Everything about House of the Commons, a conference about creative solutions to the housing crisis, was unconference-like. At 10am on the Friday a mixture of practitioners, researchers and councillors gathered in a bright Methodist church in Oxford adorned ceiling to floor with a gigantic banner picturing the event’s open door symbol. Three young speakers started the day.
Beth Stratford, a researcher at the university of Leeds, kicked with a primer about how we got in this mess. Her excellent Prezi, a digital presentation all on one screen, whizzed through the balance of supply and demand pressures on the housing market.
Beth cut down the dinner party refrain “we just need to build more” with a presentation that showed building more houses isn’t enough. She said that we need to resurrect the idea of community-led housing and break “the cult around home ownership” to create a new approach to the system – or a new system entirely.
Celia and Laura from @lilacleeds talking about the first #mhos scheme up in Leeds #HotC2016 pic.twitter.com/1PPk8BVAQm
— House of the Commons (@HOTC_Oxford) October 21, 2016
What does that take? Perhaps the biggest problem, according to Beth, is working out how to make a fall in house prices in the UK manageable and palatable when so many people and institutions, including the Government, are relying on prices rising.
Alastair Parvin, an architect and designer with the group Zero Zero, pointed out that for the fifth biggest economy in the world to have a housing crisis can’t be because we don’t have enough money to build houses. We have money. We have skills. But the people in charge of building houses – developers – are in the business of selling land for more than they bought it for.
Fascinating introduction to the @WikiHouse idea at @HOTC_Oxford. Could we build the citizen sector for housing? #RightToBuild
— Peter Lefort (@peterlefort) October 21, 2016
Developers have a financial incentive to buy it as cheap as possible and build “bad” houses (cheap houses rather than quality, environmental, sustainable ones) so they can make the most profit. This doesn’t make developers evil – despite this being the way they are often cast – because they are performing the function they were created to perform. But it does mean we need a new sector to protect the interests of homeowners. And who better to look to than the people who will be living in those homes?
Alice Belotti shares her research on estate regeneration and its impacts on communities. Great stuff happening today at #HotC2016 ! pic.twitter.com/4mMI8Jamlr
— House of the Commons (@HOTC_Oxford) October 21, 2016
Alastair argued that we needed to provide the citizen sector with the skills and materials to solve the housing crisis itself. That’s in part where his WikiHouse comes from, a digitally fabricated house that two people can assemble in a day.
Alice Belotti, a researcher at LSE, had a stark warning against the top down approach taken by developers and governments. Her research looks at the benefits of regenerating old estates, rather than demolishing and rebuilding them. There are more than 65 housing schemes planned in London that will ship people out of their homes leading to displacement and fear for residents.
Panellists agreed that the time for bashing developers and over-stretched local councils was over. Instead the time had come for citizens, residents, researchers and people of all disciplines to attempt real change.
