Dr Louise Crabtree
Research Program Coordinator Urban Research Centre

Christie Walk in Adelaide is a leading example of sustainable urban design. Developed by a non-profit co-operative in the 90s, Christie Walk was completed in late 2006. The project combines medium density housing with organic food gardens, energy generation and community facilities including a sustainability education hub. The story of Christie Walk illustrates the frustrations and joys of community-led innovation. It provides an example of the potential outcomes of the co-operative sector and offers a pertinent case for the support of innovation in the sector.

Caroline Butler-Bowdon
Homes in the Sky: Apartment Living in Australia

Homes in the sky: apartment living in Australia is the first comprehensive look at this controversial yet ubiquitous form of architecture. Australian cities are being remade by an unprecedented apartment boom with more apartments than houses being built in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. This presentation will provide an insight in to the history of this important component of Australia’s domestic history. It will provide an introduction to the main apartment locales and genres – the city, inner city, suburbs and seaside, public housing – and their markets, architecture and identity.

Since apartment buildings first appeared in Australia one hundred years ago, their proponents and critics have agreed as to their transformative impact on our cities’ urban and social structure and architectural character. While historians and other image-makers celebrated and commemorated Australian suburbia, another way of life was flourishing.

Focusing on the range of apartments this presentation will highlight some key examples of cooperative housing in apartments in 20th century Sydney. It will also highlight future opportunities for successful higher-density living as metropolitan Sydney continues to grow in population and more importantly, grows in the number of households.

Joseph Connellan
Financial modelling for affordable housing and excluded groups

‘Australia is experiencing a housing crisis in home ownership, private rental and public housing. The new Federal Government has committed to address these issues in a large scale partnership with state and local Government as well as the private sector. Co-operative housing is well placed to become major contributors to this response.

Mark Snell
Financing Options for Affordable Housing

A ‘third way’: Co-operative ownership & management of assets: House and land package for $15,500 per person? It's not private ownership, and it's not rental. It's co-operative ownership. This scenario might be exceptional, but it is possible. Using current Australian examples and an alternative economic perspective, Mark Snell describes how owner-builder co-operatives can provide affordable housing and some of the obstacles that stand in their way.

John Mant
Lawyer and urban planner

In Australian cities there has been little encouragement for co-operatives to be part of the solution. There are few examples. Why not more? In the early 1970s a group of us decided a co op could provide a good solution to our housing and other family needs. We wanted land for seventy houses, and the right to design a different kind of development – better than the usual badly designed fragmented housing on bulldozed sites. Surprisingly the barriers were formidable. We succeeded only because we were working in Ministerial offices. There were two successful schemes, but the Canberra planners did not encourage any more. They were offended we got what we wanted and showed their product up. My paper will touch on the positive things about coop solutions and the difficulties we need to overcome to bring it them about.

Prof Julian Disney
Affordable Housing: Key Problems and Prospects

The Rudd government has taken office with a more substantial and innovative package of housing policies than is generally recognised. The main directions for action are sound and they are backed by specific funding promises. A key challenge is to negotiate a wide-ranging, well-resourced National Affordable Housing Agreement with state and local governments. The agreement should be designed to regenerate public housing, strengthen non-profit housing and attract major institutional investment into low-rent housing for low-income households. It is also important to move forward rapidly with the promised residential infrastructure fund, linked especially with adoption of a national commitment to strengthening rail transport and provincial cities. Sufficient resources for these reforms can be mobilised while maintaining sound fiscal management. Large amounts can be redirected from wasteful and ineffective subsidies like the First Home Owners’ Grant and the lavish tax benefits for wealthy buyers and speculators. Modest public borrowing would also be a cost-effective, equitable way of funding the infrastructure program. Substantial progress on the ground can be made in the government's current term, but the problems will remain huge. Pressures for a quick fix must not divert attention from also locking in a longer-term program which includes larger and sustained funding for the rental housing and infrastructure programs, as well as initiating key tax reforms.

Jo Barraket
Living Cooperatively and Community Wellbeing: current trends, tensions and possibilities

The social and economic challenges of a global era have stimulated new interest in cooperative models and other forms of community enterprise to support affordable housing, promote social cohesion, develop or retain services in disadvantaged communities, and create employment for those excluded from the labour market. Drawing on her research on the impacts of community enterprise on community wellbeing and the role of local government in facilitating this , Jo Barraket will consider some of the synergies and tensions between cooperative principles and current policy agendas that promote ‘social inclusion’ and ‘community building’. She will discuss some of the practical implications of these synergies and tensions for both cooperators and policy-makers.

Professor Andrew Jakubowicz
The Politics of Space: the political dimension of control and use of urban land

Sydney is a city slowly being strangled by its mishandling of the opportunities offered by globalisation. Its public housing is archaic, its planning desultory, its transport system is in a state of nervous collapse, and its politics becomes ever more feral. The cultural diversity that was once its strong point has become soured by administrative incompetence and social prejudice. What options might an enlightened population pursue for a cosmopolitan and creative future, rather than one reeking of pollution in a stagnant wasteland of lost hopes and failing capacities? How can a different
"politics of the local" in which co-operation is the keystone contribute to a better future?

Professor Peter Phibbs
The Economics of Housing Affordability from a Local Government and Community Housing perspective.

Housing in Australian Cities is an expensive asset. There are a number of ways we can reduce the costs to groups concerned with developing affordable housing but as some economists say “there is no such thing as a free lunch”.  This short talk examines some alternative ways of developing affordable housing from a local government and community housing perspective and attempts to outline the pros and cons of each alternative. The talk is meant to provide a framework for the rest of the session on Financing Options for Affordable Housing.