Sustainability drive Canberra’s Co-housing community

A group of older Canberrans are trying to reduce their environmental impact by creating their own sustainable co-housing community in Canberra's north.

Three couples are planning to build a small co-housing project in the suburb of Ainslie called Stellulata Cohousing.

The group originally planned for the building to serve as a way to retire into smaller units, but they say it is not just for retirees, with the latest couple to join being in their 40 s and 50 s.

The co-housing building is designed to appear as a large house from the street, but it will contain three attached one-storey units and one shared building.

Stellulata Cohousing says the build is focused on sustainability and will include solar panels with battery storage, high-efficiency electric appliances for hot water, heating and lighting and rainwater harvesting.

The design was chosen by the ACT government to be a Demonstration Housing Project, which aims to showcase ways to deliver a compact and active city through innovative planning, design and delivery.

Jillian Reid and James Godfrey are the newest couple to join the community, having moved from Sydney to Canberra in hopes of finding somewhere to live that had sustainability in mind.

Ms Reid said that they had originally planned to buy a home in Canberra and renovate it, but found it hard to find somewhere that was not too big and focused on sustainability.

She said that she said that for us to buy one of the old houses and renovate would have been more space than what we needed.

We then turn to townhouses and that is appealing but the sustainability features in a townhouse come into the same challenges as with apartments.

It was really hard to get that in a townhouse arrangement, because it was so hard to control the energy, have solar, have batteries and rainwater management. She said she found Stellulata Cohousing's website and quickly joined the community.

The appeal was the location, but also the design. She said sustainability principles were central to the design.

That combination of private space and the sharing components was the right amount of space for what we need together with the garden.

Ian Ross, a future resident, said the overall response to the project has been positive, with many saying they wanted to retire with friends once told about the design.

The most common response we've had is people who say, 'Oh, we've been talking with our friends about this for ages, you know, getting together when we retire and living together and having an enjoyable, supportive time,'' he said.

People in our situation, who were in a big house, know that they would like to go somewhere smaller, but they don't want to move out of their neighbourhood. As part of their engagement with the Demonstration Housing Project, Stellulata Cohousing will have open homes at the property for five years, allowing Canberrans to view the sustainable design.

She said seeing the completed building could result in similar co-housing structures appearing, but that co-housing communities were only one part of solving housing issues.

She said that this is not the only answer, and I would absolutely expect it to become more common.

Should it play a role in how do we solve the density? The question of housing, and do it in a way that has a community focus, that actually maintains all the good things we have now in the suburbs, is a sustainability focus.