This AHURI project aims to build an Indigenous model of crowding conducted in two stages, stage one will initially focus on a literature analysis, and then to test its veracity and application to Indigenous crowding in regional urban and metropolitan settings.  In so doing, the researchers seek to uncover salient dimensions and properties of Aboriginal crowding to see how different tenures impact on distinctly Aboriginal rule-governed behaviours and coping mechanisms. These findings seek to inform refined definitions of Aboriginal crowding for policy applications across all Australian jurisdictions as well as to have relevance for other international jurisdictions with substantial Indigenous populations (e.g. Canada and New Zealand). The research findings will also have implications for government policies on Indigenous health, housing procurement, housing management, homelessness, town planning and appropriate house design. We aim to provide policy-makers with ways to understand, predict, measure, assess and manage Aboriginal household crowding.

Two suburbs within metropolitan centres were chosen for this study: Inala in Brisbane and Swan in Perth; each has a substantial Indigenous residency. In addition, the two regional centres of Carnarvon and Mt Isa were selected as case study sites, both of which have high Indigenous residency rates and attract visitors or residents from a regional catchment of remote communities that are characterised as having strong traditions of residential behaviours. The four urban study sites were used during Stage 2 to ensure a reasonable (although not necessarily equal) sample of householders. Our primary criteria for selecting interviewees was the recent (one year) experience of hosting large households.