Overcrowding is a major problem

Overcrowding is a common problem in Aboriginal communities and camps. Houses and tin sheds in Alice Springs' town camp are home to 10 people on average, sometimes to 17 people ^[8][9], in Mowanjum, an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, about 350 people share 42 houses, most of which have only three bedrooms ^[10].

Families in Western Australia's Roebourne community have to share one shower and bathroom with up to 12 people and sometimes up to four generations. The lack of privacy is another concern of overcrowding. Rates of overcrowding increase with remoteness, affecting 13% of adults in major cities, 20% in regional areas and 48% of those in remote areas ^[11]. In some remote communities two-thirds of Aboriginal people live in overcrowded houses.

Reality might be even worse than official statistics. Georgina McLeod has lived in Kalkarindji (NT, 780 kms south of Darwin) for more than 30 years. Census data indicates an average of 4.7 people per house and 1.8 in each room, but in McLeod's experience some houses have four or five families, each one living in a single room. ^[6]

A UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing wrote in his report in 2007 ^[12]: "The conditions that I saw of overcrowding, up to 30 people living in one house, and the fact that these conditions have existed for 7 decades, it is definitely amongst the worst I've seen around the world." He also noted that Australia lacked a "clear, consistent, long-term and holistic housing strategy" as well as a national legislative framework against which initiatives could be measured.

Similarly, an NT health advisor suggests to "define the endemic 'overcrowding' we see in the NT as effectively being a form of homelessness" ^[13]. The Australian Bureau of Statistic considers severe overcrowding (where 4 or more extra bedrooms are needed to adequately accommodate people) to be a form of homelessness. ^[6]

Most Australians are not aware that [in 2006] the United Nations declared that Australia has the worst Indigenous housing in the world.

— Mick Mundine, CEO, Aboriginal Housing Company ^[5]

Why live so many people in one house?

Houses can overcrowd temporarily or permanently.

Temporary overcrowding happens because

• Family visiting. Family come from their homes in remote communities into town and stay with their relatives. They come in for shopping or visiting family who are in town because they have to be on dialysis. 21% of families in remote or very remote communities had temporary visits lasting two weeks or more in the previous 12 months ^[14].
• Sorry business.Mourning a death in the family can take several days, so families have to stay with other Aboriginal people. More than half of temporary visits was due to cultural reasons, only a quarter due to holidays ^[14].

Permanent overcrowding can be due to

• Uninhabitable houses. According to the 2002 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, 40% of Aboriginal people in non-remote (32%) and remote areas (58%) reported that their homes were structurally unsound (e.g. rising damp or major cracks). 7% needed to be completely replaced ^[14].
• Choice of lifestyle. Some families will choose to live in large, multi-generational households, despite other houses being available in the community. These families will not necessarily consider their house to be crowded, but could suffer the same health effects (see below).
• Low income class. Many Aboriginal homeless people are disabled, in poor physical or mental health, or have substance abuse issues. ^[7]
• Not enough culturally appropriate houses. Due to their cultural obligations, Aboriginal people need a different type of house that can accommodate relatives staying over and, increasingly, children who were removed from their parents and stay with another Aboriginal family. There was a shortage of 20,000 such houses in 2017. ^[6]

My whole family is all squeezing in the one house. Ten to 15 family members in the one house. No one has privacy... We all share one bathroom, one toilet, one everything.

— Julie Djarpirr, Yolngu woman, Yirrkala, NT ^[15]

Effects of overcrowding

Overcrowded houses can affect every aspect of your life.

• Domestic violence. Overcrowding leads to stress, fighting and drinking.
• Suicide. In some cases people living in overcrowded situations have committed suicide. ^[7]
• Poor mental health. Exposed to such conditions for a long time, people can suffer "enormous mental health problems", ^[7] for example depression.
• Lack of safety. The lack of safe and adequate housing in remote communities is a key driver for people to move to urban centres, live on the street or in bush camps.
• Poor hygiene. Hygiene is hard to maintain in overcrowded conditions and made worse when people cannot afford to restock soap in time, or when pipes, showers and taps become blocked through calcification from the bore water many remote communities depend on. ^[16] Lack of responsibility is another factor. "No one takes ownership of the house [cleaning] because they can’t. If one person tries to instil their rules on how to clean or wipe down the bench, that ends up in blows," explains Georgina McLeod who lived in an Aboriginal community for more than 30 years. ^[6]
• Diseases spread fast. Overcrowding is a "direct cause" of ear and eye disease, according to Chips Mackinolty, a health adviser for the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the NT ^[13]. Overcrowding also helps spread antibiotic-resistant infections such as Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) which is a common cause of skin infections and may also cause more severe bone, joint and bloodstream infections ^[4]. Meningococcal disease, rheumatic fever, tuberculosis and respiratory infections are other diseases that spread easily when too many people live too close to each other.

Public housing... [is] at the root of all our social problems: overcrowding, domestic violence, child abuse, a range of health problems associated with a lack of adequate, well-maintained housing.

— Robyn Lambley, chairwoman, Public Accounts Committee, Katherine ^[7]

Watch an ABC news clip about the government's 2010 Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) which runs until 2018:

Not good for learning

Children don't have an environment where they can learn for school, and many develop behavioural problems which negatively impact their life.

"One of the biggest issues hindering school attendance is overcrowding on the island," explains Bryan Hughes, Principal, Shepherdson College, Galiwin'ku, Elcho Island, Northern Territory ^[17].

"An average of 15 people live in each house, and one house has 54 occupants. The houses have only three or four bedrooms, so families sleep in shifts and older students and adults walk the streets at night. At 2am, there can be 40 to 50 or even 100 people walking around the community, and we're expecting these kids to be at school in the morning."

Measuring overcrowding: Not as you thought

Intuitively one would measure the level of overcrowding by dividing the number of people in a community by the number of its houses.

If, for example, a community has 20 houses and 120 people live in the community, its "crowding level" is 6 people per house.

But it is not that simple.

The National Indigenous Housing Guide (NIHG) is a key compliance document for the government's National Indigenous Housing program. It stipulates that houses need to be beneficial to their residents' health. The NIHG's highest health priority is the ability to wash ^[19].

Statistical data shows that only 35% of houses have a functioning shower ^[19], which means only 7 houses can serve the community's need to wash.

This means a functional crowding level of 17 people per house to have a shower.

Other examples include people's need for cooling or heating with the crowding level depending on functional fans or air-condition units.

Thus, overcrowding can fluctuate over the course of a day, depending on the needs of the people in the community.

With the poor record of the government's housing program, crowding levels are likely to be much higher than simple maths suggests.

The Health Habitat website shows how it is more feasible to repair and maintain existing houses than building new houses to reduce overcrowding levels.

Eviction: "Not in our street"

Some housing companies use overcrowding as a reason to evict tenants after complaints from neighbours, overlooking that Aboriginal people have cultural obligations to care and look after family and relatives. Camps and houses have always been meeting places, and evicting people when they live their cultural obligations is a racist attitude.

Aboriginal people feel that their family values not accepted. "We are judged on our poverty. We are judged on the 'cleanliness' of our houses, a hangover of the mission days when the white-gloved hand ruled. We are judged on what is in the cupboard or the fridge without recognising that our children go to nan's, aunt's, cousins, etc. We have community. We have an extended family within and without," observes Ray Jackson, president of the Indigenous Social Justice Association ^[18].

We come from a caring and sharing culture and we don't turn people away who don't have somewhere to sleep.

— Charlie Kickett, Nyoongar Elder ^[20]

After waiting for a long time to get a Territory Housing place I was kicked out after only 3 days. I was never told why. Maybe because we sat outside, that's our way, and the white neighbours didn't want us to be there. We weren't making any noise, just sitting outside painting.

— Aboriginal resident ^[21]