While a large proportion of community housing is targeted to either generalist housing or older people, a significant proportion of community housing is used by groups with specific needs. Here, we consider 3 important special needs groups; indigenous people, people for non-English speaking backgrounds, and people with a disability.

In 1998, significantly more people from these three groups occupied community housing than the number of dwellings targeted to them. This was particularly true for non-English speaking backgrounds where eight times as many households were housed than the number of dwellings targeted. The opposite appears to be the case for indigenous households where only 70% of the targeted dwellings were actually occupied by indigenous households.

Overall, 21% of community housing households were tenanted by people with a disability, 14% by people from non-English speaking backgrounds and 3% by indigenous people. It should be noted that the 1998 Mapping Project explicitly excluded specific indigenous housing services. The number of tenancies held by people with a disability will also be an underestimate as group homes were counted as one household.

For all three groups in 1998, CSHA funded organisations housed a higher proportion than non-CSHA funded organisations.

Table 1: Percentage of specific groups housed