Is Australia Ready for Permanent Disaster Housing?
- jmbmodular
- Apr 1
- 5 min read
As published by The Good Builder
Australia is no stranger to natural disasters. Bushfires, floods and cyclones have become recurring features of the national calendar, displacing thousands of families each year. And when disaster strikes, Australia is generally good at the first response.
Emergency services mobilise quickly. Temporary accommodation is rolled out. Funding is announced. Support agencies step in.
But according to Managing Director of JMB Modular Buildings James Briggs, that is where the system begins to struggle.
“The question isn’t whether we can respond to an emergency,” Briggs says. “It’s whether we are actually set up to help people get home again, fast and into a permanent fully NCC compliant home.
Australia’s disaster recovery framework remains heavily focused on short-term accommodation. Systems such as the National Emergency Management Stockpile (NEMS), along with pods, caravans and demountables, are designed to provide immediate shelter in the days and weeks following an event.
They fulfil an important role.
The problem, Briggs argues, is that temporary solutions routinely stretch into long-term displacement.
Families often remain in transitional accommodation for 12 to 24 months while insurance claims are finalised, planning approvals are negotiated, and rebuild costs escalate. What was meant to be a short bridge becomes a holding pattern.
“Temporary accommodation is dead money, it’s funding spent on mobilisation and demobilisation, not outcomes. It can work in the immediate aftermath, but it doesn’t give people the stable, safe haven they need to rebuild their lives.”
“Having lived through a house fire, I know the toughest period is often after the event, when the attention fades and everyone moves on. That’s when the real mental hurdles hit, living in temporary accommodation with no clear end date in sight.”
For builders working in disaster-affected regions, these delays have real consequences. Rebuild pipelines clog. Trades become scarce. Costs rise. Projects stall before they even begin.
For families, the toll is far more personal.
Extended displacement disrupts schooling, employment and community ties. Decision-making becomes harder at precisely the moment people are least equipped to make long-term choices.
It was this reality that led Briggs to ask a different question, not about emergency shelter, but about permanent recovery.
What if Australia planned for the next step in disaster response before the disaster even occurs?
Specifically, what if permanent, fully compliant homes were pre-manufactured, stored, and ready to deploy when they are needed most?
Not temporary structures. Not interim solutions.
Permanent homes.
“The idea came to me in the months after working on the NEMS tender. Watching natural disasters hit on repeat and knowing we can deliver a far superior solution, it’s hard to ignore how much funding is wasted on temporary accommodation and the constant mobilisation/demobilisation cycle.”
Under Briggs’ proposed model, volumetric modular manufacturers could build two- to five-bedroom homes at scale and hold them in secure storage as ready inventory. These homes would be owned by a funding partner; potentially an insurer, private equity group or impact fund and deployed immediately following a disaster.
Instead of waiting months to mobilise, families could move back onto their land within weeks.
Crucially, these would not be compromise builds.
Briggs says the homes would be designed as permanent dwellings from the outset, built to defined Bushfire Attack Levels, worst-case seven-star energy performance scenarios, and full NCC compliance.
All certification, documentation and inspections would be completed upfront, including sign-off by a registered building surveyor. Site-specific approvals could then be finalised after installation, rather than delaying delivery while families wait in limbo.
“Modern Methods of Construction has come leaps and bounds in the past two years. The homes we’re talking about are high quality, engineered for transport and lifting, with genuine architectural flair. Once they’re in place, most people can’t tell they’re modular.
MMC isn’t a compromise; it’s simply a different delivery methodology; a faster, safer, smarter, and more controlled way to build.”
For families, this could dramatically shorten the path from displacement to stability. For builders, it could remove months of uncertainty at the front end of disaster rebuilds.
One of the most persistent challenges in post-disaster recovery is not construction capacity, but planning and approvals.
This is where Australian property-tech platform CanIBuild may play a critical supporting role.
As previously reported by The Good Builder, CanIBuild’s technology has already been used extensively in the United States to help fast-track rebuilding efforts following major wildfire events. By instantly analysing planning controls, overlays and zoning constraints, the platform allows property owners and professionals to understand what can be rebuilt and how without months of manual assessment.
In an Australian disaster housing stockpile model, similar technology could help bridge the final gap between delivery and occupation.
“Any proven system that’s been trialled successfully in other countries should be investigated and, where appropriate, implemented. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”
By combining pre-approved modular homes with rapid, digital planning intelligence, the traditional bottlenecks that slow recovery could be significantly reduced.
or builders, the relevance is immediate.
Disaster rebuilds already dominate workloads in many regional markets. When approvals drag on and mobilisation is delayed, the entire supply chain feels the pressure. Labour availability tightens. Holding costs rise. Client frustration grows.
A permanent housing stockpile could absorb a portion of that demand instantly.
Instead of hundreds of families waiting simultaneously for bespoke rebuilds to commence, some could move into high-quality permanent homes straight away. Builders could then focus on site works, infrastructure and longer-term reconstruction without the initial surge overwhelming capacity.
There is also a broader industry benefit.
Large-volume, standardised manufacturing pipelines enable investment in automation, quality systems and workforce development. They drive down costs through repetition while lifting consistency and performance.
In other words, disaster recovery could become a catalyst for modernising Australian construction.
Briggs is clear that the limiting factor is not capability, it is capital.
He is actively seeking a funding partner willing to own deployable housing stock as a long-term asset, balancing commercial viability with genuine social impact.
“The type of funder we are looking for is a person or entity that would spend $15 million at a charity action, someone with serious resources but an even bigger heart”
Importantly, Briggs does not see this model as limited to disaster response alone. Homes held in inventory could also be released into the broader housing market during quieter periods, helping ease supply pressures while ensuring stock is available when emergencies occur elsewhere in the country.
In a market defined by inflation, labour shortages and chronic undersupply, even homes sitting in storage are unlikely to depreciate.
At its core, Briggs’ argument is simple.
Another fire or flood will happen. The only unknown is timing.
Australia can continue relying on temporary accommodation and drawn-out rebuild timelines or it can plan for permanent recovery in advance.
“The driving force here is simply to help people fast, in their time of need. We all have a responsibility to learn and plan – because the question isn’t if another fire or flood will happen …. It’s when.”
For builders, insurers, policymakers and investors, the question is no longer whether modular construction and digital planning tools can deliver faster outcomes.
The question is whether Australia is ready to connect the dots and commit to getting families back into real homes, on their own land, sooner.
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