Kimberley Trip – Shelter WA

Shelter WA CEO Kath Snell and Senior Advisor Housing Policy Paula O’Leary were fortunate to spend a week in the Kimberley in June 2023.

The visit a part of Shelter WA’s regional engagement project activities, to hear about issues on the ground impacting homelessness and community housing, and to inform advocacy and policy work.

Recovery Efforts

The trip included forums in Broome, Derby and Kununurra, attended by housing and homelessness service providers and other key stakeholders, as well as 1:1 meetings with key stakeholders in the regions, and a visit to Fitzroy Crossing to learn about the recovery efforts and challenges following on from Cyclone Ellie in January 2023.

Shelter WA commenced a regional engagement project in 2021, with the support of Lotterywest, with the aim of developing a regional network model for the housing and homelessness sector to support greater collaboration. This has included regional mapping, regional engagement and regional trips to connect with our members and stakeholders across WA. The Kimberley trip followed on from Shelter WA’s South West engagement trip in May 2023 and built on initial regional engagement in 2022 by the project manager.

Key Insights

The trip was an invaluable opportunity to learn more about the specific circumstances and challenges that Kimberley communities are facing. Some of the key insights learned in the trip include:

• Individualised, region-centric housing strategies are needed.
• Huge undersupply of housing and overcrowding prevents effective rollout of Housing First.
• There is underfunding and in sometimes complete lack of specialist services.
• Lack of housing is impacting staff recruitment.
• Need for culturally appropriate services and housing.
• Climate justice: housing needs to meet (changing) needs of region, and there is limited access to solar homes and heat pumps.
• Close relationships seen between shires creating a powerful collective.
• Strong examples of collaboration and partnership, and high community spirit.

Key insights, input from forums and next steps are summarised in our report here.