Sharing with Friends Officially Opens

After seven years of working with Sharing with Friends on their innovative co-housing model, we are excited that the project is officially open and the five women are moving in!

Sharing with Friends is an Australian-first co-housing model for older, single women, who are the fastest-growing group experiencing homelessness in the country. The project was largely funded through philanthropic support.

Each woman has her own self-contained studio with a kitchen and private courtyard, plus a shared kitchen, living room and central courtyard for when they want company. Each resident contributed $120,000, the average superannuation balance of a woman at retirement age when the project began, in exchange for a 50-year lease that gives them security for life.

Deicke Richards has been part of the project for seven years, working alongside the charity and the five women as the idea became a reality. Our Practice Partner Eloise Atkinson has worked on the project since its inception and now sits on the board. She has been a vocal and instrumental part of the project’s success, from the design, planning, and consultation, right through to the pot plants.

At the DR staff tour, Deicke Richards architect Julia Comer reflected on what the project has meant to her, to her students, and to the women who will now call it home.

The following is adapted from a speech by Julia Comer at the Deicke Richards staff tour of Sharing with Friends. 

A few months ago I presented to a group where I spoke a lot about this project. Afterwards, someone came to speak to me. They said there’s so much talk in this country about housing, and how broken it is, but that hearing about Sharing with Friends was the first time they had actually felt hope about housing in this country.

We’re not short of a diagnosis. We know there’s a housing problem, we know it’s unfair, and we know who it’s most unfair to.

I think the assumption is that a problem this big needs an answer just as big. Of course policy and funding are important to making projects like this more widespread, but I think what really resonates with people about this project is that it started with a group of women who decided they’d rather sort it out together than wait for someone else to.

It has to be acknowledged that this project came together with great help from the generosity of lots of people who are passionate about changing things, just like ourselves. But our involvement in this project has also been incredibly generous to us.

For me, the thing about working predominantly in social housing is you almost never meet the people who will actually live there. This project is the first time I’ve met the people who will live here. Being able to speak to the women, understand their needs, and challenge some of my assumptions has been incredibly beneficial as a designer.

And it’s not just me. Alongside this project, I’ve been involved with a second-year architecture studio course at UQ with Dr. Andrew Wilson, where students have been working on a brief based upon Sharing with Friends for the last four years. Getting students thinking about housing like this is really important. Most of them will graduate into a world where housing is one of the biggest problems they’ll face as architects. If the only models they ever see are the ones that got us here, that’s what they’ll keep designing. Seeing projects like Sharing with Friends while they’re still studying stops it from being a radical idea and makes it a normal, even obvious one.

The biggest contribution has come from the five women: Robyn, Jenny, Anne and the two Barbs. They’ve trusted the process through seven years of change, and they’ve come along to crits to give the students honest, generous feedback. Students rarely present to the people they’re designing for, and tutors mostly talk about architecture. The women talked about living: where they’d sit to put on their shoes, who they’d want to see from their front door, what would make them feel safe. As Susan Davies (Sharing with Friends Foundation President) has said, the architecture is probably the least interesting thing about this project.

The project is in the name. We have five women here who developed a friendship and trusted each other to plan the rest of their lives together. It’s been a real privilege to be a part of it.