How do you build your way out of renting?

Since the 1980s, rent has been rising steadily in urban areas.  In the UK, we now pay nearly £60 billion in rent each year collectively.  We spend on rent only slightly more than we do on mortgage payments.

Londoners will guess that the capital has been behind a decent share of this growth.  Wealth inequality, gentrification, and environmentally costly developments are all a by-product of an expanding private sector.

No surprise then that more of us interested in community-led development, including housing co-ops in the past few years.  Although their growth has stalled since the 1980s, co-ops are now increasingly attractive to people who would normally be paying private rents for an average of 15 years before they scrap together a mortgage deposit.  But co-ops also offer solutions to social problems such as isolation and getting your work-life balance perfect.

Last month, I sent some questions to Sun Coop.  A group of friends, whose experience of co-operatives and shared living, has compelled them to launch a housing project.  Sun will build their own homes around a unique design that will challenge the standard nuclear family model of living.  It will also be a community development owned by its members:

“We are essentially a group of friends living in London. Some of us met through being involved in a co-operative educational project together, and I suppose the more you think about collectivising resources, you start to think about ways this approach could be used in other areas of your life.  The catalyst was finding two derelict houses in 2017 and approaching the owner about selling them, since they had been empty for so long.  We heard nothing back – which is of course symptomatic of the way people treat buildings in places like London – as investments rather than homes. Obviously rent in London is so high – it’s such a high proportion of the average income especially if you are self-employed, partially employed or in precarious work. So it was important for us to look into why housing provision is so unequal here, and how the quite fertile cooperative housing and squatting movements of the 1960s and 70s have been dismantled somewhat over time.

Sun not only wants to break into the housing market.  Members have been also been speaking to the architectural consultants Dogma, who builds resources about urban architecture and shared living.  The layout of Sun’s living spaces aims to encourage shared autonomy over work and rest. Private living spaces will be adjacent to shared residential and work areas:

“Again, part of this idea was a reaction to the London context.  Some of us are designers and programmers: workspaces are expensive and hard to find, and often the providers of such spaces are involved in dubious practices of redevelopment or gentrification. Some of us have to travel a long way for work and pay a lot for travel (before Coronavirus anyway!), and are disconnected from our local area.  But our ideas were primarily influenced by our discovery of Dogma’s book Communal Villa, which sets out a simple plan for meaningful shared space – whether for making things or having a business – as a part of a residential building, rather than seeing work and life (production and reproduction?) as two unconnected activities. That said, we want to maintain the boundaries between leisure and work, not to have work invade our homes or evenings or weekends.

The concept of Sun’s space

Government has provided some support to this type of residential development.  Last year, the Major of London launched a £38 million fund for community-led housing with the stated aim of “enabling Londoners to play a leading role in building new social rented and other genuinely affordable homes”.  Some has gone to support Community Led Housing London, which in turn helps co-ops.  I asked Sun if they have had any trouble finding sites for their development:

“We have had no trouble finding sites, it’s just everything that comes afterwards is the problem!  We have had generous support from Community Led Housing London and also from CASH CLT which has given us access to tools to discover ownership of potential sites and read through past planning applications and decisions. We have a few sites in mind, but it has taken a long time to understand what sorts of sites are more possible than others. Often people say to ‘think like a developer’, but really it seems to be about finding sites that most developers would overlook, with architectural or environmental quirks that wouldn’t be worth their while to work around. Also, there are particular London boroughs who are more open to community-led housing schemes, and there are some who do all their housing development themselves, for instance. But pretty much all of them have committed to building new residential homes in their Local Plans and Strategies.

Community Led Housing London lists many more emerging projects like Sun on their website.  These developments are not only community-led but several are adapted for the needs of their residents – such as older, LGBT+, or intergenerational households. For some of Sun’s members, the pandemic has laid bare the advantages of shared living:

“Many of us already live in a shared house and (personally)* I have found it a comfort to have others around, to cook in rotation and generally digest what has been happening in the world.  Obviously, it has not been an easy time for anyone, but it’s clear to see how during the first lockdown the idea of mutual aid became a necessity for many of us on different scales and I don’t see why this wouldn’t be the same within Sun Coop as a ‘household’ of up to 40 people. 

We want to live with people of different ages, and different backgrounds, and to share and develop communally. Our timeline is in flux as we continue with site research. Every aspect of this work is dependent on something else, so it’s not necessarily had much of an effect on us in that way. With the new Government planning rules though, it remains to be seen how these will affect us, whether developments will fall through that allow smaller grassroots initiatives to actually do something, or whether it will be a free-for-all for more expensive developments that end up empty. With the current government we’re not hopeful, but we are determined either way!”

Thank you to Sun Coop for answering questions about their experience. You can visit Sun’s home on Github here and find more advice and case studies on housing co-ops in London here.

Capability Approach in Housing

Noble Prize Winner Amartya Sen

Housing policy in the UK has little ethical framework behind it for the most part.  It is not something that is regularly thought of.  But if politics is able to adopt a consistent model for assessing housing outcomes, it will probably be easier to implement consistent policies in our housing infrastructure.

The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence published a report last year titled ‘How Should We Evaluate Housing Outcomes?’.  In it, authors, Professor David Clapham and Dr Chris Foye prepared a framework for judging policy reports based on the Capability Approach.   

Capability Approach is an idea of human development that focuses on the moral significance of choices.  Amartya Sen developed the concept in the 1980s, and since it has been built upon by figures like Philosopher Martha Nussbaum.  Capability Theory has also influenced the UN Development Programme.

The Approach studies a person’s abilities to achieve a good life.  Poverty is understood as the inability to resource things that make a good life – food and education for example.  The approach focuses on our ‘effective freedom’, while taking into account factors such as relative poverty and the phenomenon of ‘adaptive preferences’ – the idea that someone may consider themselves not badly off, even if they are in objectively bad circumstances.  

The theory challenges so-called ‘objective’ economic theories of value.  Sen has cited Karl Marx’s concern with “replacing the domination of circumstances and chance over individuals by the domination of individuals over chance and circumstances” in his work.

Sen’s ideas have gained serious attention in policy and in the work of NGOs.  But Clapham and Foye’s report is like a breath of fresh air for anyone interested in UK housing policy.  In their report, they say there is no ‘neutral, value-free’ way of assessing housing outcomes.  (This already provides the option of not assessing outcomes through checkboxes of ownership or market value.)

The report goes on to focus on how the individuals living in them may value their homes.  For example, some people may not mind living in what are technically overcrowded homes in circumstances.  A person wishing to live near their older relatives is a reasonable expectation.  Housing outcomes may consider if people are capable of accessing green spaces.

Since Clapham and Foye focus mostly on what individuals choose, rather than governance, they focus on ‘democratic deliberation’.  The last pages give more attention to the idea that communities should be able to pre-empt and assess their own housing outcomes.  Citizens’ juries and the valuation of land are ideas worthy of attention.

Sen talked about what individuals may consider valuable after ‘reflective valuation’, so the report’s reference to the ‘informational blindspots’ creates room for more discussion.   

Since becoming aware of Sen’s work, I have been interested in how one can apply the Capability Approach to policy decisions in the UK.  Unfortunately, the work of development theorists is often seen as only applying to the ‘developing world’.  Oddly, I don’t think human development ceases in other countries.

Its application can potentially teach us a lot about life in the UK.   Considering, how we must ensure communities in this country are capable of mitigating and resisting the effects of climate change, Capability Theory I believe the theory has a role to play.  I encourage others to read the report and stay familiar with the Centre’s work.

No ‘new deal’ when it comes to housing

Library of Congress, US: Franklin Roosevelt

Boris Johnson gave a speech in Dudley last month where he said the UK was going to ‘Build, Build, Build’ out of recession.  He spoke of the government’s plan to spend on infrastructure and construction as similar to Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal‘ of the 1930s.

Commentators and people on Twitter pointed out that the Prime Minister actually plans to spend far less than FDR.  (He has put aside about a 200th as a percentage of GDP compared to what the ‘New Deal’ spent). 

Though a few people were happy to go with this – up to a point.  Ailbhe Rea wrote an article in the New Statesman about how Conservatives are at least ‘waking up’ to the ‘political salience’ of housing.   The guests on the Financial Times’ Payne’s Politics Podcast used the announcement to compare their favourite Roosevelts.

The problem is that, even with higher spending, Boris Johnson is not offering a New Deal, particularly for housing.  The Government’s proposed reform is enlarging a planning loophole known as Permitted Development Rights. 

Permitted Developments are projects that do not need planning permission from the local authority.  They were added to planning law decades back; most often they applied to small single-storey extensions.  In 2013, the then-Government expanded PDR to include large ‘change of use’ property developments.  So people could do things like convert old (disused) office blocks into flats.

Primarily, PDR is more rights for developers; not the people living in or around the developments.  ‘Terminus House’, a PD in Harlow, Essex, is considered a modern slum by many. A documentary on Youtube shows residents there living in cramped conditions – some with only one window for their whole flat – having to clean up blood in hallways.  Nearby local residents have also reported much higher levels of crime since Terminus House opened. 

Chris Guy (Flickr): Terminus House

Although Terminus House is merely one of the worst examples, space and comfort have been major issues elsewhere.  According to a report released this week – which the Government funded in preparation for the change – only 22% of permitted developments meet the Nationally Described Space Standards.  This means that, as one might expect, they are typically quite small.

Conversely, developers have been pleased with the opportunity permitted developments have been.  One, whose company owns and operates Terminus, calls the policy ‘genius‘ – talking about it as one of the best things a Government could have done.

Housing Minister Robert Jenrick has similarly praised the ‘40,000 or 50,000 new properties’ that expanding Permitted Development Rights have helped build.  Though his department claim to have no exact number because local authorities do not keep data on developments they do not approve.

That alone should be worrying.  Housing policy, including PDs, do not appear to have had an effect on the UK’s rising homelessness.  There is no evidence they are less fuel efficient but they are not A rated either.

COVID is likely to change the look of our highstreets and towns and cities. The extension to PDR will likely give landlords a way to sell or convert their less valuable property, as retail and hospitality crumbles.

Rather than take the opportunity to create communities resilient to climate and social change, Johnson is giving a handout to an industry that has given over £11 million to his party in the last year alone. And he is calling this a ‘radical reform of planning’ along with a ‘new deal’.

A rethink in the promises American society made were at the centre of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  It is the kind of thing we could actually use – some economist have recommended a ‘Green New Deal‘ to prepare us for the 21st century.

But this won’t be achieved without planning, or without reviewing the rights and capabilities we expect to see in our homes and communities. Permitted Developments will likely take us in the wrong direction.