Housing Digital editor, Mark Cantrell speaks to Dr Anna Pagani, lead author of a research paper that makes a startling suggestion for tackling the housing crisis – stop building new homes
There’s disruption – and then there’s heresy.
The tech industry adores the former, of course, especially when it’s the one doing the disrupting; then it’s a Good Thing.
Increasingly, the housing sector is looking to tap into this spirit, as it seeks to harness digital innovation to help solve some of its myriad challenges. There’s a growing view that the sector is ripe for disruption, after all. But this isn’t a tech story, it’s more about building; or rather not building, as it so happens. Therein lies the ‘heresy’.
Earlier this year, an international team of researchers led by Dr Anna Pagani, a senior lecturer in engineering at King’s College London, came up with their own disruptive suggestion for tackling the housing crisis – particularly the shortage of social housing.
In a paper published in the journal, Built Environment, the team make the case for a moratorium on the construction of new homes.
The proposition is a simple one, the reasoning a little more involved, and the ramifications intriguing, but it’s probably not the sector’s idea of disruption. Certainly, as Pagani herself acknowledges, it all sounds rather counter-intuitive.
Detrimental growth
“The problem is that the current mechanisms that provide social homes are dependent on endless growth, and it actually has been detrimental to the provision of social housing,” she says.
“On the one hand, [a moratorium] forces a focus on other avenues. On the other hand, it questions and disrupts the growth-dependent system that is currently underpinning the production of social homes.”
Up to now, cross-subsidising social housing through the construction of market homes has caused more harm than good, her research suggests; it has “pushed for demolition”, impacted health and well-being, led to the “displacement of tenants”, and burdened housing associations with increased pressures that drag focus away from their core purpose (such as adequately maintaining existing stock).
As the paper notes: “The need for funding and efficiency creates a breeding ground for the construction of market homes (eg, shared ownership housing), and the associated increase in the share of residents with higher socio-economic status.
“Altogether, demolition, residents’ displacement, and new market homes directly and indirectly exacerbate the social housing shortage, generating feedback loops that contribute to increased financial pressure, stigma, and the artificial production of social mixing.”
The paper goes on to say: “In this setting, a moratorium would discourage the loss of the existing, limited stock via demolition, and halt the construction of market homes … Eventually, the benefits of a stable social housing stock on its tenants’ health and well-being could allow [housing associations] to engage in better evidence-based decision-making.”
All that said, Pagani is certainly not denying there’s a need for more social housing specifically, and affordable housing generally, but her paper argues that other pathways are available.
Under occupation
For instance, there are some 1.5m empty – more accurately “unoccupied” – homes in England, according to the research paper. Some of these are second homes; others are owned by international investors.
“We quickly realised that it is also a problem of distribution; that to provide more social homes, we do not necessarily need to build more social homes,” Pagani says.
Given the paper’s arguments and conclusions, it’s not hard to see how the proposals threaten to tread on the toes of a lot of well-entrenched – even powerful – vested interests, be they investors in residential asset classes, those comfortable second home owners, or the housebuilding industry itself, whose activities would be abruptly curtailed. As the paper’s argument goes, however, perhaps we could take it as the socially purposeful thing to do.
“A moratorium is typically something to suspend harmful activities,” Pagani adds. “Construction has become a harmful activity. It has a terrible impact on the environment, on nature, and on the climate. We do not have the carbon budget to continue building.
“Secondly, it has a terrible impact on communities, and it’s not helping to lower housing prices, or to provide the homes that are needed. [But] we do have the homes that are needed. It’s not a matter of constructing them.
“It’s a matter of thinking in a different way how to use the existing housing stock. Unfortunately, for some, this is very uncomfortable because it means really addressing the sources of power.”
The call for a moratorium also flies in the face of received wisdom, it’s fair to say, not to mention the government’s recent seismic announcements on investment in social housing; coming after years of the sector facing short shrift and government cold shoulder.
Skewed delivery
In June’s Spending Review, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves demonstrated considerable largesse towards the sector – with a £39bn boost for social and affordable housing. This month, the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner fleshed out some of the critical detail – announcing the funding would be skewed towards the delivery of social rent homes.
Quite how – or indeed if – the government’s step change on housebuilding investment can or will reconfigure the mechanisms Pagani’s research explores is open to question, but it would be a crushing irony if the boost in the construction of social housing simply dug us even deeper into the hole.
As Pagani explains, the research her team undertook is rooted in systems thinking, which broadly speaking looks at the underlying systems and trends that operate beneath the surface, out of mind as it were, but critically affecting how we respond to events. Basically, it’s a breeding ground for unintended consequences.
She uses the metaphor of the iceberg; what we see on the surface are the issues to hand, the multifaceted housing crisis, with its struggling first time buyers, precarious private renters, the severe shortage of social homes, and record levels of families in temporary accommodation.
We can add to that grim manifest the scandal of unfit homes that has engulfed the sector in recent years, epitomised by the death of toddler Awaab Ishak, or the issues that have emerged around building safety in the wake of the horrifying loss of 72 lives in the tragedy at Grenfell.
Running deep
Beneath the waves, the iceberg runs deep. These are the systems and mechanisms, the policies and procedures, the culture and attitudes that shape our thinking, mould objectives, and channel our actions, in ways not necessarily aligned to the desired outcome. We can probably add, an accumulating tangle of reactive ‘quick fixes’ thrown out on the fly.
“In systems thinking, we say that a system is designed in a way to achieve its goal,” Pagani says. “If the goal of the system is to provide affordable housing for all, then the system would be designed to achieve that goal.
“But when we see that social housing has been decreasing, that gentrification has been happening, that tenants have been emotionally displaced, we realise that the system is not designed for that purpose.
“And so it raises the question, for what purpose is the system designed? Often it is designed for growth, for the sake of growth. And when the overall system is there to create a dependence on the production of new market homes, we really realise that the goal is not to provide social housing.”
Another reason to call for a moratorium, then, is to “create space” to think and reflect, analyse those underlying structures, and consider whether they are serving society’s housing needs, or if society is simply serving the ‘algorithm’ of growth for growth’s sake.
“It forces you to raise questions [about things] that are otherwise taken for granted, and are actually the source of the problem,” says Pagani. “At the same time it forces us to address questions that otherwise wouldn’t be addressed. By doing that, it helps disrupt a system that is having quite a strong negative impact on all of us.”
In essence, Pagani and her team’s research questions whether we can truly build our way out of the housing crisis – no matter how much money is thrown at it – but it also extends beyond the provision of social housing. The paper also sets out to make a case for the sustainable use of resources, degrowth, a circular economy, and living within the limits of planetary boundaries.
It feels likely that many – most? – within the housing sector will declare Pagani’s paper as ‘heresy’, rather than embrace it is a source of enervating disruption. That’s the way it goes. Sometimes, of course, to innovate and break new ground one has to think the unthinkable.
But at the very least, the paper certainly offers food for thought.
You can read the full paper here.
Main image: Dr Anna Pagani, senior lecturer in engineering, King’s College London
Read next: MPs launch inquiry on England’s housing conditions
Are you a social housing professional? Sign up for a FREE MEMBERSHIP to upload news stories, post job vacancies, and connect with colleagues on our secure social feed.
