"It's time to build on our community: Neighbourhood Houses do the quiet work that transforms communities" - Opinion piece in The Mercury, 5 May 2026

This week, people from across Tasmania’s Neighbourhood Houses will gather on Parliament lawns for a picnic - a simple way to mark the lead-up to Neighbourhood House Week. It’s a chance to celebrate being part of more than 1,000 Neighbourhood Houses across Australia, and to recognise the quiet but vital role these places play in communities large and small.

Neighbourhood Houses are open doors in towns, suburbs and cities - places where people can gather in simple but meaningful ways. They are not clinical services, and they are not government offices. They are familiar, human spaces. You don’t need a referral. You just turn up.

You often have to experience that simplicity to understand its power.

When someone is new to an area, feeling isolated, doing it tough, or simply looking to belong, a Neighbourhood House offers something rare: a place that says, “You’re welcome here.” That welcome isn’t accidental. It’s what makes connection possible, and what helps communities stay strong over time.

We talk a lot about resilient communities, especially as governments grapple with complex, long-term challenges. But resilience isn’t built only in a crisis. It grows through everyday interactions - people learning together, sharing ideas, and solving problems side by side.

That’s what Neighbourhood Houses make possible. They are places people go for companionship, practical help, or a reset when life is heavy. They help people reconnect and remember they are part of a “we”, not just a collection of individuals.

That’s why Neighbourhood Houses aren’t interchangeable with programs or services. Services matter, and we will always need them. But they are often designed elsewhere before being delivered locally. Neighbourhood Houses start locally, with what people in that community actually need.

They don’t assume what works in one place will work in another. They begin with local people - and work alongside them to shape responses that fit.

Done well, that makes Neighbourhood Houses a launchpad for local action.

They create the conditions for people to try new things, test ideas, learn, and build confidence. Sometimes change is slow and steady. Other times it moves quickly, sparked by a local need or opportunity. Both matter.

This is how lasting change happens - not through a one-size-fits-all solution, but through responses grown locally and shaped by lived experience. Disadvantage isn’t turned around by a single program. It shifts through relationships, trust and shared effort over time.

The Tasmanian Government’s decision to fund an independent Neighbourhood Houses Needs Analysis is a good step. It’s about to kick off, and is a chance to be clear-eyed about where Houses are stretched - and what it would take to fund them properly so they can keep transforming lives of Tasmanians. Too often, though, public policy is framed around a finite “pie” - as if there is only so much to go around, and every dollar must deliver immediate, predictable results. That mindset makes it hard to back the slow work that helps communities grow.

Community development doesn’t work on neat timelines.

Growth requires experimentation: backing local ideas, accepting that some won’t work, and learning from what does. It’s closer to investing than buying a standard service - you build on what succeeds.

Communities do this naturally: they try things, adapt, drop what doesn’t work, and strengthen what does. What they need is steady support - not stop-start funding, but funding that lets momentum continue.

It’s also a reminder that when communities are trusted and supported, they get on with the work themselves. The returns are social, cultural and economic - even when they don’t show up neatly on a spreadsheet.

Neighbourhood Houses also grow local leadership. It can come from anywhere: a young volunteer, a newcomer, a parent, an older resident. People step forward when they have a place to meet, a reason to care, and support to follow through.

Tasmania already has this network, in neighbourhoods right across the state, held together by people who believe in connection and collective effort. The question is not whether Neighbourhood Houses work. You can see it every day in lives made easier, friendships formed, and communities strengthened.

The real question is whether we are prepared to recognise and nurture what we already have.

If we do, we won’t just be funding a line item in the Budget. We’ll be backing the kind of communities we want to live in: places where people belong, where leadership grows, and where the future is built together.

That is worth backing.

Simone Zell is CEO of Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania (NHT), the peak body for Neighbourhood Houses across the state