2021-12-13 GC Agenda - Item 8 -Attachment 1 - Housing Needs Assessment

        alone. Rather than providing housing it is a platform for participants to find someone to share
        with, linking people together who are interested in sharing their home.
        Interested people register to either share their home or find someone to share a home with
        (including individuals wanting to start a new shared tenancy). Participants need to provide
        either a National Police Check or a Blue Card. Those sharing their home offer similar security
        of tenure to those of the private rental system


        Common Equity NSW is a provider and developer of community housing across NSW,
        operating in 25 Local Government Areas and managing in excess of 500 properties. Common
        delivers co-operative housing especially effective for seniors, older single women, key
        workers, people living with a disability, marginalised groups and people on low incomes. All
        properties in the co-operative portfolio are either leased to or owned by Common Equity and
        the overall responsibility for the housing properties is a shared arrangement between
        Common Equity and the Co-operatives.


While not specifically retirement villages there are many attached residential complexes that are
offering higher end accommodation suitable for and popular with mature residents. Examples of this
are Parkridge Noosa and Settler’s Cove both at Noosa Heads where lifts provide access to upper
level apartments. Gated communities like Monterey at Tewantin and Noosa Springs at Noosa Heads
are also popular with active retirees. Younger people or families are not excluded from any of these,
but neither are they highly represented.


13.6         Land needs
As indicated senior residents want to stay in a community and environment which is familiar to them
where they can continue social connections and interests. Where it’s not practical to stay in the same
building, this generally means staying in the same town or suburb.
With the exception of sites already approved for the development of integrated retirement villages
and aged care, large sites suitable for more traditional models of retirement villages and residential
care in Noosa Shire are extremely limited. It will therefore be necessary to consider smaller models
which are not so land intensive.
The ‘small household’ models of accommodation are centred on a small village of up to 60 senior
residents living in small separate households designed to imitate the residents’ own experience of
home. The separate households consist of somewhere between 8-12 residents living in a home-like
environment with a separate kitchen, intimate dining, small scale living spaces, with person-centred
care. The kitchens and dining spaces form the hearth of the home, visible from residents’ bedrooms.
There are smaller, intimate family spaces, outside of bedrooms for families or friends to meet with
their loved ones and spend quality time with them. There is direct access to outdoor spaces, and the
outdoors is brought indoors through thoughtfully designed, accessible landscaping.64
Unlike other forms of urban development, the Planning Regulation 2017 supports residential care
facilities in the regional landscape and rural production area or the rural living area of the SEQ
Regional Plan, provided the gross floor area does not exceed 5,000m2.
Despite this, it is still concerning to locate age care remote from transport and other services. Given
elderly family, friends or indeed the partners of residents are likely to want to visit, accessibility is still
important.
Having a greater proportion of new housing built to adaptable or universal design principles would
assist in providing housing that is suitable to an aging population.


64 KPA Architects (29 March 2021) ‘Small Household’ Model Favoured by Aged Care Royal Commission




Noosa Housing Needs Assessment 2021                                                                  Page 114