Cohousing in Australia
Plus other low-cost, low-tedium options for secure habitation
2021-09-24 — 2023-09-15
Scruffy notes from my cohousing working group on our research into how to find some cheap, low-fuss, convivial cohousing in Australia. These notes were not written for public consumption, but they will do for now. There was enough interesting stuff that I thought it worth copy-pasting to the internet for others. If you want to get in touch about anything discussed here please do, or join one of the meetup groups/reddits mentioned.
UPDATE: Looks like I am moving to Melbourne. Currently barn raising a cooperative house, in the Ouroboros project.
Related: Community governance, housing in general, squads…
1 Collective housing governance structures
So, there are varied governance and ownership structures for collective housing, and I have no fixed opinions about which model is most awesome.
collaborativehousing.org.au collates a few different options. Also Renew Magazine did a pretty tops story on these recently. There is also a cooperative that supports housing cooperatives, Cohousing Australia. I’ve put myself on the mailing list for all these organisations. There is a book that everyone recommends too.
1.1 Housing cooperatives
Housing co-operatives are a classic. In NSW this seems to mean going through Common Equity. A major example to be aware of in practice is our local Alpha house.
Some fun resources on housing co-ops for folks to take a look at (Commentary by Mike McKenna).
Intro to the legal aspects of starting a co-op. For those more legislatively inclined, see [sl-2013-0601#sc- Inland floods: Aqueduct
Coastal floods: Seeing
Firenadoes: No good resources for Australia yet, so we need to guess it from the CSIRO extremes data.
These give us interesting maps. TL;DR THE INNER WEST IS IN A DANGER ZONE CHECK THE ELEVATION OF ANY PROPERTIES. ALTERNATIVELY: BUY IN THE INNER WEST NOW AND YOU WILL HAVE A BEACHFRONT PROPERTY IN A COUPLE OF DECADES.
1.2 Pollution
In an urban context, we might be interested to see this map of the lead levels in Sydney soil by Macquarie University’s Vegesafe.
In a rural context, bushfire smog is a non-trivial risk to health, and is obviously also related to climate change. Does anyone have up-to-date statistics on this in the Australian context? There is an excellent list of resources and challenges for lung health from California.
1.3 Future epidemic risk
Future epidemics are considered likely and might seriously change the trade-offs of urban living. Or not.
For now, see this piece by Elizabeth Van Nostrand for some risk calibration.
2 Buyers’ agents
Buyers’ agents might be good for people with specialist housing purchase needs. Do any of us know how to choose amongst them? There are a few top-ranked results from Google:
- https://www.housesearchaustralia.com.au/
- https://rebaa.com.au/buyers-agents/
- https://nationalpropertybuyers.com.au/buyers-agents-australia/
- https://whichrealestateagent.com.au/buyers-agent/best-buyers-agents-australia/
- https://www.propertybuyer.com.au/
I don’t have much understanding of the incentives facing these people.
3 Governance
Two parts:
3.1 Legal/financial
Structure of the entity which owns the development and determines the rules and procedures for who lives there and when.
Note that Stamp Duty is a cohousing-hostile tax that you will need to deal with.
See e.g. Replacing stamp duty with a land tax could save home buyers big money. Here’s how.
3.2 Community/procedural
How does a group doing co-housing decide stuff? This is a classic Community governance question.
urbancoup’s members thought about this for WAY TOO LONG and tried many governance structures. I did learn about Sociocracy from them, which sounds like a low-lift governance model.
Sociocracy is a system of governance that seeks to create psychologically safe environments and productive organisations. It draws on the use of consent, rather than majority voting, in discussion and decision-making by people who have a shared goal or work process
4 Finances
5 Housing theory and policy
I am no expert. There are people who study housing policy in general; in Australia, specifically; and for cohousing in particular. There is LinkedIn activity about policy setting for co-housing, for example.
- Land Value Taxes which actually exist, sort of!
- Housing Medallions is a think piece for the American market which looks at the (AFAICT somewhat different) dynamics of zoning there, and argues that it is all about monopoly rents
- (pro-)Renting lobby: Better renting
- Generally-better-Sydney lobby, the Sydney Alliance
- Talk by Sydney housing/squat activists from 2001 which will seem eerily familiar
- My own posts on housing
6 Questions to answer about goals
Here are some we came up with.
- Multi-generational
- Shared kitchen
- Shared guest room
- Shared workshop
- Shared event space
- Shared garden
- City?/Country?/ Urban fringe?
- NSW/Qld/Vic/Tas/NT?
- Build from scratch?
- Convert apartments?
- own/rent?
- co-op/strata/corporate title/other?
- How much capital can you stump up now?
- What do you want to do if someone needs to sell?
- How much can you raise as a loan?
- Price
7 Incoming
-
Grounded is a not-for-profit organization established to advocate, incubate, and accelerate the development of Community Land Trusts in Australia. The group has come together to ensure a diverse mix of housing models is possible.
Our Design — Stellulata Cohousing A Canberra retirement cohouse.
Global Ecovillage Network: Community for a Regenerative World
Phil, Co-buying property with friends (Not Australian but good generic advice)
Buying Property Through A Company: In What Entity Should You Buy Your Property?
…is an unlikely assortment of writers, designers, musicians, clowns, entrepreneurs, artists, coders, and scientists slowly cultivating a flourishing neighbourhood within a neighbourhood in Bushwick, Brooklyn — one of NYC’s creative hubs.
Currently, our collective consists of 10 living rooms within a 5min walk of Morgan Ave L. Communes are cool, but we’re something else: a friend network that shares spaces, manages projects, and raises each other’s aspirations.
What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal
“Today’s future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives,” writes Kristen Ghodsee. Even our most ambitious visions of utopia tend to focus on outcomes that can be achieved through public policy — things like abundant clean energy or liberation from employment — while ignoring many of the aspects of our lives that matter to us the most: how we live, raise our children, and tend to our most meaningful relationships.
Ghodsee’s new book, “Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life,” (Ghodsee 2023) is an attempt to change that. The book is a tour of radical social experiments from communes and ecovillages to “platonic parenting” and intentional communities. But, on a deeper level, it’s a critique of the way existing structures of family and community life have left so many of us devoid of care and connection, and a vision of what it could mean to organise our lives differently.