POSITION ON LAND AND HOUSING

The Cape York Institute believes that individuals and families must be given (and must take) greater responsibility for their housing in all its forms.  This involves a movement towards a functioning property market based on home ownership.

The current system of public housing in Cape York communities is at odds with the goal of personal responsibility for housing.  For example, no financial investment is required by the tenants towards construction of their house; rental rates are very low and are frequently not collected; tenancy agreements frequently do not exist or are not enforced; families do not pay for repairs and maintenance even if they cause significant damage. Moreover, choice over housing (the norm in mainstream society) is severely restricted.  Families have little say over what sort of house they receive and when.  Choice is restricted to choosing from one of a handful of designs or some peripheral or cosmetic aspects such as the colour scheme. More recent programs have offered the opportunity to customise certain elements of the house design, but only to a very limited extent.

There is now an inter-generational expectation within Indigenous communities, that governments will provide, maintain, and in the end replace their housing. Like other forms of passive welfare over the past three decades, public housing in Indigenous communities has promoted dependency and passivity. The Institute believes that we must break this dependency and reintroduce personal responsibility.  This must entail moving towards home ownership solutions where families make sacrifices to acquire or build a home of their choice and take ongoing responsibility for its maintenance.  Any home ownership solution, however, will still require some government subsidy as the construction costs of houses are well in excess of their market value. Without a government subsidy to bridge this gap, families would be making economically irrational decisions to pay for a new home to be built.

CURRENT WORK

The Institute, in partnership with Cape York Land Council and Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation, is developing proposals to trial home ownership solutions based on a combination of government grant, financial equity (loans) and ‘sweat equity’ (family contribution to the labour).  The provision of ‘sweat equity’ will both reduce the overall cash costs of construction and act as a trigger for great responsibility and sense of ‘ownership’ by individuals and families.