The Blue Mountains could be among the first places in Australia to establish a community land trust for affordable housing - catering especially for women.
On the eve of winter, around 50 people gathered at Junction 142 behind the Uniting Church at Katoomba for the first in-person meeting of the Walanmarra Artists & Blue Mountains Community Land Trust.
With Australia in the grip of a housing crisis, Mountains locals were sleeping in cars for weeks on end, couch-surfing, and living in makeshift camps because they couldn't find stable accommodation they could afford, the meeting on Saturday was told.
Older women prone to homelessness
"Domestic violence is the single largest cause of homelessness in Australia and the largest cohort is older women who are over the age of 55 who don't own property and have very little in superannuation," Blue Mountains MP Trish Doyle said.
Women from Indigenous communities and those with disabilities were particularly vulnerable, she said.
A solution: community-owned land
A community land trust (CLT) would allow the land beneath a property to be in shared ownership, removing it from the cost of the building on top which could be leased or owned, making it more affordable to live there.
"They have two core functions ... one is permanently affordable housing and the other is community benefit," Western Sydney University housing Associate Professor Louise Crabtree-Hayes said.
"Every CLT gets to define what that means for its community."
That could mean affordable rentals or home ownership - even cooperatives, food production or childcare centres, she said.
Associate Professor Crabtree-Hayes said there were successful community land trusts working in Canada, the US and the UK, some in their second generation.
Few options for renters
The rental vacancy rate in the Blue Mountains plunged from 3.2 per cent in December 2019 to 0.7 per cent in April 2022, according to SQM Research.
Meanwhile, the value of homes across Australia rose 16.7 per cent in the 12 months to May.
That narrows the options available to Blue Mountains renters like Ana Vonkatz, who said she has been living in a unit affected by mould after fleeing domestic violence four years ago.
She has a cat and can't find another affordable rental.
"I've been looking but it's pretty much impossible up here," she said. "A lot of them [the properties] are just dilapidated; they're not taking care of the inside ... they're musty, they're unhealthy."
Ms Vonkatz said she came to the Mountains to heal but doesn't feel like she has rights as a renter.
"I just wanted a place that was safe, quiet so I could meditate and try to heal and, because this has been going on in the past couple of years, I'm not healing. I feel like I'm getting worse," she said.
A way forward
A NSW parliamentary community services committee, of which Trish Doyle is a member, is exploring ways to address the shortage of affordable housing and is due to report soon.
The Blue Mountains community land trust, cofounded by architect Genevieve Murray, is seeking resident and general members.
