Community Land Trusts and Indigenous Communities: From Strategies to Outcomes

There is ongoing government interest in the establishment of home ownership on lands held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter, ‘Indigenous’) peoples, primarily as a wealth creation or economic development vehicle (see FaHCSIA 2010; COAG Reform Council 2011). Indigenous households express a desire for home ownership, but the number of households that do so is often limited and this desire usually is not underpinned by expectations of capital gain. As with previous research (e.g. Memmott et al. 2009), this project has found that among the Indigenous communities that partnered on the project, aspirations regarding home ownership were more focused on inheritability, stability and the ability for community and households to play a core role in decision-making. There is a potential role, therefore, for diverse housing options that can span the divide between renting and owning, including options involving equity inputs from households if and as appropriate. Likewise, there is a strong desire among communities for such options to be based on community concerns and objectives and to be responsive and appropriate to local conditions. Building on previous work documented by Crabtree et al. (2012a), this project undertook research into the relevance of housing models based on community land trust (CLT) principles in New South Wales (NSW) and the Northern Territory (NT) in partnership with interested Indigenous community organisations in the two jurisdictions. In NSW, this translated into developing a workable hypothetical long-term leasehold model for an indicative household based on the organisation’s household data and organisational objectives. In the NT, this involved a household survey to capture residents’ perceptions of housing issues prior to the suite of changes known as the Intervention, now and for the future, as well as stakeholder interviews focused on the core issues regarding home ownership or tenure diversification among Indigenous communities. This report presents the project’s aims, processes, findings, suggestions and tools, including a framework for a spectrum of diverse housing options defined according to their core operational features; a series of steps for identifying program parameters and a corresponding decision-making tool; a long-term lease developed in discussion with a partner organisation (an Aboriginal housing service provider); and financial modelling based on data from this partner organisation. These outputs were achievable only because of the interest and participation of the project’s Indigenous partner organisations in the research and have been reviewed and endorsed by the project’s two Indigenous Advisory Groups (IAGs).