On Home and Community: Discussing the UK's Housing Crisis

"Home is the most important piece of architecture in our lives. It crafts the way we live, and how we grow as families and communities"

George Clarke

Currently the housing crisis in the UK is an example of how not to do sustainable development.

The housing crisis has no singular solution that can be applied cross-country to fix everything overnight. The model itself needs re-thinking before the crisis can be fixed, in order to create new domestic settlements for the future which fulfil the United Kingdom’s housing needs in a sensitive and sustainable way. Sustainability (if it needs re-iterating louder for those snoring in the back) is the focus on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

So how do we in the 21st Century create sustainable homes fit for our population's changing needs?

The Home of 2030 event (2nd December 2019) posed these questions as part of a design competition influenced by the public's view of what we need. Through a series of workshops around the country, participants explored what made "home" work for them, and what they wanted to change about how the UK's housing worked.

The workshops used scenario-based exercises, such as "slice of life" journey mapping, to discuss the pros and cons of how we live in the modern day.

For example - as a student at the time, living in a shared house, I chose to map the experience of cooking in a shared kitchen. Pros: shared experiences, sharing food (cooking turkey together at Christmastime was a highlight that year), and learning new things from each other's cooking styles.

Cons: squeezing 4 peoples' worth of cooking equipment all in one place, having to carefully choreograph when we ate so we weren't all using the oven at the same time, and the mountains of other peoples' washing up (Ah, the joys of student life).

One of the exercises at the event included brainstorming the opportunities and challenges future homes face

These exercises led on to a series of scenarios - how might we live in the future?

1. Could we see an end to ownership, with more shared living?

2. Would our changing work patterns lead to a huge shift in how we lived?

3. How would our homes adapt to climate change?

4. What impact would digital interconnected technology have on our homes and lives?

5. How would we deal with our ageing population, as more people are living longer and many of these live alone?

6. Would we see a rise in tiny homes, squeezed into brownfield inner-city sites to keep up with housing demand?

Using these scenarios, we explored their opportunities and drawbacks, and decided on some key themes for future homes. One of the most important aspects across all scenarios was the recurring theme of creating housing that brings people together to create stronger communities. The “loneliness epidemic” triggered by social isolation is damaging to peoples’ mental health and social wellbeing, and the uptick in digital communication via social media and instant messaging in recent years can leave people isolated from physical contact, further harming societies on an individual and community scale. Digital communication does have the bright side of bringing people together as well, allowing larger groups to communicate community efforts, such as via a neighbourhood Facebook page or an Instagram profile promoting local services and events, which can be shared at speeds far greater than singular word-of-mouth could.

We are now 4 years closer to 2030 than when I attended the Home of 2030 event, and following a global pandemic, an escalation of the UK's housing crisis, and higher inflation rates this year (2023) than any year since 1990, what does this mean for future homes?

We are all experiencing first-hand the effects of climate change on our homes and lives. We have experienced more severe winter storms, causing widespread flooding and damaging land and property. In 2022, summer temperatures in the UK broke 40oC for the first time in recorded history. I remember attempting to work on the hottest day of the year in my 2nd storey flat, curtains closed against the heat and feet in a bucket of water with ice packs floating in it, and still overheating, and I’m a relatively healthy twenty-something. Vulnerable members of our society, for example disabled people and senior citizens, are disproportionately affected by extreme weather, and vast amounts of housing for lower-income households is inadequate for our changing climate. And this is before it gets any worse.

I now work in the ventilation sector of construction, and a large amount of my job is finding ways to “futureproof” new housing stock with Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MVHR) and with Purge ventilation – Purge is nowhere near as slash-horror as it sounds, it is simply the addition of fans to habitable rooms in locations prone to overheating or where opening windows for ventilation is difficult (noise issues, pollution issues, or security reasons). Since the introduction of Approved Document O in 2021, we have seen more of these projects requiring measures against overheating coming in. We are also starting to see more developers look towards Passive House measures, which I will come to in a moment.

One thing I notice about the projects I work on is that many of them proudly proclaim a certain percentage of their housing stock will be “affordable”. What this term means is nebulous at best, and it is rare to see a development with more than around 30% “affordable housing” implemented from what I’ve seen. According to Parliament itself (Barton & Wilson, 2022), there is no agreed definition for affordable housing in the UK, so developers can interpret this to their own interests.

In terms of changing working habits, when I attended the Home of 2030 event, working from home was a relatively rare set-up, with a majority of people who worked in office-based environments commuting to their offices every day. Back then, Covid-19 hadn’t even hit the news cycles. We hadn’t experienced the first of three national lockdowns, hadn’t implemented social distancing or mask mandates, did not clap for the NHS on our front doorsteps... Sometimes it is incredible to see how much social upheaval has occurred in the past three years. Now, remote and hybrid working is hugely popular, having given people freedom away from endless commutes to spend more time with their families, saving on transport costs, and improving mental wellbeing through better work-life balance. There have also been pioneering studies on the benefits of a four-day work week, with an overwhelming success rate from the pilot trial rolled out earlier this year showing an increase in productivity for 92% of participating companies (Lewis et al.). Back in 2019 most of these things were still very speculative, and I believe their implementation in society has been brought forward by the Covid-19 pandemic.

All of this still poses more questions than it does answer them. There are so many different factors to consider when planning for future housing, and reflecting on the scenarios laid out above, the likeliest course for the future is a combination of all of the above rather than one specific route, with different parts of the country (and planet, for that matter) being affected by certain factors more than others – for example overheating becoming more of an issue in London and the South-East, or social isolation in poorly-connected areas with ageing populations. Each of these factors does not just affect housing, and to propose such is a gross oversimplification of the challenges we face ahead. Architect and TV personality George Clarke (quoted above) has said that our housing shapes the way we live and our sense of community – thus linking Housing with Infrastructure and Transport, Social Connection, Mental and Physical Health, Education...

As one person, and a young worker still gaining experience in their field, there is no way I will hold the answers to this. Not without communicating and connecting with other individuals and collectives seeking to answer the same questions I have been examining for the last few years. I intend to do further research and connection with regards to the worsening housing crisis, and will eagerly push to make housing in the UK accessible and affordable, ready for whatever future comes our way.

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References:

Home of 2030 Consultation & Design Competition, 2 December 2019, Oxford Town Hall.

“What is Affordable Housing?” Research Briefing. C. Barton & W. Wilson. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7747/Published 26 March, 2022, Retrieved 21 April 2023

“The Results are In: The UK’s Four-Day Week Pilot” Report. K. Lewis, et al. for Autonomy Research Ltd. & the 4 Day Week Campaign https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/ February 2023. Retrieved 21 April 2023