Indigenous housing occupies a complex policy environment in which policies and programs are in intermittent states of flux. As a result, the existing frameworks struggle to deliver sustainable outcomes. This study considers how conditionality in housing policy and management contributes to housing outcomes, and what modes of conditionality are most effective and in what contexts for Indigenous clients. It considers the most effective co-related household and governance arrangements to enable forms of reciprocity to occur. A key hypothesis tested is the critical necessity for a ‘recognition space’ involving mutual recognition of the moral relationships of duty and care between SHAs, intermediary organisations and tenants.

This report is structured around seven chapters. Chapter 1 opens with the background to the study, including the methodology. Chapter 2 follows with a literature review that examines the housing policy environment and the contested fields of Indigenous disadvantage and social housing in the domain of Indigenous affairs. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, the report brings together the findings from all of the case studies on the respective perspectives of tenants, governments and intermediary /community organisations. Chapters 6 and 7 offer a view through the lens of the recognition space towards the enablers as well as strategies that might bring about a more progressive agenda involving good practice principles and positive Indigenous housing outcomes.