Is Building New Homes An Answer To the Housing Crisis?

Posted on August 31, 2011 by editor
Posted in Architecture Blogs, Economy News, Politics Of Property Tagged Answer, building, Crisis, Homes, housing, new, property, uk

In the press this week we have seen the National Trust getting in on the house building debate with their own NIMBY approach. Or put another way, it’s fine to build new homes so long as it’s no where near National Trust land. Obviously no one wants to see our remaining green spaces lost to swathes of brick built identikit boxes, but the problem here is more than skin deep. Green belt land is really just a highly contentious issue which distracts from the real problems in housing.

Empty Homes

If you check back through our blogs you will see that we are big supporters of the movement to reuse and refit our existing housing stock. In England alone there are 738,414 empty homes -according to stats from the Empty Homes Agency. And, in case you think they are all in the north, London & the South East have 179,539 of their own. Renovating or converting some of those properties could help, and is often a cheaper option than new build.

Now, while we are on the subject of empty property, what about commercial property? Since the economic downturn many commercial properties have been either mothballed or abandoned because the owners can’t find a new tenant. Surely the time for such blatant waste has to come to an end. Whilst changing the ‘use class’ of some commercial property to allow conversion is a step in the right direction from the government, developers may still need planning for other aspects of conversion, such as, lease restrictions, access, changing door and window openings etc. Changing the use class alone won’t help, other planning issues need looking at too for that to have any effect in practice.

Government Relationships

One of the main issues that has been witnessed with successive governments is the heavily entwined relationship between government, big house builders and finance providers. Together they form a kind of cartel which makes long term real change very difficult in reality. As a government, how to you keep the big builders happy ( those who contribute to your campaigns for example) whilst trying to reform the housing system? It’s a conundrum that successive governments have not found the solution to.

What Is Affordable Housing?

Affordable Housing, what is that? It seems to have taken on a new form. To me, affordable housing is simple, it’s good quality housing provided at a level that people can afford. This could be in the form of purchased or rented accommodation. However, the term itself has been twisted and deformed to where it now equals many different things with no coherent core value. For example; owning a small part of a property via a mortgage whilst paying rent on top. Is this affordable housing? The system and the definition is broken.

Does affordable always have to mean ‘ownership’. If someone supplied housing at a guaranteed long term rent in quality spaces where people want to live, would we not consider that as affordable?

Without question, we have the technology to be able to build or retrofit affordable homes in the true sense of the words. So why aren’t we doing it? Maybe what is required is a paradigm shift in thinking, where the people who need housing are consulted and allowed to be part of their own future. Or is this a Utopian dream?