Community housing gets standards uplift from new entrant
LONDON: Community and disability housing are getting a quality standards uplift from an interloper to the sector.
Nightingale Housing is expanding into SA with community housing provider Housing Choices Australia in a collaboration that will for the first time build carbon-neutral housing for lowerincome people.
The five-level building in Adelaide’s Bowden, a 16-hectare urban regeneration precinct on the edge of the CBD, will have 34 apartments that will be a mix of below-market rent affordable housing, for-sale private homes and specialist disability accommodation.
About half the $10 million construction cost will come from the state government’s South Australian Housing Authority, which will own a portion of the affordable housing units and will be operated by Housing Choices. The operator will also tap NHFIC funding for construction and raise debt finance against its own asset portfolio.
‘‘This is a never-before seen solution to the affordable housing crisis in the sense that you’ve got carbon neutral residential buildings at the bottom end of the market,’’ said Housing Choices chief executive Michael Lennon.
The project, also backed by state development body Renewal SA, will also be the first Green Star-rated Nightingale project. The state government is spending $400 million to build 1000 new affordable homes by 2025.
There is one key difference between the Adelaide project and other projects by Nightingale, which all to date have placed a covenant limiting the resale value of privately owned properties in the building to the average gain of property in the area.
The 14 or so units in this building, which will be allocated to buyers by ballot, will not have the same covenant, as it was not possible to get local banks and valuers familiar with the planned product in the time available to start the project, Nightingale founder and architect Jeremy McLeod said.
‘‘There’s been a tyranny of time for us,’’ Mr McLeod said.
‘‘It’s been about not just providing affordable housing and access to housing for first home buyers, it’s been about stimulus for the state.’’
In his home city of Melbourne, banks and valuers had four years from completion of the prototype Commons project until the first Nightingale development, so had time to get used to the new type of product and resale values, Mr McLeod said.
‘‘The first project into a new area is the one that works the hardest.’’
Mr Lennon said the mix of different housing types in the one building not only created better social and community benefits, but also benefited the provider and its ability to raise finance against it as lenders had greater certainty about the value of the assets.
‘‘To be able to commercialise our assets, we need to be in market conditions and not be isolated from them.’’
