Session spotlight - When community leads: First Nations approaches to ending homelessness

Major Concurrent Session 3 | Wednesday 7 October 2026 | 3.30pm

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When First Nations communities lead, outcomes look different. This session brings together four practitioners from across Australia to share models that are already changing what's possible — from breaking the revolving door of crisis accommodation in the Northern Territory, to building housing capability in the Pilbara, to reframing what a wellbeing-led response looks like in metropolitan Melbourne.

Building housing capability from the ground up

Amanda Drummond, Community Pathways Team Lead, Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation 

Amanda will present the Housing Pathways Support Program — a Pilbara pilot helping First Nations families move into private rental, employee housing and, for a growing number, their first home. With no direct financial assistance on offer, the program instead builds confidence and capability across employment, household management, education, wellbeing and financial literacy. The results speak for themselves: seven first home purchases, two exits from secondary homelessness, three families into employee housing — and a ripple effect as more families come forward after seeing what's possible for their own. Amanda's key message: sustainable housing solutions in regional Australia depend on community leadership, long-term investment and practical, place-based partnerships.

Breaking the revolving door

Shane Hamilton, CEO, Aboriginal Hostels Limited

Shane brings more than 50 years of frontline experience to the question of what it takes to stop people cycling through crisis accommodation, institutions, justice and health systems. Aboriginal Hostels Limited provides culturally safe short-term accommodation for First Nations people who must leave Country for health care, education, training or employment — work that sits at the intersection of homelessness, health, justice and economic participation. Shane will go further than describing the problem, setting out a proposed national, Aboriginal-led pathway to ending homelessness — one built on place-based prevention, integrated service responses, workforce pipelines and long-term investment aimed at breaking cycles rather than managing consequences.

Redefining what success looks like

Amber Tapili, Ngwala Willumbong Aboriginal Corporation 

Amber will present the first metropolitan First Nations homelessness entry point, established in the Kulin Nations. Their work shifts the measure of success away from transactional outputs — service contacts, housing placements — toward a wellbeing framework defined by community itself, centred on connection to culture, safety, identity and healing. They'll speak candidly about the practical and structural challenges of standing up a genuinely community-led response inside a system that has historically rewarded compliance and quantifiable outputs, and what it takes to hold accountability to both community and funders at once. Their key point: culturally safe, trauma-informed practice — including Foyer-style youth pathways into education, employment and independent living — has to be designed with community leadership from the start, not added on afterward.

Whether you work in housing, homelessness, health, justice or community services, this session offers practical, transferable models — and a clear view of the conditions needed for community-led approaches to succeed, including long-term investment, flexible funding and genuine partnership.

Registration for Australian Homelessness Conference 2026 closes 28 September. Save 10% when you book three or more tickets in the one transaction.