Difficulty in establishing a precise measure of housing need arises from the stock and flow nature of housing assets. This is captured in the data shown in Table 6.1 which indicates that the Thamarrurr Regional Housing Authority manages 217 dwellings in the Thamarrurr region (this includes eight houses at the new Manthatpe subdivision and 18 improvised dwellings) to provide for an Aboriginal service population of some 2260. In addition, there are 39 government-owned dwellings occupied by teachers, police, health staff and other government workers.

In terms of a simple occupancy rate calculated as the number of dwellings to service population, the Aboriginal housing stock accommodates 11.0 persons per dwelling. However, as also shown in Table 6.1, 17 of these dwellings require major repair, and 54 need to be demolished (33% of the stock) leaving only 148 habitable homes. If the substandard dwellings are excluded from the stock, the occupancy rate rises to 16 persons. At the same time, a few of the structures referred to here as dwellings (especially at outstations), are more appropriately described as shelters and not houses, although precise determination of what constitutes a ‘house’ for the purposes of calculating occupancy is open to interpretation. This is an issue that will no doubt be addressed by the Thamarrurr Housing and Construction priority working group. Suffice to say, that by most standards, the actual stock of satisfactory housing might well be reduced further below 136, although the current working figure used by the Thamarrurr Regional Housing Authority is 157.

Also problematic is the impact of population mobility. Table 6.1 shows Aboriginal service population estimates for Wadeye and separate outstations. The term, estimates, is used here to reflect the inherent uncertainty of establishing a population figure for a given locality owing to the frequency of mobility between localities, especially between Wadeye and outstations. The figures shown indicate the numbers that were allocated to places from the community survey and in administrative records as at August 2003. However, it should be noted that the Wadeye figure is substantially inflated in the wet season owing to a shift of population from outstations to town. Likewise, the population at some outstations can rise substantially for short periods (even daily) owing to movements of people out of town as well as from outside of the region. Within Wadeye itself, and particularly within the six main camp areas, substantial inter-household mobility occurs with numbers resident at any given dwelling rising and falling according to circumstance. The data shown in Table 6.1 therefore represent an essentially static view of a highly dynamic situation. From a planning perspective, the best that can be said is that these data point to a minimum service population for the town of Wadeye of around 2050, and a peak service population for outstations of around 200. At times, though, the numbers resident in Wadeye may approximate the regional total of over 2200 due to periodic movements into town. In terms of housing provision, these temporary relocations of people add substantially to pressures on accommodation, not least via increased wear and tear on housing stock and habitability (functionality), mostly by virtue of intense periods of overuse.

Source: Thamarrurr Regional Housing Authority, and Thamarrurr community census

This intra-community mobility, combined with movements into Wadeye from outstations and from elsewhere such as Palumpa, makes it very difficult to assign many individuals to particular dwellings. Having said that, while the average number of persons per functional dwelling in the region amounted to 17, there are several dwellings that cater for more than this number. While the process of assigning individuals to particular dwellings remains a task of the housing and construction working group, at least 48 dwellings had more than the average number of occupants in 2003, with one having as many as 22. However, as noted above, this situation varies over time. According to the Thamarrurr Regional Housing Authority, a 2002 housing occupancy survey of Wadeye recorded six dwellings with more than 20 occupants and one with 26. Because of this fluidity, average occupancy provides the most useful underlying baseline measure.

The major response to such inadequacies was led by the Commonwealth and developed out of the National Aboriginal Health Strategy (NAHS) in 1990. This recognised an essential link between health outcomes and the provision of housing and infrastructure to acceptable minimum standards. Accordingly, funding allocations in the initial years of the NAHS primary health and environmental health programs included amounts directed at housing and infrastructure services within ATSIC’s Community Housing and Infrastructure Program (CHIP). However, a review of CHIP in 1994 identified a range of problems, including a failure to address housing and infrastructure needs in a holistic way. Because of the short-term nature of the program-based approach to funding, communities were being required to structure housing needs to the CHIP program rather than the other way around (ATSIC 1994). A key response to these criticisms was the establishment in 1994 of the Health Infrastructure Priority Projects (HIPP) program to pilot new delivery arrangements for the construction of Aboriginal community housing and infrastructure.

A significant outcome from NAHS/HIPP and Indigenous Housing Authority of the Northern Territory (IHANT) spending in Thamarrurr has been the establishment of the Manthatpe subdivision with the construction of eight new houses in 2003 and planning space for a further 16. This housing is earmarked for members of the Yek Maninh and Wentak-Nganayi clans and as such represents a prototype development in the context of Thamarrurr regional planning as the first attempt to locate families on country away from Wadeye town.

While the high occupancy rate reflects larger Aboriginal household size and, in part, a cultural preference for extended family living arrangements, it is fundamentally a measure of the inadequacy of housing stock available to accommodate the regional population. To acquire a better sense of the adequacy of housing, occupancy rates must be set against dwelling size and one measure of this is provided by the ratio of available bedrooms to the population in dwellings (Table 6.2). Overall, in the region, the CHINS recorded a total of 484 bedrooms in 2001. Since that time, construction of new housing at the Manthatpe subdivision has added further bedrooms. However, many rooms within the housing stock remain in substandard dwellings and include improvised bedrooms. By excluding these, the current (2003) working figure for the number of available bedrooms in Thamarrurr is 451, which translates into an average of five persons per bedroom.