Back in 1996, using the 1994 NATSISS, the second set of issues I was able to explore was the affordability and adequacy of different housing tenures including, at times, owning and buying, as well as community, government and private rental. This exploration bore out the usefulness—indeed, the indispensability—of the distinction between community and private rental, as these are not only very different tenures in terms of their geographic distribution but also in terms of their affordability and adequacy characteristics.

Table 7.6 confirms, yet again, the vast differences in rents between community and private rental, with mean weekly rentals of $66 and $152 respectively. Government rental, with a mean rent of $87 per week, is a little more expensive than community rental but considerably less expensive than private rental.

Source: Customised cross-tabulations from the 2002 NATSISS RADL

Table 7.7 suggests there is, however, a downside to the inexpensiveness of community rental in terms of dwelling adequacy. It presents data from the 2002 NATSISS showing community rental dwellings as being reported most often (at 54.7%) as having structural problems and least often (at 57.6%) as having repairs and maintenance carried out in the last twelve months. Government and private rental were reported to be substantially better on both these adequacy measures and dwellings that were owned or being bought were better still.

A third measure of housing adequacy has been constructed by the ABS by comparing numbers of people and bedrooms in a dwelling against the Canadian National Occupancy Standard (CNOS). ^[2] On this measure too, community rental comes out as the least adequate tenure, with 34.4 per cent of its dwellings requiring additional bedrooms, compared to 13.8 per cent in government rental, 11.6 per cent in private rental and single figure percentages in dwellings that are owned or being bought. To a large extent, these figures for requiring additional bedrooms are a reflection of household size and, in the fourth line of Table 7.7, I give the mean household size for dwellings containing Indigenous households by tenure. Community rental, at 4.6, has a distinctly larger mean household size than the other tenures, none of which have means above 3.6 people per household.

The fifth line of Table 7.7 provides a housing affordability measure, which is perhaps a little more sophisticated than just rent paid. This is the proportion of households paying more than 25 per cent of their income in rent or mortgage. On this measure, community rental (16.0%) is again a bit more affordable than government rental (22.2%) and a lot more affordable than private rental (50.2%). Also, buying is actually more affordable than all three rental tenures, although buyers may of course have non-mortgage costs, like rates, that renters do not. Furthermore, affordability for buyers can depend greatly on where they are in the repayment cycle, so comparisons between buyers and rental tenures are not straightforward. The most important figure to emerge from this fifth line of Table 7.7 is, I would argue, that 50.2 per cent of Indigenous households in private rental pay more than 25 per cent of their household income in rent. Whereas community rental appears to be an inexpensive tenure with some adequacy issues for Indigenous households, private rental appears to be a tenure category with some quite significant affordability issues.

From the sixth line, Table 7.7 presents more fine-grained housing adequacy measures from the 2002 NATSISS relating to household facilities; such as whether a dwelling has a working stove, washing machine or toilet, and adequate kitchen bench and cupboard space. Although the proportions of dwellings containing Indigenous households which have these facilities are generally quite high, there are instances where they drop away. In all instances, bar one, it is community rental dwellings that most frequently do not have these facilities. The three instances where figures drop below 90 per cent in this part of Table 7.7 are all in community rental dwellings; having a working fridge (89.9%), a working washing machine (81.1%), and having adequate kitchen cupboard and bench space (76.5%). The last line of Table 7.7 shows major differences between tenures in having a working telephone in the dwelling, with less than half of community rental dwellings doing so.

Source: Customised cross-tabulations from the 2002 NATSISS RADL

Table 7.8 reports the top five of these adequacy and affordability measures by Indigenous adults living in different tenures. This reporting tends to accentuate the differences between community rental and the other four tenures compared to reporting by dwelling. For example, the percentage for dwellings requiring additional bedrooms in community rental increases from 34.4 per cent when reported by dwelling to 51.0 per cent when reported by ‘persons’, while the comparable shift for private rental is from 11.6 to 18.2 per cent. These shifts need not concern us greatly here, as reporting housing adequacy and affordability characteristics as if they attach to people is sometimes a bit strained. Also, in the 2002 NATSISS, this information was generally obtained from a single household spokesperson, so is probably best reported on a household basis.

Source: Customised cross-tabulations from the 2002 NATSISS RADL

Of more substantial interest is that these housing adequacy and affordability measures from the 2002 NATSISS can also be reported by remote and non-remote areas, as in Table 7.9. Given the very different geographic distribution of the tenures, it is not surprising that this division also shows substantial adequacy and affordability differences. Table 7.9 shows that 49.9 per cent of dwellings containing Indigenous households in remote areas have structural problems compared to 31.9 per cent in non-remote areas. And 32.9 per cent in remote areas require additional bedrooms compared to 9.7 per cent in non-remote areas. Conversely, only 10.4 per cent of Indigenous households in remote areas pay more than 25 per cent of their household income in rent or mortgage payments compared to 26.4 per cent in non-remote areas. Further down Table 7.9 we can also see, for example, that 89.6 per cent of dwellings containing Indigenous households in remote areas have a working refrigerator, compared to 98.4 per cent in non-remote areas, while 50.3 per cent in remote areas have a working telephone compared to 83.4 per cent in non-remote areas. Table 7.10, like Table 7.8 for tenures, reports the top five of these adequacy and affordability measures by Indigenous persons, rather than dwellings.

Source: Customised cross-tabulations from the 2002 NATSISS RADL

Source: Customised cross-tabulations from the 2002 NATSISS RADL

Tables 7.7 to 7.10 all show that housing adequacy issues are much more prevalent in remote areas and community rental, while affordability issues are much more prevalent in non-remote areas and private rental. This contrast is now a well established theme in discussions of Indigenous housing need based on census analysis (Neutze, Sanders & Jones 2000). It should also be noted, in this regard, that the measures in lines three to five of tables 7.7 to 7.10 can be—and have, in recent times, increasingly been—constructed from census data (Jones 1994, 1999; NCSAGIS 2003). If these measures are seen as sufficient for understanding the basic adequacy and affordability characteristics of Indigenous housing, by tenure and remoteness, then the census tells us essentially what we need to know.