Yurts for all

Why a yurt is better than a country cottage - Times Online

Here's an article in the Times about a family that uses a yurt as its holiday home. The kids have to find firewood to boil the kettle, and there is no toilet, which is getting just a little too "back to Nature" for my taste.

Still, reading about yurts reminds me of my widely ignored thought that maybe the neverending problem with providing adequate housing for remote aboriginal communities is due to the inappropriateness of trying to provide permanent housing for remote aboriginal communities.

When I read about the current controversy over the cost of a current program to improve housing in the Northern Territory, I can't help but feel I was onto something with my half-baked idea. According to that last linked news report, some people think that it is going to end up costing $1 billion to provide 750 new houses, 230 "rebuilds" and refurbishment to 2,500 other existing houses.

Let's see: a company in Bangalow will sell a 10 metre diameter yurt with a heavy canvas cover for around $20,000.

Let's be generous, and allow another $20,000 for changes in design, some sort of decent flooring, etc. (A clan's bunch of yurts could share a central, simple ablutions block, but admittedly I have no idea how to estimate the cost of that.) Maybe $10,000 to get it there and put it up? Rough figure - $50,000 per yurt. Pretty expensive for a tent, but...

If you assume the 750 new houses will take 1/2 of the billion dollars that may be spent on the current program, you can get ten thousand $50,000 yurts for that price. Let's say that my back of the envelope figuring is way out - surely 5,000 is still in the ball park.

At that rate, it hardly matters if you have to replace them every five years.

Maybe I should start the Yurts for All Party as a way of publicising this idea.