Neighbourhood Houses began life in the 1970s as a social movement to provide social and educational opportunities for women who were out of the paid workforce (usually due to child rearing).

The houses are a community resource; they have community development, health promotion, adult learning, and social inclusion focuses and are predominantly governed by democratic committees drawn from local citizenry. Thus each house reflects the local community in which it is based.

Within the community and not for profit sector they are one of the last truly general local services. The majority evolved through a dedicated bunch of local people working together on local needs.

They usually have a big volunteer base and a strong ‘labour of love’ component.  Over the years through vigorous and longstanding campaigns and lobbying the organisations have gained small incremental funding increases.

In 2006 they won a large boost to their re-current funding (very unusual in the sector). This funding is called the Neighbourhood Houses Coordination Program (NHCP) and is for ‘coordination hours’. The 360+ houses throughout Victoria are funded for between 10 and 40 hours per week. This is to enable houses to hire a coordinator and carry out community development work.

A feature of the funding is the governance structure; houses must be managed via a ‘community governance’ model, whereby the local community/ies can be seen to be governing the direction of the organisation. This community governance model is also the requirement for network funding. Networks must be governed directly by their memberships (DPCD 2009).

Within Network West the unfunded houses are usually run or auspiced by local government (or by welfare/community service agencies)