Like everyone, my family of five became pretty accustomed to our home during those never-ending days of COVID lockdown. We home-schooled two kids (with a preschooler also running around), my husband ran his tech start-up and I covered every word, day in and day out, of Gladys Berejiklian’s 11am pandemic update. All from our dining table in our two-bedroom, 72-square-metre apartment.
It was a long few months, but we survived because raising kids in an apartment is an absolutely acceptable and tolerable way to live. Anyone who says otherwise has almost certainly never done it.
The kids are all right: state political editor Alexandra Smith with her family.
Of course, that does not stop people passing judgment and I have heard some corkers about our housing choice, including from friends, who have suggested that apartment living with kids is akin to child abuse. “Are you still in your apartment?” they would ask, as if we were up to no good.
It is a very Australian bias to insist that a family home must be a house. My brother-in-law and his wife live with their two energetic young boys in an apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. Their building has had a lift added to make life easier for all the young families with prams who were struggling to haul their kids up the original spiral staircase. Apartment living is the norm in Paris but not in Sydney. Here, apartments are for 20-somethings – not families – and there is an expectation that you’ll need to upgrade to a house – with obligatory backyard – once offspring arrive.
But to afford these must-have houses, people are fleeing the city. Sydney is losing about 7000 people a year aged between 30 and 40 to the regions or interstate. Between 2016 and 2021, Sydney lost twice as many people in that age bracket as it gained (35,000 came to Sydney, but 70,000 left). And overall, about two out of three people who leave are of working age – that is, between 25 and 64.
This exodus will have dire social consequences if not addressed pretty quickly, according to a sobering paper released by the NSW Productivity Commission this week, which warned of a looming grandkid drought in Sydney.
“If we don’t act, we could become a city with no grandchildren,” was the blunt warning from the Productivity Commissioner Peter Achterstraat. Put simply, the housing crisis is pushing young families out of Sydney with very little chance of them ever moving back.
We made the conscious decision not to be one of those. We bought our two-bedroom apartment when we were a family of three. Our criteria were simple: affordable and a relatively short commute on public transport to the city. With no grandparents in Sydney to rely on for help, we wanted to be to close to work, so we could manage the daycare juggle and, later, the school pick-up.
Anyone who reckons you can’t raise kids in a flat has never done it
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14.02.2024
Like everyone, my family of five became pretty accustomed to our home during those never-ending days of COVID lockdown. We home-schooled two kids (with a preschooler also running around), my husband ran his tech start-up and I covered every word, day in and day out, of Gladys Berejiklian’s 11am pandemic update. All from our dining table in our two-bedroom, 72-square-metre apartment.
It was a long few months, but we survived because raising kids in an apartment is an absolutely acceptable and tolerable way to live. Anyone who says otherwise has almost certainly never done it.
The kids are all right: state political editor Alexandra Smith with her family.
Of course, that does not stop people........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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