First Nations-led housing solutions are already here, the research needs to catch up

Across Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have long been creating, sustaining and leading their own approaches to housing, grounded in Country, kinship and culture. Yet these strengths are often overlooked in research. For decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have picked up housing research reports and found themselves described as a problem to be solved. Phrases like "the Indigenous housing problem" appear in academic literature going back to 1971. Opening pages list deficit indicators. Statistics compare First Nations people against white norms. And the communities, cultures and housing solutions that already exist go largely unmentioned.

A new paper from The George Institute for Global Health's Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program argues this isn't just a matter of language. It causes real harm.

Published in the International Journal of Housing Policy, the paper, authored by Jacek Anderst, Keziah Bennett-Brook and Tamara Mackean, calls for a fundamental shift in the way housing research talks about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The authors describe the current approach as "deficit discourse": a mode of thinking that frames people as lacking or failing, strips away the structural context of colonisation and erases the truth of Sovereignty and community strength.

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For too long, housing research has overlooked First Nations strengths and solutions, focusing instead on what’s perceived to be ‘wrong’. That shapes policy in ways that fail to support what communities are already doing.

By:

Keziah Bennett-Brook

Program Director, Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program

When research reduces First Nations housing experiences to a catalogue of negatives, it shapes what policymakers believe is possible and weakens the case for self-determination.

The paper points to strengths-based discourse as the way forward. Over the past two decades, Aboriginal health researchers have pushed for strengths-based approaches that foreground culture, community capability and the ongoing impacts of colonisation. That shift has reshaped health policy in Australia, including calls to eradicate institutional racism in healthcare. The authors argue housing research can follow the same path.

A strengths-based approach would begin by recognising dispossession as the root cause of housing precarity rather than individual failure. It would centre First Nations peoples' own definitions of home, rooted in Country, kinship and culture. And it would foreground the community-led solutions that already exist: the mutual aid networks, community-controlled services and culturally grounded housing models operating right now.

Examples are already emerging. The Wongee Mia (Strong Home) project in Western Australia and the recently developed national Housing Policy Partnership Workplan both demonstrate what is possible when First Nations voices, priorities and definitions of home are placed at the centre of housing design and policy.

The authors are clear this is not a call to avoid discussing housing challenges or to replace one set of stereotypes with another. It is an invitation to flip the script and in doing so, change what research makes possible.

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A strengths-based approach is one piece of the puzzle to bring to life thriving housing futures led by and in solidarity with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

By:

Jacek Anderst

Research Fellow, Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Program

Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2026.2659250*