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Housing affordability needs a vision that goes beyond the next election

By Russ Grayson - posted Monday, 20 October 2003


As usual with issues requiring the application of intelligence and creative thinking, housing affordability has become a game of political ping pong as state and federal governments seek to point-score off each other rather than apply themselves. Such pedestrian politics is meaningless quibble to people wanting to buy their first home in the city. It moves the argument absolutely nowhere except into a quagmire of political buck-passing and bun-fighting.

That leaves the economics of home ownership as the most likely point of intervention for government. This year's budget surplus could enable Canberra to raise the value of the first-home buyers grant. The impending election would make the move a vote-getter for the Coalition or for the Opposition, had they a more promising leadership. We may yet see movement on this as the election approaches but potential first-home owners should not hold their breath in anticipation.

Then there is the "out of the box" thinking that takes a more innovative but longer-term approach to reducing the cost of housing.

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An innovative scheme that could tackle the more extreme situation of homelessness rather than the affordability of home ownership is presently underway under the control of UNSW architect and academic, Col James. He has gained the support of property owners and South Sydney Council to set up the city's first legal squatter's settlement. The prototype in Sydney's Green Square will accommodate only students but it holds potential to address homelessness through a do-it-yourself approach. Unlike the popular image of unruly and scungy squatter households, James' model is highly organised and makes use of buildings only until they are ready for redevelopment.

Of more direct value to home affordability is co-housing. Developed in Scandinavia more than 20 years ago and since spread to the US, the model lends itself to affordable housing because it offers freehold title to a dwelling in a medium-density development and to shared ownership to communal facilities. Think of it as strata title applied to a horizontal residential development rather than a vertical apartment block. Shared facilities might include, as they do elsewhere, launderette, child-minding facilities, dining and open space. The legislation to make co-housing a reality in Sydney already exists in the form of the Community Titles Act. With its shared open space, co-housing developments could also address the need for creating a sense of community, the "village green" that Sydney-based social analyst, Hugh Mackay, has identified in his research.

At present, there are three co-housing developments in Australia including one each in Perth and Melbourne and, the first, Cascade Co-Housing in Hobart. Despite promise, the early-1990s proposal for a co-housing project in Sydney, the Inner Pod Co-housing project of geography PhD, Nigel Shepherd, did not eventuate.

Making a lasting dent in Sydney's home-affordability crisis requires short-term financial solutions as well as longer-term approaches that promote choice through new models of residential development. The biggest impediment here is not identifying those new models - they already exist - but getting Canberra and Macquarie Street to think beyond the next election.

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Article edited by John Carrigan.
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About the Author

Russ Grayson has a background in journalism and in aid work in the South Pacific. He has been editor of an environmental industry journal, a freelance writer and photographer for magazines and a writer and editor of training manuals for field staff involved in aid and development work with villagers in the Solomon Islands.

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