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Abstract
Housing is a known determinant of health for Aboriginal Australians in remote communities. However, less is known about the impact of housing on health for Aboriginal people who live in urban areas. This thesis provides, for the first time, a systematic examination of the housing of urban Aboriginal people as it relates to health and wellbeing. It examines Aboriginal people’s beliefs about their housing and presents a granular description of the housing conditions of a significant sample of Aboriginal people in identified urban communities participating in phase one of the Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH), the largest cohort study of urban Aboriginal child health in Australia.
Chapter 2 explores the views of Aboriginal people living in Western Sydney about their housing circumstances. Difficulty accessing housing, secondary homelessness, crowding and poor dwelling conditions were described as common. Participants associated housing problems with physical and mental health problems.
Chapter 3 examines Aboriginal perspectives about the causes of urban Aboriginal housing disadvantage. Racial discrimination, poverty, marginalisation and a shortage of social and affordable housing were described as key barriers for many Aboriginal people attempting to access housing in Sydney.
Chapter 4 describes the housing of the SEARCH cohort and examines differences in exposure to specific housing problems by tenure type. Housing problems were prevalent. While SEARCH families in social housing had significantly better housing stability and affordability than those in private rental, they reported significantly more physical dwelling problems than those in both privately rented and owned homes.
In Chapter 5, poor housing conditions were found to be independently associated with recurrent gastrointestinal infection in SEARCH children in a dose-dependent manner.
This thesis establishes housing as an issue of major concern for Aboriginal people in urban New South Wales in relation to health and wellbeing. It offers some initial evidence of an association between exposure to housing problems and gastrointestinal infection in urban Aboriginal children. This work provides a platform to better understand housing and health in urban Aboriginal communities and to design, develop and test interventions that aim to improve them.