Communal Living " !

 The ultimate ambition would be to have each and every Australian family  living in a home that they own but the price of housing makes that impossible.  Australia has always had a divide between home owners and people who rent the place where they live, and in yesteryear there was a third alternative called a " boarding house ".

Usually this was a big old house where the owner was letting rooms and providing communal meals. Guests shared a bathroom and often these boarding houses were delicensed suburban pubs converted to communal living functions.

The standard of  accommodation and meals varied widely  according to the rent charged and today this form of public housing is in decline. It is not encouraged by councils and in fact boarding houses have a bad reputation of constantly changing tenants associated with crime.

The by-laws in place governing new housing provide incentives for " affordable " housing to be part of the housing mix, but often this gravitates swiftly into the $400 a week rental category.  Often, the builder and developer gets construction advantages when constructing housing that meets this " affordable "  definition.

Now the housing authorities are considering renewal of that old boarding house concept with modern overtones.   They envisage a " private living " complex of thirty to thirty five square metres comprising bedroom, bathroom and food preparation area with communal living space shared with other residents.

Just as scarcity of available housing is pushing house prices ever higher,  there is fear that competition for this form of communal housing would quickly push the charges that apply to " affordable " housing beyond the reach of the low income tenants envisaged.

The aim is to provide affordable accommodation for the essential numbers of low paid people who serve the functions of a modern city.  This housing scarcity is leaving vacancies unfilled to the detriment of city services. These people are being pushed onto the city perimeter with an impossible daily commute  that drives them to other forms of employment.

Basically, what is envisaged is a new housing code for affordable housing.  It would provide the essential privacy required by the resident with the opportunity to share communal living space with others, which was exactly the concept employed in the boarding house era.

It is a concept that requires a mix of sociable, reasonable people to work efficiently and it will certainly need adequate regulations in place to prevent the law of supply and demand pushing the rental price for this type of accommodation to market heights.

The boarding house concept provided a need in yesteryear.  It is worth recycling in a modern form.