The Right to Adequate Housing in Australia: Community-Based  Disaster Management  and Social Work  Advocacy

Abstract

This article shapes an introductory advocacy framework for social workers striving to achieve the right to adequate housing for all in the Australian disaster recovery context. Inequalities across Australia are deepening, significantly driven by the current housing crisis. Stable, adequate and secure housing provides us with the platform to thrive in all domains of life, including health, relationships, education and employment. Compounding, however, upon this housing crisis across Australia is the frequent destruction or serious damage of housing in areas that experience climate change-amplified disasters, such as floods and bushfires. Pre-existing housing inequities substantially shape the aftermath of disasters. Social work human rights–based practice, leveraging upon the human right to adequate housing, is critical for improving the wellbeing of those impacted by disaster.

Keywords

Social work human rights right to housing climate change disaster recovery housing crisis

Introduction

Practices of urban, regional and remote planning, and the inequalities and injustices intensified through contemporary neoliberal capitalism, as evident in increasingly disparate housing arrangements, provide the context within which disasters occur (Jacobs, 2019; MacLeod, 2018; Schmid, 2022). ‘Disasters’ are situations where a community is overwhelmed, political response is demanded and then executive government powers and discretionary funding are triggered (Jacobs & Williams, 2011; UNDRR, n.d.). ‘Crises’, on the other hand, such as the housing crisis (and the climate crisis), do not attract the urgent and near-immediate political response that a disaster receives, they instead persist without adequate resolution or a discernible end point. Disasters fuelled by climate change are hastened on a global scale by those with the highest patterns of extractive consumption (Grant & Hare, 2024), yet the recovery burden largely falls to those with the least resources to recover (CSIRO & BOM, 2024; Friel, 2022; IPCC, 2023; Smith et al., 2022). This is no different in the context of Australia, where more marginalised communities and populations (see, e.g., Ewenson, 2025b; Ewenson et al., 2025; Walter, 2025), existing in a range of challenging housing arrangements and tenures, carry the greatest burdens of climate change-induced disasters (Lucas & Booth, 2020; Rusconi & Boetto, 2024).

It is important to emphasise that all experiences of disaster are shaped by intersectional and long-standing oppressions, including settler colonialism, poverty, race, class and gender (Ewenson, 2024b; Haworth et al., 2022; Jacobs, 2019; van Bueren, 2020). These intersections also shape experiences of housing, including access to different forms of housing tenure. In other words, disasters, in all forms, tend to lay bare the pre-existing inequities, the uneven landscapes embedded across our lands, which have dramatically variable levels of climate risk (Ewenson, 2024b; Greenberg, 2017; Thomas et al., 2019). A silver lining of a disaster is, however, its potential (albeit currently unrealised) to enable an ongoing crisis—such as the housing crisis and the climate crisis (Gittins, 2025)—to receive a comprehensive government response with the urgency and funding that a disaster frequently attracts. Miriam Greenberg recently called for more research linking disaster studies with applied critical housing research, noting that housing inequities substantially contribute to the shape of the aftermath of disasters (Greenberg, 2021). Echoing Greenberg’s call, Compton (2020) notes that ‘disasters occur at the intersection between hazard and susceptibility to harm. As they result from pre-existing vulnerability to harm, these events do not break with the past, but instead are very much produced by it’ (p. 2).

Social workers engage in strong multidisciplinary teams in disaster recovery across Australia, and ensuring that community members have access to adequate housing is a core part of this social work domain of practice, as well as broader social work practice (Alston et al., 2019; Howard et al., 2023). Social work is a human rights–based profession as mandated by our Code of Ethics (AASW, 2020, 4.2 p. 12; Ewenson, 2024c), and leveraging the right to adequate housing is one way that social workers located in disaster management can contribute to achieving safe and adequate housing for all in disaster contexts and beyond. This article outlines what the right to adequate housing entails and presents a preliminary framework which social workers can advocate upon to help achieve the right to adequate housing in a disaster recovery context within Australia, this being a provisional framework which can be developed and amended over time and adapted for other contexts.

The Right to Adequate Housing

We all intrinsically know that ‘home’ is more than ‘where the heart is’. Stable, adequate and secure housing, amongst other attributes, provides us with the platform to thrive in all domains of life, including health, relationships, access to education and the ability to hold down a job. In the language of human rights law, the right to adequate housing is described as fundamental, a base from which we can then achieve our other social, economic, cultural and civil rights, to which we are all entitled, and recognising the interdependency of these human rights is key (Hohmann, 2020). Currently, across Australia, there is a widespread housing crisis. Levels of homelessness are at an all-time high (AIHW, 2022; Constantine, 2023), rising rents and rental insecurity underly housing precarity (Dyrenfurth, 2020; Morris et al., 2021), and social and public housing levels are vastly insufficient (Groenhart & Burke, 2014; Lawson et al., 2016), with, in some contexts, substandard conditions (Anthony & Hohmann, 2024). The cost to purchase a home in Australia’s major cities has now escalated far beyond the reach of most (Ong ViforJ & Phelps, 2023; Pawson et al., 2019). Inequalities across the nation are deepening rapidly, significantly driven by this crisis of housing (Davidson et al., 2023). Compounding, however, upon this escalating housing crisis is the destruction (or serious damage) of the housing of those living in areas that experience disasters, such as floods and bushfires, disasters that are indisputably climate change-amplified (CSIRO & BOM, 2024; CSIRO Workshop Report, 2024). In these circumstances, housing may be destroyed with little to no warning (ACYP, 2020; Li et al., 2023; van den Nouwelant & Cibin, 2022). This additional level of housing instability layers on top of this well-documented wide-ranging housing crisis across our wealthy nation (Kohler, 2023; Martin et al., 2023). These are not separate issues; instead, the right to adequate housing is tightly entwined with climate and disaster justice (Schlosberg et al., 2024).

As social workers we must draw upon international human rights law asserting the right to adequate housing and leverage related literature and jurisprudence to drive public policy and law reform in the context of increasingly frequent extreme weather events (Ewenson, 2025b; Hohmann, 2025; Ife, 2022). Governments need to counter the unfettered self-interest that neoliberal capitalism promotes, and the housing markets, in all forms of tenure (including private ownership, public and social housing and rental), need to be shaped with full recognition of the humanity of all in this era of climate change (Lee, 2023b). The mantra of ‘resilience’, the dominant framing discourse of disaster response within Australia, shifts (generally) the burden of responsibilities to individuals or communities, while neatly ignoring the fundamental systemic and structural issues such as housing injustice (Madden, 2021, p. 99; Morley & Robertson, 2023). This pattern of focusing upon ‘resilience’ within recovery processes is driven by a political convenience of syphoning disasters off from ongoing long-term crises and is fundamentally bound up within short-term political gain objectives (Sun, 2016). David Madden and Peter Marcuse (2016) argue that a ‘real right to housing needs to take the form of an ongoing effort to democratize and decommodify housing, and to end the alienation that the existing housing system engenders’ (concl, p. 4). They emphasise that indeed ‘the residential is political’ (intro, p. 1). Disasters are also political, ‘enmeshed in a deeper tangle of casual factors that are political, socio-economic and demographic in nature’ (Gaillard et al., 2007, p. 263).

In 1975 Australia ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) (ICESCR), within which Article 11(1) specifies the right to adequate housing:

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.

This Article reiterates and builds upon Article 25(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Relevantly, Article 2(1) of the ICESCR further notes:

Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.

With regard to this emphasis or caveat of ‘to the maximum of its available resources’, it needs to be remembered that Australia currently sits as the 23rd richest nation in the world (Ventura, 2023). A lack of resources is not an issue for Australia; however, the ‘distribution’ of these resources in the face of our widespread housing crisis clearly is an issue (McAuliffe, 2023). The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals reinforce the necessity of adequate housing, a right already mandated by international law (UN General Assembly, 2015, SDG 11.1).

There is an expectation that international human rights law standards are adhered to by ratifying states in accordance with rules-based global order (see, e.g., Ford, 2021), noting, however, that Australia has a dualist legal system where ratified international treaties are not automatically incorporated into domestic law (Azzi, 2024). While economic, social and cultural rights have frequently been viewed as the ‘lesser cousin’ compared to civil and political rights, there is growing recognition that the achievement of economic, social and cultural rights is fundamental for the achievement of a socially just and humane society (Alston, 2019; Fredman, 2018), and that achieving the right to housing is intrinsic to achieving the central, and non-derogable, right to life (Mazzucato & Farha, 2023; UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, 2016).

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) provides detailed commentary to better understand the rights as determined under the ICESCR, and in 1991 they clarified the seven substantive elements comprising the right to adequate housing. They specify that the right to adequate housing entails: (a) legal security of tenure; (b) availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; (c) affordability; (d) habitability; (e) accessibility; (f) location and (g) cultural adequacy (UNCESCR, 1991, para. 8). All of these elements need to be met to satisfy the achievement of the right to adequate housing, even in the context of disaster recovery (United Nations, 2011, p. 5). More recent commentary from the current UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, has highlighted that sustainability should now form the eighth central element to underpin this right, to ensure that adequate housing is both climate resilient and carbon neutral in its production and management (United Nations, 2022, para. 4).

Centring the right to adequate housing can fundamentally change how we conceive of housing across Australia, shifting us away from the heavily financialised and individualised asset-based approach to housing which is currently dominant (Hohmann, 2013, 2020; Madden & Marcuse, 2016; Mazzucato & Farha, 2023; Rolnik, 2019). The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) recently released a report calling for a national housing and homelessness strategy, however, housing in the context of disaster recovery was not explicitly addressed (Martin et al., 2023). There is only a relatively small amount of literature focusing on the principle of the right to adequate housing in a disaster recovery context (Barber, 2008; Carver, 2011; Gould, 2009). Leilani Farha, a previous UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, has articulated that homelessness, or grossly inadequate housing, should be addressed as an unacceptable violation of the right to life (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, 2016). Indeed, recent research has found that homeless Australians die on average at the age of 44, as compared to the average age of 77 for all Australians (Seastres et al., 2020; Woodman et al., 2023).

A Framework to Promote the Right to Adequate Housing in an Australian Disaster Recovery Context  and Beyond

To address the significant housing injustices experienced after disasters, a preliminary framework is presented here to shape advocacy for government accountability to ensure that the right to adequate housing is achieved. Social workers have a significant role in policy advocacy (Pawar, 2019), and by further utilising their expertise in this rights-based space, such endeavours may also help increase the understanding and recognition of social work expertise in the domain of disaster management overall (Ewenson, 2025a). This framework is designed for Australia but is modifiable for other locations. This framework can be used as a platform by social workers to advocate for a housing ecosystem which endorses principles of human rights, equity and social justice. If principles from this framework are adopted, with the right to adequate housing enacted, we will be able to better withstand the inevitable future climate disasters looming.

Australia Needs a Commonwealth Human Rights Act

As detailed by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC, 2022) and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, 2024), Australia needs a Commonwealth Human Rights Act (CHRA), including fully justiciable economic, social and cultural rights for all individuals. The CHRA would therefore articulate the right to adequate housing in line with the ICESCR and provide domestic legal accountability. Interpretation of this right would be guided by the commentary of the CESCR, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, and related jurisprudence. The introduction of a CHRA would include extensive human rights education for accountable government bodies (including housing authorities), the judiciary and community and advocacy groups, amongst other relevant parties.

Notably, other comparable countries have included the right to housing in their national constitution, including Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands (Kolocek, 2013, p. 137), and this is also being considered within the state of California in the United States of America (Sandronsky, 2023). While constitutional amendment within Australia is an incredibly difficult task (see, e.g., Biddle et al., 2023), the introduction of a CHRA would shift Australia to a modern human rights–engaged nation. Australia is currently in the unenviable position of being the only democratic nation in the world to not have a national bill or charter of human rights (Williams & Reynolds, 2017).

It is important to note, however, that Australia has three jurisdictions, Victoria, the ACT and Qld, where there are state/territory-based human rights frameworks enshrining civil and political rights, including the right to life (see, e.g., Walsh, 2022). Domestic human rights legislation can enable access to remedies through legal action holding governments accountable. International law provides complaint mechanisms where findings are not directly enforceable (Ewenson, 2024a), and Australia has an absence of a regional human rights court such as the European Court of Human Rights.

The purpose of human rights law is to promote the full humanity of all while recognising that the principle of equity justifies greater expenditure for certain populations to enable full participation in an inclusive and socially just society (Lee, 2023a). The domain of housing in a disaster recovery context is no different, the promotion of our full humanity, by engaging the principle of equity as well as effective legal frameworks, can guide the achievement of this fundamental right.

Social Housing Across Australia Needs to be Dramatically Increased

Social housing in Australia comprises Indigenous housing, community housing and public housing, and as of June 2022, there were 418,400 households living in the main social housing programmes across Australia (AIHW, 2023). This amounts to less than 4% of the housing stock across Australia (AHURI, 2023), as compared to nations such as Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark, where social housing comprises over 20% of housing stock (Kadi & Lilius, 2022; OECD, 2020, p. 5). Concerningly, as of June 2022, there were 188,300 households on the waiting list for social housing (AIHW, 2023). From the ‘households’ description, it is not possible to know the exact number of individuals on the social housing waiting list, however, as an estimate, using the statistic that an average Australian household comprises 2.5 people (ABS, 2022), this amounts to around 470,000 people on social housing waiting lists, an unacceptable number for Australia as a wealthy nation. If there are around half a million people waiting for social housing, and knowing that the people at the intersection of numerous oppressions are the ones most likely to be on this list, their precarity in times of disaster and disaster recovery is exacerbated. Furthermore, the residential tenancy arrangements covering those living in social housing need to be governed by justiciable human rights law. Such arrangements would lessen the risk that social housing tenants are evicted to homelessness, an occurrence which has been reported elsewhere (Walsh, 2022). The proposed CHRA, as noted above, would provide a framework for protecting the right to adequate housing for all, including those living in a social housing context.

Homelessness Services Need a Dramatic Increase in Resources

Homelessness services need resources to assist both pre-existing homeless populations and those made homeless by disasters through the provision of wrap-around services during the prolonged periods of disaster recovery and beyond (Donoghue, 2023). As the AIHW describes, the number of homeless people across Australia is a national concern, with census night in 2021 revealing there were more than 122,000 people homeless (AIHW, 2024), a figure which is expected to be vastly underestimated (Power, 2021). A number of reports related to homelessness have revealed that the number of people living in precarious situations after disasters for prolonged periods has increased significantly due to the vastly insufficient capacity of homelessness services (see, e.g., Bezgrebelna et al., 2021; End Street Sleeping Collaboration, 2022; Legal and Social Issues Committee, 2021). Homelessness services need a substantial increase in funding to play a significant part in promoting and protecting the right to adequate housing in a disaster context (Osborn et al., 2019).

A Zero Target for Homelessness is Required

Following the model of nations such as Finland (Kaakinen, 2019), a zero target for homelessness in Australia is required. Such a target will require requisite resources invested in social housing and moving away from an over-reliance on short-term emergency accommodation, arrangements which do not enable a platform for people to thrive. The Commonwealth Department of Social Services is currently developing a National Housing and Homelessness Plan (the Plan) (Department of Social Services, 2024), and this is set to consider the impacts of climate change on housing security and the resultant impacts of extreme weather events. However, it is yet to be revealed how ambitious the plan will be and whether the plan can adequately address underlying long-term housing issues, including homelessness. It is unclear if the plan will better position communities and housing services with resources to adequately and equitably respond after disasters in both the short and long term. As the Australian Council of Social Services recently noted, ‘unmet housing need and homelessness are complex problems affected by policy levers across several levels of government and policy areas’ (ACOSS, 2024, p. 2), highlighting that there is no overarching Australian government agency to coordinate housing-related and impacting activities across all three levels of government (ACOSS, 2024, p. 2).

Habitability, Cultural Adequacy and ‘Communitas’ Must Be the Focus for Any Emergency or Temporary Housing Provided in Disaster Contexts

Habitability, cultural adequacy and ‘communitas’ must be the focus for any emergency or temporary housing provided in disaster contexts, as aligning with the right to adequate housing literature and jurisprudence (Anthony & Hohmann, 2024), taking into account the particular context and requirements of those being housed (Charlesworth & Fien, 2023; Richardson et al., 2014). As has been noted in recent reporting, the temporary housing provided to flood survivors within Lismore and surrounds, in New South Wales, has not met these thresholds (Northern Rivers Community Foundation, 2022), and the amount of temporary accommodation provided has also been insufficient (NSW Auditor-General, 2024). Furthermore, the NSW Auditor-General has found that this temporary housing programme did not meet the needs of mobility-impaired people, and concerns have been expressed by First Nations people about the cultural safety provided by some of the agencies and organisations involved in facilitating the temporary housing response (NSW Auditor-General, 2024, pp. 28, 31).

Improved Rental Protections

Greater protections are required in legislation across Australian jurisdictions in terms of housing habitability (Anthony & Hohmann, 2024), protection from unreasonable rent increases, and protection from forced eviction, including when residing in social housing (Walsh, 2022). If private landlords cannot afford to maintain a rental property to a high standard and maintain a reasonable cost of tenancy, including in times of disaster recovery, they should not be landlords (Swannie, 2023).

Ensure Buyout Programmes Have a Balanced Regional Component

‘Buyout’ (or buyback/managed retreat) programmes have a strong element of collective solidarity in repurposing land no longer suitable for housing because of climate change and disaster risk (O’Donnell, 2022; Siders, 2019). However, such buyout programmes carried out after disaster need to be facilitated in a timely manner with the voluntary opportunity to acquire a similar landholding/home in the region (i.e., a balanced approach), appreciating the importance of place and community in governments promoting and protecting the right to adequate housing (while also recognising the logistical difficulties that arranging such a ‘balanced’ programme may involve). Such parallel processes will minimise the possible risk of ‘anti-social capital’ occurring when communities are rapidly depleted of members and therefore also depleted of the associated ‘community spirit’ through standard ‘buyout’ programmes (Kuo, 2018; United Nations, 2022, para. 24).

A Publicly Funded Home Insurance Scheme

Recent Commonwealth parliamentary reporting has examined the considerable distress and hardship caused by the current system of private home insurance for those who have experienced disasters across Australia (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, 2024). The Insurance Council of Australia has also reported on the challenges climate change is presenting to the insurance industry (ICA, 2024). The system failures regarding home insurance after a disaster have been documented elsewhere (Settle, 2024), noting that the current federal government Cyclone Reinsurance Pool focuses on supporting insurance companies (Australian Government, 2022), rather than directly supporting people impacted by disaster (Settle, 2025). This reporting highlights the need for a collective government-owned system of home insurance, similar to Medicare, Australia’s collective health insurance system, where people are not penalised (i.e., through insurance premiums becoming unmanageably too expensive—or homes being deemed uninsurable) for living in areas more prone to climate change-exacerbated disasters (Moss, 2021). Such a model is equitable and socially just, as it is not these individuals who are primarily responsible for the emissions escalating climate change and the resultant destructive impacts, nor for the considerable historical land-use planning failures.

The individualised process of home insurance is a maladaptation in this era of the Anthropocene, where private insurance companies, always primarily seeking to make a profit for their shareholders, have inadvertently found themselves at the frontline of determining risk from climate change (Booth et al., 2022; Lucas & Booth, 2020; Lucas et al., 2021). In the United States of America, certain insurance companies have been reported to be exiting altogether from some climate-impacted states (see, e.g., Flavelle & Rojanasakul, 2024). Indeed, this era of climate change calls for a return to the origins of the modern insurance system, that of community members living in solidarity and communality together, caring for and helping each other. It is this ethos of care which needs to be applied by duty bearers, that being governments, to promote the right to adequate housing in a disaster recovery context.

Social Workers Need to be Involved in Land-Use Planning

Urban and regional planning needs to proceed with climate change and climate change–induced disasters as a key consideration (Scott & Moloney, 2022), and social workers must be active contributors within such planning processes. In Sweden, recent legislation mandated that social workers be involved in land planning processes, recognising their expertise in working with marginalised communities and the pertinence of eco-social work theory in our climate-changed world (Cuadra & Ouis, 2023).

Increase the Tangible Value of Paid and Unpaid Caring Activities in All Forms

Caring for each other and caring for the environment are critical time-consuming activities essential to the human condition and for planetary health. Historically, however, caring in paid or unpaid forms has not been highly valued (Foote et al., 2024; Gilligan, 1982; Tronto, 2013). Relationality has been considered peripheral in Western cultures, although enduring and central in Indigenous ontologies (see, e.g., Bennett & Gates, 2022; Bennett & Green, 2019). In summary, it is posited here that in this climate crisis era, to effectively achieve the right to adequate housing for all, caring in all forms must be elevated in tangible value, and this primacy of relationality and care must be integral to all policy and legal considerations in our democracy (Ewenson, 2025b). This valuing of care gives rise to what can be considered a ‘relational rights-based framework’ which aligns with extensive feminist theory (see, e.g., Ewenson, 2025b; Noble et al., 2024; Phillips, 2023), and it can be incorporated into social work advocacy.

Conclusion

We need to embed the right to adequate housing in a disaster recovery context and across the entire housing system. Things can be done differently. For instance, the Barcelona City Council has enacted a Right to Housing Plan, centring the achievement of adequate housing for all, in the recognition that housing is the necessary platform to live a full and flourishing life, to accord with principles of human dignity and equity (Mazzucato & Farha, 2023, p. 17). Finland has almost ended homelessness in a programme run in parallel with the implementation of a broad affordable housing strategy (Allen et al., 2020). As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing notes, ‘States have an obligation to use the maximum of their available resources to address the impacts of climate change on housing, to mitigate it and avoid foreseeable harm’ (United Nations, 2022, para. 63). He further demands that states should fully incorporate the right to adequate housing in national climate action plans and national adaptation plans and that national housing strategies ‘take climate risks into account and are coordinated with climate policies’ (United Nations, 2022, para. 67).

Social workers must feel equipped as human rights–based practitioners to progress this agenda, and social work education, drawing upon case studies and lived experiences, amongst other pedagogical approaches, can cultivate such a skill set (Ewenson, 2024c). Social workers and other community workers need to occupy a greater presence in the macro-sphere, influencing policy and law reform, instigating alliances with lawyers and other professionals committed to the attainment of social justice (Blackstock, 2024) and climate justice (Porter et al., 2020; Schlosberg et al., 2024). Effort is required to educate the broader public about social work’s policy remit beyond the more commonly recognised and understood micro-practices of case management and counselling (Hanley, 2025; Reisch, 2016). Social work has an imperative role in contributing grounded expertise to law reform and policy development as informed by embedded community-based practice. Misinformation and disinformation is prevalent in discourse connected to climate change (Daume, 2024), and social workers are critical to countering this.

Positioning adequate housing as a human right to which we are all entitled, as supported by legislative frameworks and legal accountability, would contribute to reducing the long-standing housing crisis and therefore also support housing recovery in a disaster context. This proposed policy and advocacy framework for social workers to promote the right to adequate housing within Australia shapes a platform which can be further developed and amended over time, and which can be adapted for other disaster-recovery contexts around the globe.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Lisa Ewenson

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The Right to Adequate Housing in Australia: Community-Based Disaster Management and Social Work Advocacy

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Right to Adequate Housing

A Framework to Promote the Right to Adequate Housing in an Australian Disaster Recovery Context and Beyond

Australia Needs a Commonwealth Human Rights Act

Social Housing Across Australia Needs to be Dramatically Increased

Homelessness Services Need a Dramatic Increase in Resources

A Zero Target for Homelessness is Required

Habitability, Cultural Adequacy and ‘Communitas’ Must Be the Focus for Any Emergency or Temporary Housing Provided in Disaster Contexts

Improved Rental Protections

Ensure Buyout Programmes Have a Balanced Regional Component

A Publicly Funded Home Insurance Scheme

Social Workers Need to be Involved in Land-Use Planning

Increase the Tangible Value of Paid and Unpaid Caring Activities in All Forms

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

References

The Right to Adequate Housing in Australia: Community-Based  Disaster Management  and Social Work  Advocacy

A Framework to Promote the Right to Adequate Housing in an Australian Disaster Recovery Context  and Beyond