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If Rob's not tinkering with his house, he's looking for "beautiful stuff to build with".
Old packing crates, pallets, rocks, recycled windows — anything goes.
It's taken the Tasmanian more than a decade to gather the materials from the tip shops, construction and demolition sites and friends' places — but he's not precious about time because it's all come at an incredibly low cost.
"The whole house has cost less than a $1,000 to build," Rob, who wants to go by a pseudonym to protect his privacy and avoid council scrutiny, says.
The place is a hodgepodge of styles, from modern tiles to Middle Eastern carpets, but Rob describes it simply — "nice".
"[It's] very beautiful and nurturing to be in. And it's vastly, vastly different from mass-produced housing," he says.
He doesn't bother with the pots and plants — instead, he's built an indoor garden.
"I've got a bigger pot than most people, I suppose," he jokes.
"I just think all homes should have internal gardens. They're better for the air, it makes you feel nice every time you look into it and you can grow food as well as decorative plants and flowers."
But despite the astonishing amount of detail, the house is a work in progress.
The first building works started more than 10 years ago.
Since then, the solar-powered house has been modified and enlarged around 20 times.
"As you find more materials, you can consider changes in the design," he says.
"It happens surprisingly fast sometimes. You can think of an idea and go to a tip shop and find the material there that day. That's how fast it can work.
"But other times, you've got to wait for years."
The trick to making it fully sustainable isn't just using recycled products — the materials have to be collected nearby.
"You want the [travelling] distance to be as short as possible," he says.
"If you dig the dirt up and make it into cob, then it's travelling five feet, which is a lot better than travelling from China or from Malaysia or wherever other building materials come from.
"After a while you come to realise that it's much more rewarding because it leaves a very, very light footprint."
One step away from homelessness
But Rob's situation masks a deeper issue — this sort of sustainable lifestyle is, really, the only way he can afford to live.
Rob quips that it's taken him decades to climb on the "mythical property ladder".
He started off living in a bus for 25 years in a bid to save enough money to buy his own property.
"Saving money is essential, so you're sort of forced into a certain style of building," he says.
Rob says if he hadn't built his own house, he'd be on the streets.
"I'd be homeless. That's what it boils down to," he says.
He says there is "a massive gap" in the market for people who don't want to be stuck in the social housing system but cannot afford to pay for builders and council fees.
"The biggest thing I've found in the last decade, with housing stress, is that the fees from local government have increased," he says.
"And if you don't have that money, what are you going to do, live under a bridge or something?"
'Not fair somebody can start knocking up a home'
The peak body for affordable housing in the state, Shelter Tasmania, says social housing isn't a quick fix for people like Bob.
CEO Pattie Chugg says the average wait time is 56 weeks.
"We've got over 3,000 people on the public and community housing waiting list, and many of those have been waiting there for many years," she says.
"It takes a very long time for most people to be housed in that system."
To tackle the problem, the Department of Communities says it will be investing another $125 million towards affordable housing strategy.
"While the housing register has stabilised in recent years, we know there is more work to do," a spokesperson said.
Shelter Tasmania says that with 120,000 Tasmanians living below the poverty line, many are left wondering how to get by.
But the Housing Industry Association wants people to know knocking up their own home is not the answer.
"It's not fair that somebody can start knocking up a home, when they don't have any of that requisite experience or knowledge," CEO Stuart Collins says.
"We're not saying they can't do certain types of work, just when it comes to structural work, clearly there's a legislation in place.
"It also creates issues around safety with the construction of those buildings and subsequent sale.
"The community has felt there's a need to licence the industry to perform structural type work."
'Better than a mortgage'
Rob says he's been an owner-builder for 34 years.
"The skills and the networks it's given me, the satisfaction it's given me, it's absolutely unbelievable. Certainly better than a $250,000 mortgage," he says.
"I did four years of manual arts at school, I've worked extensively on construction sites. Plus, a simple house is very simple.
"I think building your own home is one of the most fantastic things you can do for your life and for your family."
Topics: housing, housing-industry, industry, business-economics-and-finance, community-and-society, homelessness, lifestyle-and-leisure, sustainable-living, lifestyle, tas, hobart-7000, launceston-7250
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