Housing – a multidimensional crisis

It is easy to think about the housing crisis as if it were a single and relatively crude problem of just too few homes. In many ways this is readily understandable and easy to communicate, to paraphrase Bob Geldof, ‘just build the #!?$@*% homes!’ And at one level, this is true. However, the reality is much more complex and messier, making it easy for policy makers to focus on one dimension and offer a single solution.

As well as the absolute shortage of homes, there are real challenges about not just where those homes are but where new homes are needed, how those homes are used from the corrosive effect of buy–to-leave in London to second homes in rural locations and under occupation, to poor standards of quality, management and maintenance. Each of these can be broken down into smaller issues such that there is bewildering variety of problems, sub-problems and competing demands for attention. For anyone without a home that they can afford to live in the solution is straightforward, a home it is please, now!

The hubris of the commentator is to come forward with a series of ideas, from the practical to the utopian, which offer a panacea for what each of us perceives as the crisis and we think that will solve the problem, as we understand it. With a degree of humility, I want to put forward another approach.

‘Let a thousand flowers bloom!’

This phrase born of the cultural revolution in China suggests a more diverse, local and sensitive solution to the dimensions of the housing crises in the UK.

Whether it is something totally countercultural like a commune of yurts in a remote valley, a student housing cooperative, a self-build group using straw bales, or a philanthropic rural landowner giving land to support homes in their village for local families. Perhaps it’s house shares that help fill empty rooms for owner occupiers, or mass building, renovation and retrofit programmes. There is a role for each in the mixed economy of meeting the multiple crises of housing. I would not want to prescribe a sole solution, a single way of funding or of delivering homes.

There is a significant role for supported self-help, using social innovators and entrepreneurs to imagine new ways of making accommodation available and then helping individuals, communities and neighbourhoods to make it real. There is no substitute for large scale delivery and recent initiatives from pension funds to move in to provide market rented homes on three-year tenancies is to be applauded. What is the scope for the energy companies to grapple with the challenges of developing a low carbon future by supporting retrofit programmes to reduce demand for fossil fuels and stimulate production of renewable energy, moving capital investment from power stations to home improvements?

Looking at the totality of the housing crisis can leave you feeling overwhelmed; the way forward is to look at what the local, neighbourhood, community needs are and then focus on making that small difference.