00:02Come and welcome to my little renovation.
00:04Michael St Vincent has been on a tight renovation deadline.
00:10He's been reconfiguring his family home so his adult grandkids struggling to get into the housing market can move in.
00:18It's our duty I think as oldies to help where we can.
00:23Michael is among a growing number of Australians trying intergenerational living.
00:28The number of multi-generational family households rose from 275,000 in 2016 to 335,000 in the 2021 census,
00:39an increase of 22%.
00:41A trend experts expect to accelerate.
00:45We would expect the trend to go up simply because the cost of living pressures have increased so starkly.
00:54Those increasing pressures are why Sheena Carter and her husband are giving it a go.
00:59There are three generations living here and we all provide each other with something positive.
01:06To help their retirement, the couple bought a modular home for half the price and moved it onto Sheena's daughter's
01:13property in regional Victoria with upsides for the entire family.
01:17I'm off on camp tomorrow and my husband will be on night shifts a couple of nights this week and
01:22mum will be around to make sure no one does anything they shouldn't.
01:26But the answer isn't always a bigger block. It can be a second home in a suburban backyard.
01:33In New South Wales, the number of secondary dwellings approved jumped 24% in just one year due in part
01:42to a relaxation of planning laws.
01:44Housing Industry Australia wants a national approach to planning laws.
01:49It's calling for granny flats of up to 90 square metres to bypass lengthy planning queues.
