Social Housing Architects

235+ community dwellings delivered. Providers get program, budget and dignity under one design authority.

Social housing is judged twice: by the funders who need it delivered on budget and on program, and by the people who will call it home.

FIXED FEES | 35+ YEARS | 400+ VICTORIAN PROJECTS | 235+ COMMUNITY DWELLINGS

DELIVERED FOR HOUSING PROVIDERS

This practice designs for both audits at once, and it has the completions behind it: 235+ community and social-housing dwellings delivered across Victoria, from metropolitan projects to regional precincts.

Two recent deliveries carry the detail. For Beyond Housing and the White Foundation in Greater Shepparton, twenty units across one, two and three-bedroom types, with planning approval in seven months, completed 2021. For Beyond Housing in Wangaratta, thirteen dual-storey dwellings replacing a retired aged-care facility, approved in five months, completed 2020. Registered architect Barbara Yerondais FRAIA leads the practice.

235+

COMMUNITY DWELLINGS

400+

PROJECTS

35+

YEARS

FOR PROVIDERS

What providers get
from this practice

Program reliability

Both recent projects hit realistic, pre-agreed clocks, five and seven months to approval, because the design cases were built for their assessments rather than adjusted after them.

Type mixes planned from the brief

Shepparton ran one, two and three-bedroom types across a single coherent precinct.

Budgets delivered in the $2.5m to $5.2m range

Portfolio examples rather than a quote for your project, with consultant teams coordinated under one design authority.

Adaptive reuse where the site is a building rather than a block

Our Westmeadows project converted a church under a Heritage Overlay into affordable housing, through twelve months of process including a tribunal, and won.

DIGNITY

Design that respects
the resident

Housing works when the people in it feel considered rather than processed.

Private entries where the site allows them.

Daylight in every habitable room.

Storage that acknowledges how people actually live.

Landscape designed to be maintainable, so that it gets maintained.

Acoustic separation that lets neighbours stay neighbours.

None of this costs much at sketch stage, and all of it is expensive to retrofit. It is why our social-housing plans are drawn with the same care as our private homes. It is the same pencil.

Scoping a community-housing project or site?

Book a feasibility session and get yield, program and budget tested together, honestly.

BOOK A FEASIBILITY SESSION

PROCESS

How provider
projects run

Feasibility establishes yield, staging and the approval pathway before funding commitments harden. That order matters: a site tested after the funding is locked has nowhere to go if the numbers move.

Design and documentation then run to provider standards and funding-body requirements, with the consultant team, planning, traffic, energy and landscape, coordinated as they were on both recent precincts. Fees are fixed, programs are told truthfully, and the practice stays accountable through construction, working with builders who know the sector.

REGIONAL DELIVERY

Distance,
handled properly

Both recent precincts were regional, delivered with regional builders. Program, budget and unit mix all ran to plan.

Regional provider work asks different things of an architect: local builder relationships, councils with smaller planning teams, and travel that has to be programmed rather than improvised. It is a lane the practice has been in for years, and our regional Victoria page covers how the logistics are handled.

OUTCOMES

What gets
delivered

A precinct that houses the number of people the funding assumed. An approval won on a clean design case rather than on persistence. A build the provider can hand over without a defects argument. And homes that residents are glad to live in, which is the only measure that lasts.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Provider questions,
answered honestly

What scale of social-housing projects do you take?

The recent delivered record runs from thirteen to twenty-plus dwellings per project within a $2.5m to $5.2m range, portfolio examples rather than a price guide, against 235+ community dwellings across the practice's history. Feasibility scopes whether your project fits.

Do you take provider projects outside Melbourne?

Yes. On both recent precincts, program, budget and unit mix ran to plan, with regional builders and consultant teams coordinated under our design authority.

Can an existing building become social housing?

Sometimes very well. Our Westmeadows project converted a church under a Heritage Overlay into affordable housing, won through twelve months of process including a tribunal. Feasibility answers it for your building.

How fast can approvals realistically run?

Our two recent new-build precincts were approved in five and seven months. Conversions and contested paths run longer. We program the truth from day one, and these are records rather than promises.

Do you work to provider design standards?

Yes, and to funding-body requirements. Both are established at feasibility so that documentation is built to them rather than corrected against them later.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

Useful planning
resources

Planning Victoria

Permits, setbacks and overlays.

Victorian Heritage Database

Check your property before you plan.

Community housing articles

The straight comparison.

The next precinct starts with a conversation

A feasibility session with Barbara: the site or the building, the brief, and the real numbers. Providers get the same drawn concept and the same straight recommendation every client here gets.

Funding rounds and delivery windows do not wait. A feasibility-tested site is the difference between making this round and waiting for the next one.

BOOK A FEASIBILITY SESSION

Start the Conversation

Every project begins with a deep inquiry into site, heritage, and vision. Let’s discuss the strategic potential of your next work.

SCHEDULE A FEASIBILITY SESSION →

A PRELIMINARY CONSULTATION TO EVALUATE HERITAGE CONSTRAINTS, SITE POTENTIAL, AND PROJECT FEASIBILITY.