Urgently needed long-term funding to address the housing crisis in remote Aboriginal communities will be vital if Australia is to hold off abject and worsening First Nations poverty.

It is a message that has been personally delivered, with a delegation of Elders highlighting the critical importance of funds for sustainable accommodation, infrastructure and essential services on homelands during a meeting with powers that be in Canberra.

Aboriginal Housing Northern Territory chief executive Leeanne Caton says the group received ”a lot of positive responses” from ministers and bureaucrats.

”A lot of them didn’t know what homelands were, so we briefed them on that and then we talked about all the advantages of people going back to homelands,” she told AAP.

A homeland is a remote area where a small population of Aboriginal people live, on lands to which they have traditional or historical ties.

Evidence points to living on Country as a major factor in improved First Nations health, wellbeing, education outcomes and self-determination.

”Our connection to Country is our umbilical cord,” said Independent Northern Territory MLA Yingiya Guyula, who was also party to the Canberra mission.

Ms Caton agreed, adding ”people want to go back to their natural, traditional lands and get their kids away from the urban environments where all this antisocial behaviour is going on”.

“The kids just go straight to juvie and then to jails … so the Elders want them all back on the homelands.”

Around 7000 people live on more than 500 recognised homelands in the NT. Of those, 394 are funded to receive municipal and essential services.

”We explained that … you’ve got a big community and then you’ve got hub-and-spoke homelands that go and access the services in those communities,” Ms Caton said.

”You’ve got people out in homelands who are 70 to 80 years old, walking upright physically. But you look in town, there’s 50-year-olds in wheelchairs and leg amputees from the unhealthy living.”

The federal Homelands Housing and Infrastructure Program is providing $220 million over five years for urgent repairs and infrastructure upgrades in NT homelands.

Ms Caton said while that was a welcome investment, they were ”deeply concerned” the financial assistance would expire on June 30, 2027.

The NT government has continued to fund municipal and essential services for homelands but Ms Caton said this money had been in steady decline, with no commitments to sustain it.

”With inflation, there’s been a 38 per cent reduction in what homeland service providers have gotten over the years,” she said.

The delegation had visited Canberra to lobby MPs, “so when a new federal funding agreement request comes through in a cabinet submission, they will know what it’s about”.

The Homelands Housing and Infrastructure Program sits alongside a $4 billion, 10-year remote housing partnership agreement announced in 2024 that aims to build 270 houses a year and halve overcrowding in Aboriginal communities.

But Ms Caton warned that it was already behind schedule because of increased fuel and building costs, and major flooding.

”I think they’re at 180 a year at the moment, two years in, and the build has got to include a cyclical repairs and maintenance program,” she said.

In May, Aboriginal Housing NT told a homelands conference in Darwin that children were living in abject poverty amid a housing crisis that followed years of neglect.

The crisis in the territory was largely centred on remote communities, driven by severe household overcrowding and high rates of rough sleeping, chair Alan Mole said.

Aboriginal Housing NT comprises 19 Indigenous housing organisations that work in partnership with land councils and government agencies to improve the housing system.