Decision details

Moved by Councillor Ellsmore, seconded by Councillor Worling –

It is resolved that:

(A)        Council note that:

(i)           housing cooperatives play an important role in keeping housing affordable in cities around the world. They provide 10 per cent of the housing across Europe. More than half of the housing in Vienna is either city-owned flats or cooperative apartments;

(ii)         in Australia, housing cooperatives account for only 0.3 per cent of housing. The recent housing cooperative project by Common Equity and All Nations Housing - which the City of Sydney Council unanimously voted to support through the discounted sale of a row of terraces in Darlinghurst - is estimated to be the first new housing cooperative in the inner city in more than 30 years;

(iii)        a recent national study of housing cooperatives, as reported in The Value of Housing Co-operatives in Australia by Professor Louise Crabtree et al, found that cooperative housing’s costs were similar to those of other types of community housing, with housing cooperative residents having a generally higher level of satisfaction and agency, compared to other housing tenures, especially renting;

(iv)        the Housing for All Working Group visited a number of inner-city housing cooperatives in 2022. Housing cooperatives in the City of Sydney include but are not limited to Alpha House artist cooperative, Emohrua artist cooperative and STUCCO student cooperative. All were all established with government and institutional support;

(v)         the City of Sydney provided $31,000 to Cohousing Australia Cooperative Limited in 2022 through our Knowledge Exchange grants to develop practical guidance material to help strengthen the finance of resident-led housing groups and develop cohousing in the Sydney Local Government Area; and

(vi)        the City of Sydney provided $10,000 to Housing All Australians Limited in 2020 to a study into the long-term cost of not building sufficient social and affordable housing across the City of Sydney, to seek potential social infrastructure investment; and

(B)        the Chief Executive Officer be requested to review and provide advice to Council on opportunities to increase support for housing cooperatives through Council’s affordable housing schemes.

Carried unanimously.

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