The Rightsize Service

In the context of shortages of available housing within the City of Sydney, garages, balconies and other uninhabitable spaces are being converted into dwellings. The practice in and of itself has great potential - it enables the quick, resourceful and inexpensive creation of extra dwellings close to the amenity of the inner city with far less resources than building new ‘affordable’ dwellings on fringe greenfield sites. The problem is that some DIY development of small infill dwellings has become an exploitative practice with informal, poor quality dwellings being leased to vulnerable members of the community because of a lack of regulation and alternatives. The Rightsize Service is a proposition that aims to directly address the increasing problem of substandard development and reclaim both multiple occupancy dwellings and DIY activity as key to lifting the affordability, quality and diversity of the City of Sydney’s private rental housing stock.