Not ready to give up the Australian dream? This could be the solution

“I want what you are building.” That’s what neighbours tell James Forrest as he steams towards being the state’s first builder to complete homes using an architect’s plan bought for $1 from the NSW government’s new pattern book.

Motivated by a desire to make history and a developer’s penalty if he fails to meet a November deadline, Forrest is hoping to finish four row homes in Corrimal before the NSW government completes its demonstration model at Edmondson Park.

SAHA’s design for four row homes is one of 17 low- and mid-rise designs by architects in the NSW government’s Housing Pattern Book – a project to provide high-quality housing in the “missing middle” suburbs near railway stations and shopping centres.

More than 21,000 patterns were sold, most at the introductory price of $1 each.

Two projects, including the SAHA row homes, using pattern-book designs are under construction so far. The other project, seven terraces including the state’s demonstration home designed by Other Architects and NMBW, is being built by Landcom at Edmondson Park, and is scheduled for completion early next year.

In total, 17 applications have received fast-track approval – they will provide 66 dwellings.

No applications for larger and more complicated mid-rise developments using pattern book designs have yet been lodged.

Asked about delays, NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully told budget estimates in February that markets didn’t always react immediately and housing investment was “lumpy”.

Yet the government was seeing “absolute growth in the pipeline,” Scully told estimates. He said 75,000 homes ranging from single-storey to 20- and 30-storey and beyond were under construction, an increase of 10 per cent on the previous year.

The pattern book designs are part of NSW plans to deliver 112,000 homes over the next five years.

Visiting the site as the walls were going up, SAHA’s cofounders, architects Sascha Solar-March and Harry Catterns, said many Australians clung to the dream of a detached home with a garden.

Their goal was to provide something “in between” a home and an apartment.

Catterns said each row home had a separate private entrance and a garden “big enough to grow some veggies, or wax a surfboard”.

SAHA has won awards for multigenerational housing, having completed projects for extended families, and groups of friends priced out of the areas they love.

When friends had to move to find affordable housing, or were separated from their families and friends, Catterns said he was sad.

The row house design was like a plug-and-play module, he said.

The depth of each home, from front door to back garden, stayed the same, but the homes get wider as bedrooms are added.

Solar-March said: “I love the idea that you can have an older couple whose house has got too big for them. They can knock that down and build one of these. They get to age in place, and the kids can live next door.”

“The idea of turning one house into three, or four, but keeping it in the family would be Harry and my dream scenario.”

On the 833-square-metre block in Corrimal where a 1950s two-bedroom home stood for decades, Forrest is building a SAHA design for three three-bedroom homes about 110-square-metres each, and a two-bedroom of about 85 square metres.

Designed to reach the silver standard for accessible housing, the bathrooms and halls are wider than usual.

Interest from neighbours prompted Forrest to cover the hurricane fence with renders of the finished product.

“They want to stay where they are, in the suburb where they love,” he said. “They can see how they could build a row like this – a house for themselves, and maybe for their kids.”

Forrest of Forrest Small Homes bought every low-density plan in the pattern book, looking for what was most likely to appeal to downsizers, young couples and families. He also wanted something that was easier to build and would face minimum delays.

Neighbour Ian, 71, contacted Forrest after the project began.

Ian said he wanted to downsize but he wanted the same walk to the beach, the pub, club, supermarkets, train and buses nearby.

Most units were too small, lacked a garden and were unsuitable for his two dogs.

Carmel Grimmett and her husband Tom Sturm were the guinea pigs for SAHA’s multigenerational plans. They wanted to stay on the small block in Marrickville, but let their daughter and grandchildren use the house when they needed affordable housing.

The freestanding studio has a small kitchen and living space. It is big enough for a keyboard, a dining table that doubles for ping pong, and a window seat for reading, a must-have for Grimmett, a teacher librarian. It makes for “hilarious but squishy dinners for eight or nine”, she says.

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