LOCAL TRADE NEWS: A Recent Housing for Health Project

Community collaboration and achieving a target percentage of local Indigenous employment is essential to the success of every Housing for Health project.

Every Housing for Health project employs local teams to complete a Survey and Fix in every house, providing vital assistance with access, information, fixing and data collection. Local trades to carry out all electrical, plumbing and building fix works are prioritised over trades from further away to encourage local employment and investment back in the local community.

Healthabitat considers this as one of the greatest factors of success of Housing for Health projects over the last 20 years. Local trades from a recent project in Western NSW shared some great local employment statistics with us, including what value they see in the Housing for Health process;

…” Local people had jobs and their young families had role models, a sense that our community had industry and an opportunity for employment or apprenticeships in the future… Over the term of your program, we were able to employ 19 local people in various capacities. On a long term basis, we could offer 1 Carpentry apprenticeship, 2 Plumbing apprenticeships and 2 Electrical apprenticeship’s… All our local employees are First Nations people.

Two First Nations men who had over 5 years ago let their carpentry licences lapse as they could not envisage getting the work required to keep themselves licenced renewed their licence to enable them to work on The Housing for Health Program and now trade as sole traders as they establish their own small businesses”.

COVID-19 has continued to show us the value and importance of good quality housing in improving health.