For renters,prices are at record highs. And for those looking to own their own home,the median house prices in Sydney and Melbourne are currently $1.63 million and $1.03 million,respectively,according to Domain data.
Kelly (front) and his group of friends,who bought a block of units,known as the “Peach Palace” together in Sydney.Janie Barrett
In Sydney,these pressures have led to a mass exodus of Millennials. A recent report from the NSW Productivity Commission found that between 2016 and 2021,Sydney lost twice as many people aged between 30 and 40 as it gained,with 70,000 calling it quits in that period. The report warned that Sydney could soon become a city with “no grandchildren” but failed to reflect on the profound loss of social connection that this movement would cause.
One group of six friends in Sydney’s inner west have created their own solution to the problem,by buying a striking three-storey manor,subdivided into three apartments with a large shared garden,together,affectionately referred to as the “Peach Palace” by its occupants.
Kelly,a paediatric emergency doctor who has chosen not to share his full name for privacy reasons,co-owns the middle-floor apartment.
According to Kelly,the idea to buy a block of units started out as a joke within the friendship group around five years ago. After seeing another friendship group in Melbourne buy a few houses next to each other and pull the fences down,it started to become a serious proposition.
Kelly and the others managed to purchase the block of three,two-bedroom apartments for $2.6 million in 2022. Buying the block between three couples was a legally complex venture,but Kelly says that they found a lawyer who specialised in complicated property agreements.
While they were drafting the joint venture agreement with the lawyer,the group also wrote up the terms of what they were looking for in a loose manifesto,with agreements that people could move our or sell their apartment when they wanted to,but the others would have a first option on who fill their place.
Maya,who co-owns the middle level of the block with Kelly,says that buying the Palace was about pushing back on individualist thinking and instead promoting “mutual aid and care as a premise for our home base”.
Speaking to a collection of the block’s current residents (including tenants currently renting out the top floor),each say that they are grateful to live in this small community,especially considering that many have seen friends forced to move out of Sydney due to housing costs.
Josh,co-owner of the ground-floor apartment,says that he has seen close relationships strained in his life by distance. “Our friendship groups here in Sydney are becoming increasingly fractured by people moving further out west and people moving out of Sydney altogether.”
Kelly admits there was an initial joke that the group was trying to build a commune,but he says that each floor has the “right amount of separateness” and that the lifestyle in the block is peaceful,with regular dinners shared between the apartments and the occasional party.
The friends,some of whom have known each other for a decade,are from a diverse group of backgrounds and professions,including filmmaking,design,academia,and community work,which makes for a rich blend of talent and experience in the block.
Kelly adds that the Palace is also ideal for his and Maya’s two-year-old daughter,Asa. “You’ll see people just coming and going on a daily basis,there’s lots of little low key chats. I’ll often go down to the garden with Asa and then someone will hear us and come down after work,which is really nice.”
For those who cannot buy property near (or with) friends,the feeling of a fractured community can have ongoing consequences for people’s lives. Professor Alan Morris from the University of Technology Sydney is an urban and housing studies scholar who has researched how communities are devastated by shifts in housing.
According to experts,the housing crisis is contributing to the lonliness epidemic.iStock
In particular,Morris studied how the eviction of approximately 600 residents in 2014 from Millers Point and the Sirius building in Sydney,the nation’s oldest public housing area,led to mass isolation and loss of social networks.
Morris refers to this effect as “communicide”,a displacement of people moving against their will from stable social networks,and says that this term could certainly be used to describe what is happening to many people,as friendship groups are impacted by the housing crisis across Melbourne and Sydney.
“I think the implications in terms of loneliness,which of course is a crisis in contemporary society,are quite severe,and I think for a lot of people,moving could have a very pernicious impact,” Morris says.
This can be particularly devastating for older people who are forced to move away from friends,not only because the difficulty of making new friends is intensified,but also because the practical need for friends is greater than for younger Australians,in terms of helping to run errands or lending a hand in a medical situation.
But it’s not just adult friendships that are being affected by the housing crisis. Mary,a mother of three children,currently renting in Melbourne’s inner North,who withheld her name for privacy reasons,says that her neighbour is about to be forced out of their home by a $500 per month rent increase.
After a year and a half of living besides one another,Mary’s children have become very close with the neighbour’s family,including their young daughter,walking to school together,playing in a paddling pool in the back garden,and cultivating traditions like running up and down the driveway with sparklers at the end of every school holiday.
Mary and her children are distressed by the loss of their neighbour and her daughter and Mary believes that the social implications for children who can no longer live in long-term “childhood homes” is enormous.
“If you think about kids losing their next-door neighbours or having to move schools because they move out of a catchment zone,it’s just so degrading to childhood,” she says.
As for the residents of the Peach Palace,they say they would encourage people to consider the possibilities of living among friends.
Kelly says that,while it can be legally complicated and there are a lot of hurdles,the pay-off has been remarkable. “It’s definitely worth it. It doesn’t fix every problem with housing,of course,but it is better than the alternatives.”
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