Posted in Housing

Housing Affordability: A Problem With A Solution?

The unaffordability of housing is an almost universal problem, with planners and politicians alike being accused of killing the Aussie or Kiwi Dream. This is not a new issue —in the 1950s the ‘working man’ faced problems financing their first home. That was addressed by the emergence of the ‘working woman’ and her income and government assistance from soft loans to building subsidies, to smooth the way to home ownership.

While government intervention is still possible, present governments are less willing to intervene in those ways and the ‘working family’ has no one left to send out to work. Governments have instead instituted supply side solutions such as removing planning restrictions or increasing land supply. These have had limited success, often at the cost of further sprawl and a less sustainable city.

Caroline Miller

We first need a better understanding of who house buyers are and what expectations they have for the home they are having difficulty buying, to underpin more effective housing policies.  Houses as investments and stores of value for small time and overseas investors are a reality, and can add speculation pressure to a rising housing market.  That’s an issue best dealt with by tax policies or limits on overseas buyers. Home buyers are also changing and look for a complete housing package including landscaped grounds.

For Generation Y, a house is more than a place to live; it is an expression of their values and aspirations and is expected to demonstrate those values and aspirations to the world. Simply proving more fringe suburbia will not meet their needs. Higher densities are a solution if planners, architects and developers can create developments existing communities will tolerate and which speak to younger buyers.

Financial issues also need to be addressed making monetary policy as reflected in housing interest rates, an integral aspect of addressing affordability. Address housing affordability requires comprehensive policies addressing both the demand and supply sides of the affordability equation and solutions that are informed by the expectations of all sectors of every generation.

Associate Professor Caroline Miller, Resource & Environmental Planning Programme, School of People, Environmental & Planning, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ.

Lego-like buildings to tackle sustainability in the Australian housing market

Castlemaine architect Simon Disler thinks there is a crucial missing step when designing more sustainable houses for the mass housing market: flexibility.

“We wanted to come up with a building concept that was really about having a modular floor planning system that means you can shuffle the parts of the building around to adapt to a site to get good performance,” Mr Disler said.

That means thinking about lot size and orientation and then adapting a floor plan to the site so that a house faces the sun. He said this step is a cost-effective way to save energy consumption — but it is missing in the mass housing market.

Dr Masa Noguchi, Associate Professor in Environmental Design at The University of Melbourne agrees.

Even through it was difficult to provide a precise figure in terms of estimated savings, he estimated a 30 percent reduction of use of free clean energy provided for by the sun if a house facing west or east instead of north.

“Orientation of the building is extremely important,” he said.

“The sun is free clean energy so why don’t we use free clean energy?”

Architect Simon Disler thinks customised floorplans are crucial for good solar passive design.

Architect Simon Disler thinks customised floorplans are crucial for good solar passive design.

Mr Disler said one of the problems with the mass housing building industry was the focus on the end product rather than customising the product to suit its location.

“The building industry is sort of characterised by choosing a postcard of a house and crowbarring it into a site,” he said.

“There’s not really any expertise and much consideration of which way it should face regarding the sun which is going to give you your sort of key performance.”

Despite all new Australian housing having to comply with a national six-star energy rating system, Mr Disler said there are “lots of holes in the system” because the energy rating happens on paper prior to construction of the building and not after the build.

According to Mark Davies, group manager at Australian Buildings Codes Board (ABCB), the board is responsible for developing the national construction code but not enforcing it during construction.

“There needs to be both the prescriptive requirements and the code and the follow up by the appropriate building authority,” he said.

Greg Rowell, general manager at mass housing provider Cavalier Homes Bendigo, said a certificate of occupancy is granted by a building surveyor after a “fairly comprehensive” inspection, but it is limited.

“[It] is a visual inspection by the inspector, it’s not based on any thermal testing or that type of thing,” he said.

Mr Rowell agreed that, in an ideal world, a block would be selected and the house designed to suit that block. He said it is something the company does but not often. Instead, most houses are built to face the street.

Instead the company meet their six-star energy rating through the use of efficient materials and includes double-glazed windows, rainwater collection systems and solar panels.

“We do allow quite a few changes that will give the house a better footprint, if you like, to sustainability,” he said.

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