Many Aboriginal people in Tennant Creek live in overcrowded makeshift shelters with no running water or electricity, as they wait up to a decade for a home. But experts say the social housing being built is not safe for the climate of today, let alone into the future.
00:00This is where my aunt Matilda lives. She sometimes sleeps at the brander or under the shade.
00:18But it's really too hot for her.
00:20Marsha Morgan's aunt is in town for medical treatment.
00:24But the house is so crowded there's no space inside.
00:28So we have to just squeeze in into a bedroom house, trying to get all the families together, trying to find a cold place.
00:37Each community home in Tennant Creek houses an average 10 people, forcing some to leave in the search for more space.
00:45I've lived in community housings but sometimes, you know, because of the rent and how many families you had in the house was too much.
00:56The heat just came through the roof and it just melted everything, even our butter.
01:02We can't buy butter because the butter just only lasts a couple of hours and that one minute or two minutes then it's all like water.
01:10Wait times for housing in the Northern Territory sit around 10 years. Dudley's family has been waiting six.
01:17Nowadays, something is changing, you know. Long time around, about 60s, 70s. Nice. When it's four o'clock, it'll be nice and cool. Not today. All day hot.
01:31From the mid-1960s to the 90s, Tennant Creek saw 130 days per year over 35 degrees. Now it's 142.
01:41The CSIRO says by 2070 that will become 184 days per year and that's under a medium carbon emissions scenario.
01:51If we continue on the current trajectory, Tennant Creek residents will see 209 days per year over 35 degrees.
02:00As the heat rises, so do health complications.
02:03The kind of things that you'll see is increasing rates of rheumatic heart disease as everybody crowds indoors for a two month period to shelter in the one bedroom that's air conditioned.
02:14Rheumatic heart disease is entirely caused by overcrowding.
02:18With rheumatic heart fever cases in the NT more than four times the national average, there's a push to design houses for the climate of the future.
02:26Houses that are being built right at the moment would be illegal to build in any other state of Australia because they wouldn't meet the thermal performance building codes.
02:35People are dying because of very poorly performing thermal houses.
02:40Simon Quilty runs the not-for-profit Willia Janta, co-designing homes with local people based on their culture and lifestyle.
02:48Plans include air conditioning throughout to prevent crowding in small rooms,
02:53a deep veranda to provide shelter from the harsh sun and more options for visitors,
02:58a large breezeway made of local mud bricks, anthills and spinifex,
03:03and an outdoor kitchen to avoid adding heat to the house.
03:08We have to be planning for the future right now because it is happening right now.
03:12Tennant Creek is an opportunity to learn how to live better with this heat and to remind us all that we need to be mitigating our carbon footprint more than ever before right today.
03:21But time, a luxury many don't have.
03:24In 2025 now, you've got to wait a bit longer.
03:30I don't know what that means, a bit longer.
03:33I don't know what that means.
03:34observations in the future.
03:36Not every slideela, but if you know what it means,
03:38especially during Leon.
03:39No one's not enough.
03:40There's an art book.
03:41There's an art book with family that's an art book.
03:42There's an art book that uses the field.
03:43There's one you try and copyright.
03:44There's one you try and copyright.
03:46You can know what it means,
03:47your own art book is somethingändern.
03:52It's fine.
03:53There's one you're no越ato You've got an art book that looks a bit fine.
03:56It's fine.
03:57You only look for all of the buildings version for the landscape.
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