CoHousing. What is it?
‘At last a positive story about housing, the environment, mental health, quality housing and an alternative to aged care and potentially even affordable housing.’
NewCoh
‘It is time to transition to housing that supports people, planet, and place.’
CoHousing Australia
NewCoh CoHousing AGM
Narara Eco Village
Defining CoHousing
Ecovillage, collective living, hippie commune, affordable housing, key worker housing, planned community, deliberate development.... These are the diverse range of thoughts often elicited when the word ‘cohousing’ comes up. And diversity in types of cohousing are one of its great attributes, but also what makes it hard to pin down exactly what cohousing is under a definition.
CoHousing Australia define CoHousing as ‘… a sustainable and affordable approach to living in community. Cohousing communities are intentional communities, with people seeking out a community feel to their home lives. They are created and run by their residents cooperating to create better lives. Each household has a self-contained, private home as well as shared community space. Residents come together to manage their community, share activities, and regularly eat together.’
At this point it’s probably important to mention a recently defined and similar sounding form of housing - 'Co-Living'. The Planning NSW definition is ‘Co-living housing must contain at least 6 private rooms and include key features such as fully furnished, ready-to-occupy private and shared spaces. A manager, who is responsible for the shared spaces, should actively encourage a sense of community.’
Co-Living is a different form of housing to CoHousing and requires more of a business model. The housing is managed as short term rental and must sit on a single ownership title. At the time of writing Co-Living is only permissible in higher density residential zonings. As a housing typology we think of it more akin to the Student Housing model... but for adults.
CoHousing, on the other hand, is more closely understood as an intentional or deliberate community of actively involved residents. CoHousing can operate in torrens or strata titled properties and ownership and rental models are possible for residents. CoHousing is not a building typology.
COHOUSING
CoHousing according to Wikipedia is ‘an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space. The term originated in Denmark in the late 1960s.[2] Each attached or single-family home has traditional amenities, including a private kitchen. Shared spaces typically feature a common house, which may include a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, and recreational spaces. Shared outdoor space may include parking, walkways, open space, and gardens. Neighbours also share resources like tools and lawnmowers.’
As an example, here is a CoHousing project Saltbush are working on that is about to go in for DA. This is not on R2 and will be a traditional strata title development with a lot of common space and a Cooperative governance overlay. https://www.saltbushprojects.com/projects/glendarrahcohousing
COOPERATIVE HOUSING
Cooperative Housing is an ownership and tenure model that can be applied to various housing types such as apartments, dual-occupancies, free-standing houses and whole villages - existing or purpose built. It can also comprise a variety of mixes between renters, part-owners and full owners.
Peak body Common Equity describe it as:
'Around the world, co-ops are a big deal. Well established, highly effective and successful. In some parts of the globe Co-operative Housing is as much as 40% of the total housing in a city....
There’s so much to like about co-operative housing. Residents love it, frequently rating it better than any other form of housing...
It’s a model that empowers, generating significant social, financial, health and wellbeing benefits. It’s inclusive for all ages and demographics. And offers the benefits of safety and security with the joy of being part of a vibrant, local community...
Co-operative Housing is as varied as the people who live in it - Units. Free standing houses. Villages. Owners. Part-owners. Renters. Shared spaces. Rooftop Gardens. Innovative designs...
Australia’s housing market no longer meets the needs for so many. People on low incomes, people with good incomes, retirees, older Australians, vulnerable groups, people with a disability or those just wanting to be a part of a stronger community.'
Why are Saltbush so interested in CoHousing?
At Saltbush we feel cohousing has the capacity to address; loneliness and mental health, connection with Aboriginal knowledge and Country, housing affordability, homelessness, ageing in place, food security, material waste, planetary degradation... the list goes on.
Co-designing a place for fulfilling experiences within a smaller footprint, gives cohousing the capacity to form real and meaningful community and effect positive change. The community scale and collective governance found in cohousing could short-circuit the all-too-slow reform needed at government and global economy levels. The result being that cohousing can provide exemplar and scalable models of living to regenerate people, place and planet.
Our focus on cohousing grew from experience on a number of interrelated housing projects. We worked with Common Equity on the Lasa Street Housing proposal where we developed dual-key row housing and cluster apartments around a shared circulation network and communal spaces. On this project we also learnt of the uneasy fit that cohousing has with current planning definitions and regulations.
Prior to this project Adam had led various ‘alternative housing’ studios in the UTS MArch Design stream including the three-year-running Adapturbia studio. We have also had past experience designing low-rise apartment buildings, boarding houses and testing middle-ring densification as dual-occupancy and terrace houses for the NSW Government.
Saltbush are presently working on and around cohousing with a number of cohousing communities, government, not-for-profit bodies and universities. Our contribution in this space includes the delivery of professional services, participation in research, public forums and through university-level teaching. We see the need for reform in planning regulation and zoning, finance, community and governance structures and the ‘housing market’ and we believe pilot projects in co-housing can lead the way.
What are Saltbush doing in this space already?
Glendarrah CoHousing
Saltbush have been working with community members of Glendarrah CoHousing since 2019. In addition to developing a co-design process, site masterplan and development application, we are providing communications, story-telling and community-building services. Some earlier options of Glendarrah CoHousing can bee seen on our website HERE. The yet-to-be-launched website for the community is found here glendarrahcohousing.com.au.
NENA Housing Week 2022 Conference
Adam was a speaker in the New Economy Network Australia NENA Housing Week 2022 where he contributed on the Sustainable Housing panel with Andy Marlow of Envirotecture and Rob McLeod of Renew. The robust discussion touched on creature habits versus building performance - performance of the ‘residents’ rather than performance of the ‘residence’.
Love thy neighbour - Architecture Studio 8
In second semester 2022 Adam and Newcastle architect Basil Bullock co-led a MArch Design studio at the University of Newcastle. The studio was called ‘Love thy neighbour’ and introduced the NewCoh CoHousing group to students as a real-world client.
Students analysed an old church site in the Newcastle suburb of Mayfield and then developed a collaborative housing project to address issues of sustainability, community connection, resident-led design, heritage and housing affordability. The aim of the subject was to explore the place-making potential of collaborative housing model and examine the question of ‘How can we live better, together?’.
Weekly engagement with Basil and/or Adam allowed each student to develop an approach to higher-density collaborative-housing that was uniquely customised to a local Newcastle context. Two students - Emily Nugent and Zoe Xing - presented their projects to the NewCoh community a few weeks after the semester was over.
NewCoh Cohousing in Newcastle
Prior to the Love Thy Neighbour studio, Adam provided preliminary design and process guidance to the well-established cohouisng group, NewCoh - Newcastle's first collaborative living initiative - as they move closer to planning on their project in Newcastle.
The vision for NewCoh is ‘A sustainable neighbourhood of architect designed apartments and townhouses with community facilities and gardens that you co-own. It’s a Scandinavian way of combining private and shared space that’s designed to enrich everyone’s living experience.’
Narara EcoVillage
In late 2022 we visited the Narara Eco Village and are in discussion on a range of cohousing models for part of the Narara Stage 2 village. Watch this space through 2023…
CoHousing Research
Saltbush are contributing to a long-form research project under the banner of Collaborative housing in a net-zero future. The project is convened by The University of Wollongong in conjunction with the Cohousing Australia.
Saltbush participated in a series of three workshops to discuss the latest research and practice perspectives on collaborative housing. The workshops were convened with the goal of building an Australian research agenda in the cohousing space. The research project brings together relevant professionals, researchers, academics and cohousing communities in order to generate broad yet applicable outcomes.
Do examples of CoHousing already exist in Australia?
Absolutely they do!
The non-exhaustive lists below combines our own research in Australia and New Zealand, with a CoHousing Australia interactive map found HERE .
Established CoHousing
Bega Eco Neighbourhood Community Housing (NSW) https://bend.org.au/
Bundagen (NSW) http://www.bundagen.com.au/
Cascade CoHousing (Tas) https://www.cascadecohousing.com/
Christie Walk (SA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Walk
Crystal water, QLD https://crystalwaters.org.au/
DeCohousing (WA) https://decohousingdenmark.wixsite.com/home/home
Earthsong (NZ) earthsong.org.nz
Illabunda Village in Winston Hills, Sydney, NSW https://www.illabundavillage.com.au/
Narrara Ecovillage (NSW) http://nararaecovillage.com/
Pinakarri (WA) https://www.pinakarri.org.au/
Maleny Eco Village (QLD) https://ecovillage.org/project/maleny-eco-village/
Moora Moora Cooperative Community (Vic) http://www.mooramoora.org.au/
Murundaka (Vic) http://murundakacohousing.org.au/
Shedders (NSW) https://shedders.wordpress.com/
Shepherds Ground (NSW) www.shepherdsground.com.au
The Cape (VIC). https://www.liveatthecape.com.au/about.htmlPhone
The Clarke street Collective, VIC http://propertycollectives.com.au/projects-archive/collective-2-clarke-st-northcote/
The Ecovillage at Currumbin, QLD. https://theecovillage.com.au/
Urban Coup (Vic) www.urbancoup.org
WestWyck Ecovillage (Vic) westwyck.com
White Gum Valley, Baugruppe, Perth, Western Australia https://developmentwa.com.au/projects/residential/white-gum-valley/overview
CoHousing in Creation
Agency (Balmain) https://agencycohcom.org/
Aldinga Arts EcoVillage (AAEV), (SA) aldingaartsecovillage.com
Stellulata (North Canberra, ACT) https://www.stellulata.com.au/
Sydney Cohousing (NSW) https://sydcohousing.wordpress.com/?ref=spelling
Co-West (VIC) https://www.facebook.com/WestsideCohousingCollective
Cohousing Banyule (VIC) https://www.facebook.com/CohousingBanyule/
Cohousing Canberra (ACT) https://www.facebook.com/groups/978218968972792/about
Cohousing Eltham (VIC) http://propertycollectives.com.au/2021/06/cohousing-project-eltham-nillumbik-melbourne-july-2021-participant-expression-interest/
Glendarrah CoHousing (Hazelbrook) https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community-Service/Glendarrah-Cohousing
Miller’s Corner (SA) https://www.millerscorner.org/
NewCoh (Newcastle) https://www.newcoh.org/
Tasman Ecovillage, (TAS) https://tasmanecovillage.org.au/
The Cape (Cape Paterson, VIC) https://liveatthecape.com.au/
The Dig Frankston, (VIC) https://raywhitefrankston.com.au/the-digs/about
The Paddock Ecovillage (Castlemaine, VIC) https://www.thepaddockcastlemaine.com.au/
The Verge (SA) https://vergecohousingcommunity.weebly.com/
WinC – Older Women in Cohousing (Daylesford, VIC) http://winccohousing.org.au/
What other resources are out there?
Collaborative Housing - is a website guide developed by the Institute for Sustainable Futures that unpacks the broader notion of collaborative housing by answering some basic questions; How does collaborative housing work?, How is it different?, What are the benefits? and Who would it benefit? There is also a ‘Stories’ section that offers a broad range of examples from around Australia under the headings of Cooperatives, Collaborative retirement, Building groups, Cohousing, Co-living, Small Blocks and Intentional Communities.
CoHousing Australia - is a volunteer organisation with the mission ‘… to support the establishment and enhancement of the networks and conditions necessary to expand the Australian cohousing sector; making cohousing an option for all interested.’ The CoHousing Australia website promotes collective models of housing, housing diversity, and housing choice and they provide a terrific ‘How To Guide’ for groups interested in establishing their own cohousing community (‘roadmap’ image reproduced below).
Who can I get in touch with?
Feel free to contact Saltbush with your cohousing questions. If we can’t assist with your queries directly we will definitely call on our networks to point you in the right direction.