HOUSE OF
FAITH
Amidst a housing shortage, pressure to convince older Australians to trade in their quarter-acre block is growing.
One major barrier is a lack of suitable apartments that would allow this cohort to stay within their local community.
“We need to create communities where people can ‘age in place’,” says Architectus Principal Farhad Haidari. But appealing apartments with space, storage, amenity, and in the vicinity of established suburban communities are scarce. So is the land to build them on.
“In Sydney especially, we are running out of large plots of land. In the past 20 years, many of these were transformed into high rise developments. Currently the largest plots remaining belong to institutional land owners such as universities, sporting clubs and churches.”
Herein lies the potential for these institutional landowners to expand their relevance and cater to the communities they serve.
The Cambridge, Epping
The Cambridge is an innovative model for vertical intergenerational living. Sitting on Catholic Church land and developed by Levande, the project shows how large landowners can retain their land, remain financially viable, and look toward their community’s next 100 years.
Located in Sydney’s Epping, the site previously included Our Lady Help of Christians Parish and Primary School. The new design by Architectus has added aged care and retirement living, as well as communal spaces for connection between the generations of school children, grandparents and parishioners. Once populated, the project will theoretically release 158 homes more suited to young families in the local area of Epping, at a key transport junction in Sydney’s northwest.
An intergenerational community
For similar projects to get off the ground, state governments need to continue identifying strategic ‘upzoning’ in town centres. In Epping, Architectus was commissioned by the NSW Government to conduct an analysis and develop a masterplan. This involved identifying successful areas of the centre that needed safeguarding, as well as recognising development opportunities to support Sydney’s growth. This government-led planned precinct facilitated an increase in density for the Catholic Church and the adjacent town centre sites.
A designer on the project, Haidari says it exemplifies an institution prioritising people over profit. “The Church genuinely wanted to make sure it can play a bigger part in the community’s future,” he adds.
A 2024 audit by the Faith Housing Alliance revealed just how conveniently-placed church landholdings are in NSW, with 2,200 places of worship and 747 of them within 800 metres of a railway station. The Faith Housing Alliance is madeup of church groups working together to prevent homelessness.
The Cambridge, Epping
Together with suburban bowls clubs, sporting clubs, and university precincts, our local spaces of community connection and cohesion are perfect environments to house our ageing population.
Universities also recognise the influence of being among Sydney’s largest landowners. They have consistently engaged in efforts to integrate their campuses with the broader community, including the development of their campuses with a broader focus on accommodating housing needs.
“We’re working with a number of universities to diversify and bring mixed use developments onto their land,” says Haidari.
“As landowners in great locations, they’re alert to the issues we have and they see the opportunity. They’re going about it in the right way”.
