When her ageing mother said she’d like to move interstate to be closer to her grandchildren, Ruth Giles had a dilemma.
With no room in their townhouse and no space for a granny flat, she could try to find her mum an apartment somewhere close, but there wasn’t anything suitable around. Then she had a brilliant idea: what about getting together with a bunch of like-minded people, pooling their finances to buy land and then building a block of units that would suit them all?
Ruth Giles and her mother, Chris Paterson, now live in the same apartment building after Ruth decided to work with like-minded people to build her own. Credit: Greg Briggs
Six years on, Giles, 48, who works in the community housing sector, is living happily in their new 10-unit building in Melbourne’s West Brunswick, with her mum in one, friends she met during the process in others, and herself, her husband and children, 13 and 11, in another three-bedroom apartment.
“I loved the idea of co-housing where you could build a real community,” Giles says. “There were some challenges, like the scepticism and incredulity of people around us and access to capital from bankers and financiers. But the outcome is f
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