ADVOCACY: Requesting and Reporting Maintenance – Part 1
Recently released by “The George Institute for Global Health” is a series of housing resources to assist people to request and report maintenance.
These resources titled – “Bundi – A housing tool for mob” have been developed with and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social housing tenants in the South East Sydney Area. A great initiative. HH has recently been thinking about reporting of repairs and maintenance in housing in the Northern Territory.
Page from the housing resources showing the steps to report a maintenance issue
How much maintenance does a house need?
Data collected since 1999 shows almost 75% of the issues of basic house function come from lack of routine maintenance. This data comes from tradespeople who perform this work and report back as to why the work was required.
More recently in the Northern Territory (2021-2024) lack of maintenance has accounted for closer to 80% of issues with only 11% attributed to faulty construction. This shows housing construction is better than the national average, but does not solve the maintenance issue.
Maintenance allows for a house to continue to function and provide the hardware needed to stay healthy.
Are the current systems working?
No.
The current system is a “responsive” or “reactive” system, where maintenance issues are reported and maintenance teams are sent out in response to these reports. However due to the distances to communities and mobilisation costs often a few non-urgent jobs are received before this is actioned.
For example, to send a plumber to a remote community from it’s service centre (Alice Springs), it costs between $4.95 and $5.91 per km to mobilise the plumber for remote work (2 x staff + ute). This is the cost incurred before a tool bag is picked up. So the cost to send a plumber to fix something in Kaltukatjara (Docker River) 673kms away is between $6,662 and$7,954 before a tap is fixed.
HH often hears stories of issues being fixed months after reporting an issue. This builds distrust of the reporting system and reduces the agency of tenants to take an active role in maintaining their houses.
From a recent Housing for Health project, HH received a list of tenant reported maintenance jobs to be completed from the housing provider. Of over 800 fix jobs that were identified during the Housing for Health project only 3% of the jobs had been reported to the housing provider.
The Remote Housing Review has this to say about reactive maintenance programs;
Reactive maintenance will use up the available maintenance budget quickly, if part is not quarantined for planned cyclic maintenance. On average, emergency repairs cost 8.5 times more in very remote communities than in remote communities; and typically, the costs of emergency repairs are 75 per cent higher than planned activities, while responsive activities are 50 per cent more costly than planned.”
A Solution – Cyclical Preventative Maintenance
Think of this like a service for a car. Regular servicing every 5000km keeps your car in reasonable shape and safely on the road. Why not this for housing?
HH suggests for NT communities;
- Engage Aboriginal Enterprises to employ part-time / casual local Housing Officers in every community to;
- Be someone local residents can report faults directly to
- Be someone who is trained to repair basic things (eg blocked drains, leaking taps, changing door locks
- Be someone who after inspecting the fault gives an accurate report of fault and trade needed to fix (ie triages the fault)
- Planned survey + fix
- Pest Control treatments twice a year
- Septic tank desludging every 2 years
- Electrical safety check & fix every 12 months
- Plumbing check & fix every 12 months
- Building fabric check & fix every 12 months
- Airconditioning service every 6 months
- Planned replacement of major capital items in a house via;
- An asset condition report
- Asset register for each house
- Capital upgrade schedule for each house
As always start small with a trial and a dedicated team.
