Access to safe, suitable and affordable housing has many benefits. Housing keeps us safe and healthy. It helps us have stronger and safer communities, leading to better economic outcomes. The UN Special Rapporteur has highlighted that globally, First Nations peoples face significant barriers to their enjoyment of the right to housing compared with non-Indigenous peoples.
For First Nations peoples, the right to adequate housing is deeply interconnected with their distinct relationship to their right to lands, territories and resources, their cultural integrity and their ability to determine and develop their own priorities and strategies for development. ANTAR is particularly concerned about the impact of housing challenges – including, most notably, the experience of homelessness – that disproportionately affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, who are overrepresented among people who are homeless and those seeking assistance with housing.