Session 3, “Disaster, Care and Housing” focused on the recommendations:
Facilitated by Dani Kline (WHGNE) and Millie Rooney (Australia reMADE), we began the session with an icebreaker activity, asking everyone: “What is home for you?”. A recurring theme emerged: home is where our people are. This “hit home” with our Care through Disaster work, highlighting the importance of relationships and community connections.
In our first session, we explored what it means to apply a care lens to disaster, while our second session looked at the importance of community education through conversation, not just broadcast. This session, we brought these two threads together and put them into practice by focusing on housing as a real-world case study, exploring what it means to embed care into how we plan for, respond to, and advocate for housing in the context of disaster.
Annika Stewart (WHGNE) presented on the links between WHGNE’s report ‘Housing as a Human Right: A Gendered Examination of the Housing System’ and ‘Care through Disaster – in Practice: A toolkit for Leaders, from the Citizen to the State’.
After Annika’s presentation, we moved into a group discussion where we reflected on the questions:
- How are homes and housing part of your disaster work? Or not?
- Who is working on homes and housing in your area?
- What would your community look like if everyone had secure and safe homes before/ during and after disaster?
At first, the group was quiet (granted it was a smaller group than usual, and we had a lot of new faces). Millie gently questioned the silence and we heard that participants felt overwhelmed and defeated by the complexity of the housing system. Dani so aptly demonstrated care by sharing with the group that it was our first time running this CoP without our previous CEO, Amanda, and so we were also feeling nervous and imperfect.
Millie followed this by coining the term “spaghetti thinking” which she used to describe her (beautifully) messy jumble of thoughts which came together to form an answer to a complex question around housing solutions. After that, “spaghetti thinking” was repeatedly referred to by CoP participants throughout the session, giving us all permission to be inarticulate in this space.
Participants began to share their personal and work experience of disaster, housing and living regionally, including around the idea that insurance is profiting on disadvantage. One participant explained that people in her community found it very challenging to deal with insurance companies with a common theme that “the flood was bad but dealing with the insurance company afterwards was worse”.
A great insight came from another participant who mentioned the concept of “building back”. Building back needs to
be a considered approach, so we don’t do it the same as before. Rather, we build intentional communities with resources such as solar energy and space for vegetable gardens. This “building back” approach can help us enhance our care for one another and build stronger communities, which is what we’re all about!
There was strong interest in Millie’s mention of Pirate Care by Marcell Mars et al., which speaks to acting radically against the system. Millie gave the example of people squatting in empty houses – not as a model to follow, but as a way of expanding our thinking and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. The group resonated with this idea, expressing frustration that working within the system (for example constantly submitting to inquiries) often feels like complicity. Instead, they were energised by the notion of taking a “sledgehammer to the system” and causing disruption through radical care. There was particular interest in thinking through what a collective response to the challenges of insurance might look like.
While we may not have all the answers, our aim is to create a space where we can forge a shared vision, practice our ‘spaghetti thinking’, and support each other in the work that we do. We are excited to continue building on these discussions, thoughts and themes in our final CoP session of the year on November 12. You can register here if you haven’t already!