Despite the rapid trend towards apartment living in Australia, there is a worrying lack of information and support to deliver sustainability retrofits. The vast majority of home sustainability advice focuses on stand-alone dwellings and fails to acknowledge the complexities unique to apartment buildings, including the technical challenge of selecting the right retrofits, navigating strata regulation, and the importance of community connection in facilitating good decision-making. These issues, along with potential solutions, are summarised across two ‘Retrofitting apartment buildings’ articles informed by the inaugural Melbourne High Life Expo.

Retrofitting apartment buildings: The importance of community connection

Nearly 30% of Australian homes are apartments and townhouses. In Greater Sydney the figure is now up over 43%. The continued growth in high-density living is stark, more than doubling over the 30 years between 1991 and 2021.

Although the proportion of Australians living in apartments is growing rapidly, we’re not yet making the concerted cultural shift needed for this more collective style of living. This is a significant issue given strata legislation mandates collective decision-making. Without apartment owners being able to make effective decisions together, it is near impossible to manage the basics in an apartment building, let alone proactively deliver retrofitting projects.

Depending on which state an apartment building is in and the type of retrofit, strata legislation dictates that 50 or 75 percent of lot owners need to vote yes to a resolution before the retrofit can be undertaken. This means in a building with 100 apartments, 50 or 75 lot owners need to formally agree to proceed. In reality, that’s 85 or 135 people when we recognise that many apartments will be owned by more than one person.

We’ve all experienced the challenge of getting agreement between many people – it’s not easy. In the case of deciding to retrofit an apartment building, there are additional challenges to getting alignment:

• The decision will likely have a material impact on the finances of lot owners. In the best case, the lot owners will need to agree to invest the limited funds held by the owners corporation. In the worst case, lot owners will have to make a personal contribution to fund the retrofit, which may not be viable for all or even most owners.
• Retrofitting an apartment building is a technical process that requires research and rigour to ensure the right technology and provider is selected. To vote yes with confidence, owners need to trust that the person or persons managing the project on behalf of the owners corporation is competent to do so.
• It typically falls to the owners corporation committee to implement the retrofit. These people are unpaid volunteers. They may not have the skills to deliver a communications campaign, and provide the technical information that will educate the lot owners and provide the confidence for people to vote yes.
• It is common that owners lack an understanding of their decision-making role or are not engaged enough to even participate in the voting process.

We need to keep developing the skills to work effectively together

The need for connection and community isn’t just about feeling good. Apartment owners are in a legally binding relationship with their neighbours, responsible for the communal upkeep and maintenance of their property. The governance structures that mediate this community essentially represent a new form of civic relationship in Australia. The impact of which, goes beyond the owners, to effect apartment renters who have little ability to affect change.

The Governing the Compact City project, Australia’s first comprehensive assessment of how the strata title system is operating in regard to governance and management, found that the role of interpersonal relationships and skills amongst residents, owners and committee members are critical factors in determining the success or otherwise of strata living and management. It found that good relationships with neighbours can have significant positive benefits, not only for the individuals involved, but also for the smooth operation of the scheme.

Collective governance requires us to “get along”, at least to a degree. And while some owners corporations or committees have skilled facilitators and communicators, many do not. In fact, the performance of owners corporation committees is highly variable.

There is a need to up-skill strata owners to make decisions, to collaborate well together, to work through disputes when they inevitably arise, and ultimately to create vertical communities that are also inviting to tenants.

The co-benefits for investing in community connections

Beyond enabling building retrofits, creating social connections and building vertical communities has a range of co-benefits essential for liveability in the face of climate change and unexpected disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research has confirmed that social connection enables personal and community resilience. People who are isolated and socially disconnected are more exposed to climate risks. Despite their proximity to each other, Macquarie University researchers found that during the COVID disruptions, more than one third of apartment residents felt lonely. Research by the University of Sydney found that living in small apartments is a factor in increased loneliness.

RMIT Place Lab’s report on Living Together found that being part of a community had many benefits and joys, some of which residents did not expect. One of their research participants commented: “We’d lived in apartments before but … there’s something special about everyone in the building, and in the neighbourhood, opt[ing] in to being a bit more connected with their neighbours and wanting to live in a sustainable [way] … having people around you that share your values.”

How can connection be facilitated in apartment buildings?

When we talk about building community, making connections, and working together, it’s important to acknowledge that this can come in different forms and to different degrees. The shape of any community should not be imposed from the outside but rather be determined by those who are part of it.

The residential community within some buildings may simply want to normalise basic connections like chatting in lifts or knowing the names of neighbours. In other buildings, there will be a drive to create deeper social connections or even official groups or events.

In the strata context, there is a legal obligation for an Annual General Meeting (AGM). Those people with an interest in having a well-managed building will likely attend. While the AGM is rarely pitched as such, it does present an opportunity for connection. Simple acts like:

• hosting the meeting in person instead of or as well as online
• asking people to wear name labels
• ensuring introductions are made at the start of the meeting or
• having tea, coffee and cake after the meeting can be a good place to start.

Some communities form almost by accident, as happened to Flip and Kevin when they sat next to each other in a bar and discovered they were neighbours in the apartment building across the road. An unlikely friendship bloomed, and then expanded into a social committee for the building. Some residents began socialising together, and instead of standing in awkward silence in the lift, people were comfortable chatting.

More recently, at the High Life Expo ‘Building Bonds: creating connected and resilient apartment communities’ seminar session there was a discussion about the power of informal social gatherings with neighbours. Having recently moved into a complex of 12 units, Karen was inspired to try the idea. She letterboxed her neighbours, six people turned up for a pizza party and had a great time, and there’s already talk of who is hosting the next one. And, Karen has since decided to join her owners' corporation committee so she can be part of proactively managing her building.

In other apartment buildings, community are at the very heart of the development and there is a more intentional and concerted focus on connection. The Urban Coup is one such example. In their words “Urban Coup is an initiative of a group of Melbournians with a shared vision of creating not just housing, but community.”

The Urban Coup is a medium-density development made up of 29 households, is strata titled, and was designed under a co-housing model where residents enjoy the privacy of their home, but can also walk out their door to be part of a community with shared common facilities, garden, and the opportunity for regular meals together. 25% of the building is shared space, including a large communal dining and kitchen, common laundry, rooftop, multi-purpose spaces, and guest rooms.

Start with ‘hi’

Creating new connections with your apartment neighbours can feel awkward. An example or a sense of permission to take the all-important first step can be very helpful. The Hi Neighbour program and toolkit developed by Willoughby and Lane Cove Councils provides just that demonstrating simple techniques and approaches to break through social norms.

Working to build a degree of local connection or community may seem like a nice-to-have but in the case of strata it’s essential to unlocking sustainability retrofitting, proper building maintenance, and improving resilience.

More information

For more tools and resources about retrofitting sustainable, resilient, liveable, and loveable apartment homes, visit the High Life Expo website.