G’day! We’re Kate and Kal, a wife and husband team from Springrange NSW, a stone’s throw from the national capital. We’re part of a progressive housing movement called cohousing, which promises a better way to house people and a better way to live.
After years of dreaming and talking about cohousing, we’re finally taking the great leap, and committing to making it happen in Lilli Pilli, on the far South Coast of NSW, fifteen minutes south of Batemans Bay. This is a lifestyle choice for our family, but it’s more than that. We believe projects like this have the potential to restore humanity to housing throughout Australia.
We hope this article will inform and inspire others to explore alternative housing models like cohousing.
Australia is now suffering a housing and rental crisis that’s been building for decades. Housing affordability is now so bad, governments can’t ignore it, yet government schemes (grants, guarantees and shared equity schemes) continue to tackle it from the same angle—finding ever more ways for people to spend even more money on housing they can’t really afford. This, unsurprisingly, tends to push prices even higher.
While the cost of housing is the hot topic, we believe our current housing model is broken in other ways that affect our health, happiness and hip-pockets:
Cohousing is a modern form of collaborative housing. Any article on cohousing will tell you that it originated in Denmark in the late 1960s. In essence though, it’s a modern reinterpretation of traditional village life—something people from every tribe and nation have lived out, in one form or another, for thousands of years. Let’s look at how cohousing marries these ancient principles with 21st century living.
A cohousing development is made up of a number of separate, private dwellings—they could be freestanding houses, townhouses or a block of apartments. As with conventional housing, your home is your personal sanctuary, always there when you need your privacy or personal downtime.
Houses are clustered around shared, outdoor spaces that are car-free and people-friendly. Such spaces might include a barbecue, outdoor eating areas, a children’s playground, a basketball half-court, or a shared vegetable garden.
Driveways and car-parking spaces are kept to the perimeter of the complex, and residents are required to walk (or use their wheelchair, mobility scooter, etc) a short distance between their car and their home. In addition to providing central, car-free spaces, this creates opportunities for social interaction between neighbours. For children, it provides for safe outdoor play with neighbouring children—something previous generations once enjoyed but which has now largely disappeared from suburban life.
The multi-generational nature of cohousing provides social benefits for all ages. Children learn from the wisdom of senior residents, and seniors enjoy the contagious energy and enthusiasm of children.
Another key feature, which sets cohousing apart from conventional housing, is the shared common house. It includes a large kitchen and dining room where residents can enjoy meals together or host parties and special events. Optionally, it may include other facilities, such as a shared laundry, gym, pool, games room, workshop—really anything the founding members want. It may also include guest accomodation for visiting friends and family, or for renting out and generating income. In the most successful cohousing communities, the common house becomes a vibrant hub of social activity.
A cohousing development following the Danish model is a grassroots, community led venture—that is, it’s planned and led by residents for the benefit of residents, not for profit. So the incentive is there from the beginning to build high quality, energy efficient homes. It also means residents can make decisions about what they want and need, and what they don’t.
Cohousing naturally leads to smaller private homes as people realise the benefits of prioritising shared spaces. Decades of lived experience has shown that residents rarely wish they had built larger homes and a smaller common house. Architect and cohousing consultant Charles Durrett, who lives and breathes cohousing, describes a high-functioning common house this way: ‘It’s the place that is an extension of your home, a supplement to your home. For instance, if I have a 1,000 square foot [93 m2] home and a 4,000 square foot [372 m2] common house, then in effect, I have a 5,000 square foot [465 m2] house.’ It’s certainly a more sustainable alternative to the McMansion phenomenon.
While our primary motivation for cohousing isn’t the cost of ownership, there are significant cost savings to be had if a project is well-managed. Cost saving opportunities include:
The ongoing cost-of-living savings can be significant too when homes are designed around passive solar principles, negating the need for active heating and cooling systems. Furthermore, shared facilities like the common house deliver a wealth of extras you simply couldn’t afford to build into your own house. That’s the benefit of sharing the cost between multiple households.
There are other cost savings to be had too, depending on your willingness to share resources. Does every household really need their own lawnmower when a single mower could be shared by everyone? How about carpooling, or even a shared vehicle? A shared trailer, or tools? Could you negotiate a cheaper deal on your Internet by pooling together? The opportunities to share resources and save are many.
We find that many people, when first introduced to the concept of cohousing, are quick to find problems. What if I don’t like my neighbours? Who’s going to do all the cleaning and maintenance of the shared spaces? How will a group of households ever agree on all the decisions that need to be made? These are good questions. It would be naive to imagine that any kind of community would be without its challenges.
The good news is, cohousing wasn’t dreamed up yesterday. It is a proven model with over 50 years of lived experience. The first cohousing communities in Denmark are still thriving today, and many hundreds of successful communities have been established worldwide since they paved the way.
We’ve talked with people who live in cohousing, and have found them to be very open about the challenges. But they also talk about the opportunities for personal growth—how learning new skills in decision making and conflict resolution have helped them thrive in other areas of life too, like family and career. And they’re often quick to add that they wouldn’t go back to conventional housing. For us, it just adds to the evidence that the benefits of cohousing are well worth the effort.
Our proposed site is an 11 hectare block right on the edge of Lilli Pilli township, four minutes from the beach. The block is zoned C4 (environmental living), with the potential for a 5 lot subdivision and up to 10 dwellings. The zoning permits community facilities, subject to council approval. The land is mostly uncleared eucalypt forest. The proposed building site has north facing slopes with views (once cleared), and electricity infrastructure nearby.
Designing a cohousing development is a collaborative exercise, which takes input from future residents at whatever stage they join the project, so it’s not for us to plan and design the whole project now, before a group is formed. But naturally, we can’t help but set our imaginations to work! Here are some of the features we would love to see included in the design:
Our first step on this journey is to buy the land. We’re in the process of doing that right now. (Update: Settlement took place on 18 August 2023!) Our second step is to find a group of people with a shared vision of building a cohousing community together.
Finding people who want to live in beautiful Lilli Pilli, just minutes from the beach, in a comfortable, newly built, energy efficient home, with distant views of forested hills, along with a caring community of friendly neighbours… we don’t think this is going to be a tough sell! No, we think the challenge will be finding people who:
For cohousing to function well, there is no requirement that everyone conform to a single mindset or culture. We think some amount of cultural diversity only makes a community richer. With that said, there are some core values that we think are essential if we’re going to work well together:
Cohousing may still be in its infancy here in Australia, but interest is definitely growing. Groups are popping up all over the country as people search for alternatives to our ailing housing system. Unfortunately, many of these groups struggle to get over two major hurdles:
These can be major barriers, with many groups stalling for years, or even giving up altogether and disbanding. So we decided to break with cohousing tradition and find the land first. People can now choose to join us (or not join us) based on their location preferences. With a tangible asset and one of the hardest decisions behind us, the Lilli Pilli project already has legs.
Now we’re looking for people to come and consider investing in the next stages: paying off the property, legal structuring, site planning, design, and the development application (DA).
The benefit of joining us early is that you’ll have more of a say in all the big decisions, helping to shape the project with us. And any financial investment in the property will increase in value as the property increases in value.
If just 5 households were ready to invest $150,000 (in addition to our own investment), we could completely pay off the property, with more than enough money left over to engage professionals and progress to the DA. If 9 households were ready to invest $200,000, we could potentially complete a number of houses, or the common house with guest accomodation, providing onsite accomodation and equity to finance and complete the project quickly.
There is also the potential to seek investment from non-resident investors, reducing (or even eliminating) the reliance on banks. This could include the setting aside of one or more homes for renting, with the proceeds being used to deliver a return on investment.
In time, we’ll make ourselves a slick website (Kal happens to be a graphic designer and developer)—and reluctantly create some kind of social media presence—but for now the best way to express your interest is to simply phone or email one of us!
If you email us, be sure to tell us where you are on the curiosity–commitment continuum:
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, or just want to chat about the project, please don’t hesitate to contact either one of us.
Some questions we’ll be able to answer at this early stage, and some we won’t. Again, cohousing is a collaborative housing model, so many of the decisions won’t be made by us alone, but by the group of future residents and investors. Many of those decisions will also require the right advice from professionals in law, town planning, architecture, engineering, project management and building. (If you, or someone you can recommend highly, has expertise in one of these areas, please let us know!)
Kate 0473 747 456 kate@starkis.com.au
Kal 0411 747 456 kal@starkis.com.au
Updated: 14 November 2023