Tracy Adams has lived in busy share houses, off-grid timber cabins, intentional rural communities and, more recently, in a tent and in the back of her car.
The retired environmental scientist estimates she’s lived in 25 properties in her 62 years of age as she navigated long-term illness and being primary carer for her son.
“We moved 13 times in my son’s first 17 years of life. I had to drop out of my postgraduate studies,” she says. “It’s awful for anyone to have to live in housing precarity, but especially a single parent with chronic illness and a high-needs child.”
About 45 years ago, Adams moved into her first granny flat or “second dwelling” in Brisbane’s West End. She’s now lived in six of them, including her current home in Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
Adams says she migrated towards granny flats as a relatively affordable option for one-bedroom independent living, having no desire to live in high-rise apartments. While she laments guests having to sleep on the couch, and her book collection being in storage, she likes being nestled in a garden she can work on.
“In the housing crisis I am just pleased to have a roof over my head,” she says, having been forced to sleep rough during Covid.
Granny flats have become a hot topic as state governments and others pitch them as one solution to Australia’s housing crisis.
Earlier this year, a report into the untapped potential of granny flats identified 655,000 existing homes in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane with the space to build a self-contained two-bedroom secondary dwelling on site.
Queensland removed restrictions on renting out secondary dwellings in September last year. In Victoria, a week before Daniel Andrews resigned as premier he announced that granny flats up to 60 sq m would no longer require a council planning permit, only a building permit. They can also then be rented to anyone, whereas previously they were reserved for direct family members.
Fiona Caniglia, the executive director of Q Shelter, says there have been 553 rental bonds lodged on granny flats in Queensland since the restrictions were removed.
“Secondary dwellings that anyone can live in are a valuable addition to the housing market, especially for people struggling with housing affordability and access because of lower wages or a lack of a reliable rental history,” Caniglia tells Guardian Australia.
Adams has had both positive and negative experiences living in granny flats. She says her current place works well because she has a strong relationship with her landlord.
“You don’t need to be friends but you should ensure you should have reasonable communication and shared baseline values,” she says.
“I have lived in a place with a mean landlord who made ridiculous rules like saying I couldn’t park in the driveway and neither could my visitors. That made life really difficult.”
Adams also recommends paying attention to the design of the dwelling, as some granny flats are built cheaply without a lot of thought dedicated to living space and insulation.
Caniglia says anyone considering renting a granny flat should insist on a formal, written tenancy agreement from the landlord to protect both parties. These encompass rules on how utilities will be charged, ensure the dwelling meets legal construction standards and that owners meet their obligations over issues including fire safety.
“Just because it’s a secondary dwelling – don’t do things under the radar,” she says.
Lien Yeomans, 82, is a former Vietnamese restaurant owner and potter, and moved into a granny flat out the back of her son’s house in Kensington in Melbourne’s west in 2017. It was quite a shift, after 34 years in a five-bedroom Queenslander in Brisbane.
Part of her motivation was to spend more time with her son and his two young children. She has an art studio in a former garage, and a garden between the home and her granny flat.
“It is convenient and does not require a lot of looking after,” she says. “It is reasonable to live in a small space as long as it has a garden and greenery,” she says.
One drawback, she says, is that it is harder to organise social events as they can only really work in the outdoor garden area. “In winter I end up sitting in my room a lot.”
Helpful but only part of solution, experts say
Prof Nicole Gurran says she is wary of governments using granny flats as a magic bullet to solve the housing crisis.
Earlier this year, Gurran co-authored a report warning that over reliance on secondary dwellings as a housing solution could lead to lower density cities in future, which would in turn keep prices high.
“There is no reason why you wouldn’t allow people to build granny flats in their own back yard and I think all states should be allowing that in built up areas and removing onerous housing restrictions,” she tells Guardian Australia.
“The issue I have is when state governments call that an affordable housing strategy. I do think we should be doing better as a country in terms of providing real affordable housing.”
Melbourne’s Boroondara council unanimously objected to the removal of planning controls for granny flats, saying it could be “disastrous for neighbouring properties and community amenity”.
“The primary concern is … there can be very poor outcomes for abutting neighbours and from a neighbourhood character, design and amenity perspective,” they said in a statement.
Jonathan O’Brien, the lead organiser of Yes In My Backyard (Yimby) Melbourne, said Boroondara’s position demonstrates that some local councils continue to miss the mark amid the housing crisis.
“We have to make it easier to build in our cities and reduce the strain on our councils’ short-staffed planning offices,” O’Brien says.
“Liberalising the development of granny flats is one of the housing crisis’s lowest-hanging fruit – it’s an easy way to increase supply, and it costs next to nothing for the government to deliver.”
While stressing that she doesn’t “want to take away these immediate options for people who need them urgently”, Gurran says the problem with secondary dwellings is they can lock society into a low-density housing typology.
“Once a property owner locks that in it becomes more difficult to build new dwellings like townhouses or better, more secure housing solutions,” she says.
Adams agrees that granny flats may not provide the best solution in high-density areas, but says they can provide a vital lifeline, especially to older women who are now the fastest growing cohort of people facing homelessness in Australia.
“We have people riding their ride-on mowers over empty lawns all weekend here. Those low density, regional areas could easily fit up to three or four small homes for people in need.
“It just needs to be done well with good design and access to amenities to ensure people have privacy and a decent standard of living.”
