Social Housing Architects

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

Fixed Fees 35+ Years 59+ Heritage Approvals Registered Architect (FRAIA)

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

Image —
Shepparton community
housing precinct

Delivered, Twice Over

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, 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.

Type mixes that work

Unit diversity planned from the brief (Shepparton ran one- to three-bedroom types across a single coherent precinct).

Budgets delivered

Budgets in the $2.5m–5.2m range delivered, portfolio examples rather than a quote for your project, with consultant teams coordinated under one design authority.

Adaptive-reuse capability

Where the site is a building, not a block: our Westmeadows project converted a heritage-overlay church into affordable housing, through 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 possible, daylight in every habitable room, storage that acknowledges real lives, landscape that gets maintained because it was designed to be maintainable. None of this costs much at sketch stage and all of it is expensive to retrofit, which is why our social-housing plans are drawn with the same care as our private homes. It is the same pencil.

Image —
daylight interior,
community dwelling

Image —
Wangaratta dual-storey
dwellings

Process

How provider
projects run

Feasibility establishes yield, staging and the approval pathway before funding commitments harden. Design and documentation run to provider standards and funding-body requirements, with consultant teams, planning, traffic, energy, landscape, coordinated as our recent projects were. Fees are fixed, programs are told truthfully, and the practice stays accountable through construction with builders who know the sector.

Common Questions

Provider questions,
answered honestly

What scale of social-housing projects do you take?

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

Do you take provider projects outside Melbourne?

Yes, and the recent record shows how: program, budget and unit mix all ran to plan on both recent precincts, with regional builders and consultant teams coordinated under our design authority. Providers get the same delivery discipline wherever the site sits.

Can an existing building become social housing?

Sometimes brilliantly: our Westmeadows project converted a heritage-overlay church 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 respectively; conversions and contested paths run longer. We program the truth from day one, and these are records rather than promises.

Local Knowledge

Useful
resources

Planning Victoria

Pathways and overlays.

Victorian Heritage Database

For adaptive-reuse candidates.

Regional social housing experience

Community-housing articles from the practice.

Start the Conversation

The next precinct starts
with a conversation

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

Funding rounds and delivery windows do not wait; a feasibility-tested site is the difference between this round and the next.

A full one-hour feasibility session, in person, where Barbara sketches your design live while you work through logistics, budget and planning timelines together, so all parties leave aligned; the drawn concept is yours to keep.

Schedule a Feasibility Session