Could Aboriginal-designed housing help solve the health crisis in remote communities?

Tennant Creek residents Norm Frank Jupurrurla and Serena Morton Nabanunga look at a cardboard model of a preliminary house design for the Wilya Janta housing collective. Photograph: Andrew Quilty

It’s hotter inside than out in many of the homes in the remote Northern Territory town of Tennant Creek, where the Warumungu man Jimmy Frank Jupurrurla and his family live. Most lack insulation and guttering. At Drive-in Camp outside town, the homes are tin sheds, disconnected from services since the 2007 intervention but still occupied.

The poor housing is making the residents sick, Jupurrurla says: “I worry about the future – will my grandchildren and their kids be living in prison-like houses? Or are we going to start designing homes that allow us to practise our culture?”