Appendix 1 - Housing for health methodology

The Housing for Health approach to assessing and fixing Indigenous housing has been developed and refined by the environmental health and design consultants, Healthabitat Pty Ltd, since 1987.

The approach has a safety and health focus and is underpinned by the philosophy of ‘no survey without service’ where, at the time of testing houses, there is also immediate fix work carried out to improve house performance.

Poor environmental and living conditions promote the spread of infectious diseases. Without the ability to wash and remove waste from the living environment, infectious diseases will flourish. Living environments must be equipped with the health hardware to perform Healthy Living Practices. Public health research shows that to achieve health outcomes, most houses in a community must have health hardware functioning most of the time. To achieve this, houses must be designed well, soundly constructed and regularly maintained.

Housing for Health involves a team of people, including local Indigenous community representatives and licensed tradespeople, conducting a 250-point check of health hardware items in each house in a community.

The local teams fix health hardware during the assessment of each house. Within 24 hours, licensed tradespeople carry out the most urgent fix works. Critical health hardware relating to electrical safety, water and waste removal are given the highest priority. Health hardware that cannot be repaired or replaced immediately is fixed by the tradespeople over the next six months. A second survey/fix is conducted when all repairs have been completed to ensure that all the work is satisfactory and to assess the improvement in health hardware function.

Since 1999, Healthabitat has surveyed and fixed over 4,000 houses in Indigenous communities in suburban, rural and remote environments in four states and the Northern Territory. Reports from licensed tradespeople completing the fix works demonstrate that health hardware failure is primarily due to a lack of routine maintenance and poor initial specification and construction. In projects completed over a seven-year period, vandalism, abuse or over-use accounts for nine per cent of all fix work.

In summary, the Housing for Health methodology:

• assesses the function of health hardware in all houses in a community by standard repeatable tests
• ensures the immediate fixing of urgent health hardware faults in houses by local Indigenous teams or licensed tradespeople
• provides accurate data to assist in housing maintenance and management in communities within days of the commencement and at regular intervals throughout the project
• provides to governments and agencies accurate data for policy development, evaluation and program planning
• ensures community involvement in the projects, including paid employment for all participants
• ensures the provision of training in health hardware assessment and basic repairs for local Indigenous people
• raises community awareness about the relationship between functioning houses and good health.

The National Indigenous Housing Guide acknowledges the 25,000 residents, 2,000 local Indigenous staff, 500 licensed tradespeople, managers and technical staff who have participated in Housing for Health projects.

Reference

Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs 2006 Evaluation of FHBH 2, 3 and 4, SGS Economics and Planning in conjunction with Tallegalla Consultants, Canberra