Key Strategic Challenges. The overwhelming challenge for governments is to ensure long term sustainability of the massive, potentially once in a lifetime investment in housing and related infrastructure that has been made possible through NPARIH funding. No one involved underestimates the enormity of this task, particularly when considered against a background of related policy challenges such as: • The changing demographics of remote Indigenous communities where populations are getting younger, growing at a steady rate and mobile, or relocating, in some jurisdictions. • The prospects for future economic activity in some remote Indigenous communities – the NPARIH investment in new housing mainly focussed on larger communities, many of them RSD communities, where future prospects for economic development were considered greatest. • The cost of repairing, maintaining and rebuilding ageing infrastructure in remote Indigenous communities – the NPARIH funding has enabled a significant number of upgrades to community infrastructure to support housing, but longer term this remains an unresolved policy challenge for governments. Most critical of all is the need to firmly embed the systemic reform of property and tenancy management currently being implemented in remote Indigenous communities through the NPARIH. While keeping up momentum on the timely delivery of the remaining capital works commitments, governments need to shift the strategic focus to property and tenancy management to ensure their practice in remote communities delivers equivalent service to their mainstream public housing practice. This is vital both for sustainability of the housing assets and to underpin changes for tenants in social housing in remote communities to ensure they have a good understanding of their rights and responsibilities for paying fair rent, caring for their house and notifying authorities about repairs and maintenance issues. It is not an easy task. It requires sustained effort and dedicated, resilient individuals and service providers who are capable of providing robust management of the reformed system, but also ongoing guidance and support for tenants who are undergoing a significant change management process. Governments face particular financial and operational challenges in small very remote communities with poor economies of scale, little prospect of future economic activity, and where there is a comparatively large amount of existing, unimproved stock. The cost of implementation and ongoing...
