remote areas have the highest levels of childcare deserts, at 87.5 per cent and 79.9 per cent respectively.
More than two thirds of priority communities experiencing early childhood disadvantage in childcare deserts are in regional or remote areas, with a significantly higher representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children among them.
This matches what is being observed locally: a childcare building exists but the service is not operating, and it is unclear whether this reflects a funding gap or an implementation failure.
Tully McIntyre, Women’s Safety and Support Officer, Central Australian Women’s Legal Service
Housing, childcare, and the community legal centres workforce crisis
The shortage of housing and childcare in regional and remote areas combine with chronic underfunding to drive an acute workforce crisis for community legal centres and other local services. Staff shortages then leave people and communities without access to the help they need and workers at risk of burnout and vicarious trauma in the face of overwhelming demand.
Community legal centres’ lack of resourcing to pay sufficient wages combine with low rental availability and high rent costs to leave frontline workers struggling to find a place to live. Limited childcare options can be another insurmountable barrier for regional and remote community legal sector workers who have children.