Category: Building & Construction

More and more people of all ages are unable to buy their own home in Britain, and there is no denying the country is in the grip of a nationwide housing crisis.

The main “solutions” put forward by the government so far have focused on how to encourage the house building industry to build more homes, and faster. But we need to move away from these traditional notions of developer-led housing and instead encourage more self-building.

Already in Britain self-builders build more homes than the largest individual house-builder, but despite these figures, it is still considered a marginal activity and an individual choice rather than a potential large-scale policy solution.

This is short sighted because self-build is a good way to develop more appropriate housing which meets residents’ demands and desires while also being affordable.

In European countries self-build is the norm; in France and Belgium it accounts for about 50% of all new building and in Sweden about a third of new house building is self-built – compare that with England where the figure stands at less than 10%.

We are crying out for more self-build housing in Britain, not only as a way to address the housing shortage but also as a way to deliver low carbon lifestyles – something conventional house construction has failed to do.

Close to home

What is considered self-build varies internationally, but it is generally when a resident has built all or part of their home, sometimes working with or employing others during the build. In Australia, for example, the term custom build more accurately describes how a lot of new houses are built.

With custom build, a developer offers two or three design options and the customer chooses a design and the number of different rooms they want. The difference between self-build and custom-build is the level of resident responsibility, organising and interaction. But all varieties offer useful options for the provision of more affordable housing.

Many people build their own homes with limited building experience, but are keen to get involved because they get to choose the layout, materials and aesthetics of their home – plus self-build is often a much cheaper way to get on the housing ladder.

With residents taking on all, or some of, the jobs themselves and moving away from reliance on the brick – the use of cheaper and quicker methods like prefabricated systems, reclaimed materials, or straw-bales can reduce costs and cut out the need for a company to make a profit.

The significant cost of land can be also mitigated with self-build by developing communal land ownership structures that make it available for affordable housing. And costs can be lowered even further when a collective builds homes, such as co-housing groups, who share the purchase of land, infrastructure and building.

Building for the future

Despite the low number of self-builds, Britain already has a broad variety of homes built in this way – from the large detached houses featured on programmes such as Grand Designs to numerous small homes crafted from low-cost, natural or reclaimed materials.

In an attempt to create housing for local residents some councils have started to allocate land for self-build housing, and others have created exemptions in planning legislation that allow certain forms of self-building in places normally denied building permission.

To tackle the housing crisis we need a complete rethink of the way we build houses in Britain. Self-building shouldn’t be for the reserve of the mega rich, or those looking for a project in retirement. Instead young people, families, couples, anyone should be able to build their own home.

We need to look to our European neighbours to learn a thing or two about self-building and shared ownership. We need to learn how to minimise the amount of materials required by building smaller individuals houses with shared communal space for gardens, laundry, workshops and storage.

And instead of purchasing freehold we could roll out more stakeholder ownership models – just like Lilac in Leeds. At Lilac costs are linked to ability to pay and residents only pay a housing charge equivalent to 35% of their net income. Meaning the higher earners subsidise those on lower incomes.

With a rise in self-build housing we could build our way out of the current housing crisis – but maybe more importantly, we could also avoid a repeat of it in the future.

From The Conversation.

The resignation of Australia’s first minister for cities and the built environment after just 99 days is a setback for federal leadership in these areas. Yet enough momentum and goodwill have been generated to keep the flag flying. The greatest hope is that an urban consciousness in national public policy will be lodged permanently.

Even before state planning ministers assemble within months to hammer out the ground rules for federal engagement, the mutual understanding will be that the states are Australia’s primary urban governments.

In August 1945, a conference of Commonwealth and state ministers in Canberra confirmed that arrangement. The states rejected a generous proposal for a central planning bureau to provide advice, training and information resources plus cover half the costs of employing technical experts to assist local authorities.

Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s summation sealed the fate of the bold reconstruction initiative hatched by Nugget Coombs:

… the matter ought to be left to the states.

How cities became ‘orphans of public policy’

Regardless, the federal government has retained a periodic interest in cities, with mixed outcomes. Historically, most initiatives have been linked to Labor.

Gough Whitlam’s Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD, 1972-75) injected valuable locational and equity perspectives into policy. However, a big-spending command, control and co-ordinate mission proved problematic.

Bob Hawke delivered AMCORD and Green Street as best-practice guidelines for residential development. This helped change the culture of the development industry. But the Hawke government’s main legacy, driven by Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, was Building Better Cities, centred on strategic housing, environmental and infrastructure projects.

Paul Keating gave us the Urban Design Task Force (1994) and the Australian Urban and Regional Development Review (1995) of federal programs for infrastructure, planning and transport.

By the time of the Rudd-Gillard governments, an actual National Urban Policy emerged to guide public intervention and private investment. Its quartet of themes remain widely accepted: productivity, sustainability, liveability and governance.

The Coalition’s contributions have been more muted.

The enduring love affair was between Robert Menzies and Canberra. The capital received extraordinary largesse to become an exemplar of modernist architecture, design and planning. Most everywhere else was ignored.

Late in his term, William McMahon instituted a National Urban and Regional Development Authority, which lingered as a commission for new cities alongside DURD.

The Fraser government wound down Labor’s perceived excesses but still found a rationale for inquiries into the Commonwealth and the urban environment (1978) and a pioneering study on urban environmental indicators (1983). John Howard offered various charters and best practice initiatives, notably the Development Assessment Forum (1998).

Cities have been called “orphans of public policy”, so the decisive and acclaimed entry of the Turnbull government into the fray is remarkable. Malcolm Turnbull has the credibility, nous and drive to supplant Tony Abbott as the first infrastructure prime minister. In a sense, Abbott ignored cities – except to champion motorways – at his peril.

Turnbull invigorates urban agenda

Turnbull’s transformative move has been to declare officially what has been long known: cities are “crucibles” of innovation and enterprise.

Productive cities are smart, innovative, prosperous and great places to live. Less productive cities are accordingly less liveable, sustainable and connected.

While a new cities minister will lay claim to one ear of Turnbull, wife Lucy will command the other. A former lord mayor and “city expert” adviser to the COAG Reform Council, she chairs both the Committee for Sydney and the NSW government’s new Greater Sydney Commission.

The problems of Australian cities are well documented: density (the drawbacks of low joined by the challenges of high), transport (needing greater mass transit connectivity and walkability while reducing dependence on cars), housing (affordability and variety), inequality (divided by income, health and mobility), the spatial mismatch between jobs and homes, fractured metropolitan governance, open space, environment, heritage, design.

Australia’s “broken cities”, to quote the Grattan Institute report City Limits, are:

… caught between the three tiers of Australian government, hardly registering on the agenda of many politicians.

What to do next?

The solutions are wickedly challenging. In December, the then-minister, Jamie Briggs, distilled the state of play in his keynote address to the State of Australian Cities conference. The Commonwealth was not set to take over from the states, create new bureaucracies or become a “planning approver”. Rather, there would be better co-ordination between federal agencies and across all tiers of government.

Briggs flagged collaboration with the private sector, researchers, and the wider community. He spoke of the need to secure “better outcomes” and “measure our performance”. The gaze was on the long run and locking in agreed planning and co-ordination of projects.

Smarter, more flexible and adaptable financial arrangements will come into play. The buzzwords “value uplift” and “value capture” pinpointed the need to extend federal intervention beyond cash handouts. This is code for differential tax increment financing to tap into revenues generated by rising property prices from infrastructure improvements.

Labor’s National Urban Policy framework will need to be revisited. The way forward is through intergovernmental agreements that link specified outcomes to robust and streamlined planning systems. These will need to connect up issues of housing, employment, environment and infrastructure.

This agenda has been taking shape for some time. Bellwethers include:

• Productivity Commission inquiries into planning, zoning and development assessments (2011) and public infrastructure (2014), and the Harper review of competition policy (2015), all highlighting the need to reform land-use planning;
• Tomorrow’s Cities Today (2014) by Consult Australia;
• the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC) report, Investing in Cities (2015), aimed at “maximising the benefits created by the world’s most urbanised nation”; and
• COAG’s review of metropolitan planning strategies to ensure matching and orderly infrastructure provision (2011).

Ideas and inspirations abound

Several seers lit the ideological torches for the new infrastructural urbanism. Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City is a paean to proximity, density and light-handed regulation. In The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida broadcast the competitive advantage of attracting human capital. Enrico Moretti’s The New Geography of Jobs (2012) demonstrated the multiplier effects of urban “brain hubs”.

In the UK, the Cameron government’s City Deals policy highlights an attractive model of bespoke multi-target programs for competing cities. It is aimed squarely at economic growth underpinned by enhanced tax revenue from development.

While the cities component of the new portfolio is crystallising publicly, what of the built environment? In exploring a model that works for the Coalition another exemplar is the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (1999-2011). Although emasculated in a purge of quangos, it was widely respected as an adviser and advocate for quality design and valuation of the public realm.

Run leanly and through a similar mix of design reviews, publications, research forums and an adviser network, an Australian adaptation could assume a timely leadership position. It would be a vehicle for many voices to be heard, not just the property and development sector. Turnbull tacitly recognised the value of this when he announced that his summer reading included Marcus Westbury’s primer for DIY urbanism, Creating Cities.

Quite a few federal activities might be connected under this umbrella. These include State of Australian Cities reporting; the National Australian Built Environment Ratings System (NABERS); various environmental policies including management of national and Commonwealth heritage lists; leased federal airports, which have become development hotspots; the National Capital Authority; the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN).

Given the importance of evidence-driven policy, it is unfortunate that urban-related research is under-supported by the Australian Research Council. It barely registers in its research priorities.

Urban policy is complex because it potentially links up and intrudes into many arenas of government. The cities ministry and the new interdepartmental taskforce sit within the Environment Department overseen by Greg Hunt. As shadow minister for cities, Anthony Albanese has warned of “convoluted administrative arrangements”, with five ministers sharing responsibilities for cities and infrastructure policy.

Former professor of public administration Martin Painter identified the “impossibility of urban policy” because of insoluble administrative problems flowing from taking too comprehensive a position. His advice was “the simpler the better”.

Briggs’ successor will likely continue down the same path with a discussion paper, a national forum with the prime minister speaking, and that meeting of planning ministers to talk through approaches and decisions. There are now huge expectations that a new urban age has dawned in Australia.

Many Australians want to grow old at home with family and friends. Yet most have homes that are inaccessible. Without intervention now, taxpayers will be asked to deal with the unintended consequences for the health, aged care and disability budgets.

We all know people who go to hospital and do not return home because they can no longer climb the stairs, get down the hall, or use the bathroom. The alternative is an extended hospital stay while they wait for expensive modifications, or placement in some distant residential facility.

The fix?

Community and housing industry leaders agreed with the federal government a voluntary national guideline and a plan to provide basic access features in all new housing by 2020. Governments at all levels endorsed this agreement through their housing, aged and disability policies. This includes COAG’s 2010-2020 National Disability Strategy.

Adding these features at the design stage is cheap and easy to do. One cost estimate is A$200-$1,000 per dwelling. This would provide:

1. An accessible path of travel from the street or parking area to and within the entry level of a dwelling;
2. Doorways, corridors and living spaces on the entry level which most people can use;
3. One bathroom, shower and toilet that most people can use, with reinforcement in the walls for easy installation of grab-rails if required.

The agreement does not solve the housing needs of people with significant long-term disability. This requires more thought. But it does allow most people to manage unexpected disability, illness or frailty until more substantial changes can be made.

Just as importantly, it allows friends and family who have mobility difficulties to visit and be part of family life.

Voluntary approach isn’t working

A 2015 review of the agreement indicated that the voluntary approach has failed. It estimated that, without intervention, less than 5% of the agreed 2020 target would be achieved.

There are good reasons for this failure. The housing industry is highly competitive and risk-averse.

Most housing is designed and built long before the buyer comes along. Builders build what has sold in the past and what they think buyers might aspire to in the future. Their experience is that most buyers do not aspire to be old, disabled or frail, so access is not high on their agenda – but it should be.

Although the features are easy and cheap to install, a change to new practices has its risks and can be expensive. Contrary to the notion that a single builder builds a home, housing construction constitutes a complex web of subcontractors and suppliers. Each is dependent on the other to avoid delays or unexpected costs.

A simple change, such as wider doorways, can throw out the preceding and following trades, and both time and money are lost.

From the housing industry’s point of view, the estimated cost of voluntarily providing these features is much greater. It is simpler to keep doing the same – there will always be a buyer at the end.

The housing industry acknowledges that when change is necessary for the common good, regulation is required. The industry first resists, then makes the change. The “conveyor belt” of housing construction adjusts, and business continues as usual.

A home’s design affects people’s lives throughout its lifetime, so many others bear the secondary costs of inaccessible design. Providing access in a home after it is built is 19 times more expensive than if it was included from the start. But it is the tertiary costs to health, ageing and disability programs that are of real concern.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme and the aged care reforms – Australia’s most ambitious and costly social programs in a generation – are based on the premise that it is both socially and economically responsible to keep people connected. This includes participating in community and family life for as long as possible.

What now?

Australia needs only to look to other countries to understand what needs to be done. The UK has legislated for minimum access in all housing since 1999. For three decades, Japan has provided financial incentives for the housing industry to build accessible housing.

Although these strategies are not without their problems, they have clearly changed the housing industry for the better.

The federal government must let go of the voluntary approach, to think long-term and regulate for minimum access features in the National Construction Code for all new housing. The agreed 2020 target can then be achieved.

As a nation that prides itself on embracing difference, a national accessible housing code is a good place to start.