Developers tout co-living as solution to housing crisis
More people than ever are living in group households. While people have been successfully organising share spaces on their own for as long as there have been houses there's new kid on the block developers building and promoting co-living accommodation.
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00:00I think it's interesting that the developers are calling this co-living or collaborative
00:05housing when in fact it's separately tenanted rooms within a house or a building, which
00:11is not what cooperative or collaborative housing normally means, which is where a group of
00:15people essentially share a house by agreement and are known to each other and form a household
00:22as it were amongst themselves. This is actually separate sub-tenanting. It's much more like
00:26a boarding house or a rooming house than any sort of co-op living.
00:31So developers are actually building new properties with that in mind. It could look from the
00:36outside to, or is, one house, but there's perhaps two or three couples living in it?
00:42Separately locked bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms to them. It's not people who are
00:48coming together as one group to share this property. It's separate tenancies within one
00:55house.
00:56So the advantage being that the rent is a lot cheaper than they would be able to afford
01:01renting an apartment on their own?
01:02Well that would be the case for cooperative housing. What the developers in this case
01:06are promoting is actually much higher revenue for the landlord by having separate tenancies
01:11within it. That's not really a cooperative housing model. That's much more like a boarding
01:16house model but with higher rent.
01:19So the developers are on the side of saying we can help solve the housing crisis by getting
01:26more people in one property?
01:28Well yes, although they're not arguing that. They're arguing better revenue for investors.
01:33I think we need to draw a distinction between cooperative housing that is collaborative
01:38in nature and is people choosing who they live with from separate tenancies within bedrooms
01:44of a house, which is a different model, much more like a disused model of group homes that
01:50used to be used in disability accommodation, where people don't have a choice about who
01:54the other occupants of their home are. So I think these are quite different models.
01:58OK, this is something that we see in other countries much more. Is there more of an uptake
02:05on it with cost of living, with the lack of housing here in Australia?
02:09Of the genuine cooperative housing, yes, there is an uptick in interest in cooperative housing
02:13in deliberative design methods where people will come together as a community and have
02:18a development that they'll then live in, and other forms of cooperative household or property
02:24models. Yes, absolutely, we're seeing an uptick in that. Very small numbers in Australia still,
02:29but it is growing.
02:30And is it generally younger people, couples?
02:33No, no, it's all age groups. We're often seeing older people moving into this as a means of
02:39downsizing, to share a property with people they know, like-minded people that they can
02:44share with, as a cost-saving measure.
02:48And a cost-saving measure, but also, I guess, a social support network measure.
02:53Certainly in a sense of community. I think people in cooperative housing tend to talk
02:56about a couple of things. They talk about security of tenure and knowing where they're
03:00going to live longer term rather than just being on shorter term leases or feeling vulnerable
03:06in the rental market. They talk about cost savings by sharing, but also that real sense
03:11of community and belonging that comes with being part of a close-knit community.
03:15Michael, are there rules different by state as to what can happen in this space?
03:21Well, in the sort of model that these developers are marketing, yes, there are. The rules around
03:25boarding houses, rooming houses, lodging houses, it even has different names in each jurisdiction.
03:30There are quite different sets of regulation and legislation controlling what's possible
03:36and what's available. So where we're seeing something that looks to be bypassing those
03:40to market it as cooperative, when in fact it's quite different, is something we should
03:45look at closely.