Strata title is all about splitting real estate into many cubic spaces and dividing ownership …. that’s the magic ingredient.Here’s a new twist on low density housing that applies some of that magic.
Last weekend the Waratah Community Land Trust was established in Sydney to introduce a new form of owner-occupied, resale-restricted housing to the Sydney market as a middle way between social housing, rentals and the private property market. Using land trust model, the trust owns the land in perpetuity and members pay a nominal lease to use the land and buy the dwelling built on it, dramatically reducing the cost and their mortgages. Owners can sell the dwelling to other trust members so they can get their equity back.
Mark Swivel, a director of the Sydney Credit Union who is involved in the Waratah Community Land Trust believes the model lines up well with the values of the mutual sector and could be a partial solution to the housing affordability crisis saying ‘It sits between social housing and the law of the jungle that applies in the open market’.
The Waratah Trust hopes to receive bequests, unused property on Crown land or other investments from governments and councils, and private finance from philanthropists and corporate foundations to start it’s housing programme.
A similar organisation in Castlemaine, Victoria, the Mount Alexander Community Land Trust, with membership fees of $20 a year, and has received property bequests in wills.
Dr Louise Crabtree, of the Urban Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney has done some research and study on the topic and describes the Waratah Trust concept as ‘a fiscally conservative and socially progressive model that appeals to everyone’ and that ‘the model aims to bridge the gap between affordable rentals, community housing and market rate ownership … creating more rungs on the housing tenure ladder’.
There’s also been a bit of news coverage on the idea which can be found here –
- In the SMH Domain
- On Nine MSN
- In Mortgage News
- In the Castlemaine Independent
Mark Swivel’s written an article about it all too here.
Francesco …
Posts
Dr Crabtree emailed me about this post with the following comments and corrections.
ReplyDelete-------------
Hi Francesco
Thanks for your post and for letting us know about it. The model is getting a lot of attention. I have a few corrections and suggestions for your post:
1. Waratah is not a CLT - it is an Association set up to do the legal and financial groundwork for setting up a CLT, so Waratah itself will not develop or receive any housing stock.
2. CLTs are not just a low-density option. In the USA their stock ranges from farms and freestanding homes through to boarding houses and apartments. They can and do steward perpetually affordable apartments, whether entire buildings or individual units within a development.
3. The two videos you linked to are the same video. If you want to link to a US video, I'd recommend http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.php?fuseaction=Blog.dspBlogPost&postID=85 which provides three case studies of CLTs in the USA.
4. The Castlemaine organisation is called Mount Alexander Community Land Limited, as legal issues prevent them using the word "Trust" in their name.
Again, thanks for letting us know and for the coverage.
kind regards
Louise
Dr Louise Crabtree
Research Fellow
Urban Research Centre
Research and training for better urban life
http://www.uws.edu.au/urban
University of Western Sydney
Level 6, 34 Charles St
Parramatta NSW 2150
l.crabtree@uws.edu.au
mob 0420 946 186
ph 61 2 8833 5931
fax 61 2 9891 5899