What Happens When You Invest in Aboriginal-Led Housing Organisations: Lessons from the ACHO Project
In 2021, Shelter WA partnered with four Aboriginal Community Housing Organisations across Western Australia on a project that would prove to be one of the most impactful pieces of work the organisation had undertaken. The ACHO Capacity Building Project, funded by Lotterywest, set out to strengthen governance, operations, and collaboration across four organisations collectively managing around 300 homes for over 1,000 tenants. What it delivered went far beyond those goals.
The Four Organisations:
The project worked with Murchison Regional Aboriginal Corporation (Geraldton), Goldfields Indigenous Housing Organisation (Kalgoorlie), Southern Aboriginal Corporation (Albany), and Noongar Mia Mia (Perth), four organisations spread across seven WA regions, three of whose CEOs had never met in person before the project began.
What Was Achieved:
Over ten months, the project delivered governance reviews, desktop audits against the Community Housing Registration Framework, draft registration-compliant policy templates, social media and marketing training, and four peer-learning operational forums. Perhaps most significantly, the project supported all four organisations to successfully apply for funding from the Sisters of St John of God, resulting in over $550,000 to Shelter WA for ongoing centralised support and millions of dollars of direct investment into the four ACHOs for new housing, tenancy management software, asset management systems, and tenancy support programs.
The Lesson:
The ACHO Capacity Building Project demonstrated clearly that when Aboriginal-led housing organisations receive targeted, culturally appropriate, and practically focused support, the outcomes are transformative, for the organisations, for their tenants, and for the sector as a whole. As Mary Marshall, CEO of Murchison Region Aboriginal Corporation, reflected: “This project, as well as the ongoing support from Shelter WA more broadly, has provided multiple benefits to this corporation that will enable it to increase its viability and sustainability going forward.”
This is the spirit that Community Housing Futures WA carries forward, at scale, and across the entire State.
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