Understanding the process

Housing for Health – the seven stages of any project

Since 1999, Healthabitat has delivered over 180 Housing for Health projects nationally using a standard, but constantly updated, methodology. 

Housing for Health projects are only commenced when everything needed for a successful project is in place, including: local community discussion and agreement, the agreed employment of local Indigenous staff, money ready to pay for fix work on day one of the project, trades available for immediate fix work and all tools are on site.

Healthabitat uses a non-commercial licence for every project. This licence sets out in detail what needs to be done to comply with the Housing for Health method and prevents any exploitation of the process for profit or political motive. 

Stages 1, 2 and 3 – Setting up the project: project planning, community negotiation, feasibility report and budget preparation

Projects are selected in collaboration with Indigenous housing groups. Healthabitat ensures the project will have a good chance of delivering improved house function by asking the appointed manager of the project to complete a Feasibility Report to check project viability. If the Feasibility Report reveals problems, the manager will describe the issues and suggest ways to improve them so a project can commence in the future. A Project Licence Agreement (PLA) is negotiated and a Project Licence Holder (PLH) identified. Healthabitat nominates an accredited Manager and they select a project team.

Stage 4 - Survey Fix 1: starting the assessment and fix work on day one of any project

This involves surveying and testing a standard list of around 250 essential safety and health hardware items for every the house and the surrounding yard area. The work is completed by several teams of 4-6 local Indigenous people led by Team Leaders. The Team members receive some preliminary safety, testing and fix training. Minor fix work by the Survey Fix Teams is encouraged by the Team Leader. The survey information is then entered into an ‘in-field’ database. Job sheets are immediately generated to enable immediate urgent fix work to be completed by licensed trades, with larger or less urgent jobs being prioritised and allocated to future works.

Stage 5 – All Fix Work: fix work continues until the money runs out

Essential trades, with the support of some members of the original Survey/Fix Team complete the more extensive fix work, identified in the Survey Fix 1 stage, to improve function of the house and surrounding living environment. This is sometimes referred to as the Capital Upgrade stage. This stage can take from 6 – 12 months depending on project scale and location and consumes the bulk of the project budget. The works and costs are constantly reviewed by the Manager.

Stage 6 – Survey Fix 2: checking works were done correctly and testing the function of each house

Survey Fix 2 allows the checking all the work carried out since the beginning of the project and a comparison of the function of all houses before and after the work done by the Housing for Health project. Checking the work prescribed by Survey Fix 1 has been completed by the trades, the quality of work and re-testing house performance occurs at this stage. A similar process to Survey Fix 1 occurs using local Indigenous Teams and licenced trades available to complete any last minute fix work.

Stage 7 – Reporting Back: giving the results back to all those involved in the process 

A final report and meeting with the participating community identify how successfully the program improved house function and people’s living conditions. The detailed report contains information on all house function results, list of works completed, works still to be completed, reason the fix work was needed (tenant damage, poor initial construction, routine maintenance needed), costs associated with all stages of the project and cost compared to health function gain per house.