Housing Crisis? How about Housing Solution. | Nicole Gurran | TEDxSydney

[Music] I've been researching housing for 15 years and I'm here to tell you that the solutions to the housing problem are really simple I love a good reality renovation show how to turn dumps into dollars through smart design and great cushions it's been called property porn the crack cocaine of reality TV but our addiction to property speculation as entertainment has crossed too far into real life the housing market has come a competitive sport where the winners make the most money and the losers a first home buyers and low-income renters we need to think about housing not as investing in real estate but as investing in community the good news is there are ways to redesign our deeply unequal housing system but first we need to know how we got to this point homes have always been the most expensive item on our household budget and for those of us who own one our most valuable asset the rich have always been able to buy what they like but one of the great success stories of the 20th century was to even things up through decent housing for the poor and by making home ownership possible for working Australians in the first 20 years after World War two we nearly doubled our housing stock and built more than 100,000 public housing units by the mid sixties 71 percent of Australians owned their own home supported by a flexible private rental market and a public rental safety net you'd start on the housing ladder by renting maybe sharing when you left home and buy your first house when you were ready to settle down it was a reasonable expectation that families on ordinary income could save for a home deposit within a couple of years so that by the time they retired the loan was paid off and financial security guaranteed things began to change in the 1980s economic growth dual income households financial deregulation which loosened up lending and later lower interest rates all increase the amount of money people could borrow and pay for housing tax tricks like negative gearing created a new type of investor the mum and dad landlord able to out be it first home buyers from the market and by the turn of the new millennium house prices were rising much faster than incomes the politicians solution was to release more land for housing by up zoning near railway lines in the urban fringe and calling for more houses and apartments to be built the story was that more new homes would make renting and buying affordable once again but that didn't happen because the government had defunded public housing turning to the private sector to increase housing supply total public sector involvement in new house building fell from 12 percent in the mid 80s to 2 percent today and although we've built more homes than ever in the past five years fueled by the latest housing boom prices have continued to rise well beyond what most first home buyers can afford so we have a generation increasingly stuck in insecure rental tenure we have more new houses but homeownership rates have fallen permanent homes are converted to Airbnb style holiday rentals housing tourists while local teachers and nurses are forced to the urban fringe at the very bottom of the market low-income workers and students crowd in substandard and precarious share accommodation the total value of Australia's housing stock grew to six point eight trillion dollars in 2017 four times GDP Sydney's homeless population to buy nearly 50% in half a decade the profit to be made in residential real estate has blinded us to the true value of home and a community where everyone has a decent place to live Australia has been infected by a global contagion known as the financialization of housing the more money to be made on housing the more we've wanted to invest and the more dependent on property wealth we've become with houses converted to money making assets access to home has become deeply unequal and I have an idea for a reality TV show to fix that it won't be a show about photogenic couples failing the market with a risky renovation and a quick flip it will show us how to redesign our housing system to better meet the needs of the 1.3 million Australians who are currently missing out well do it in three episodes first we'll fix public housing which has been stigmatized by 30 years of disinvestment and neglect the idealism of the post-war years that pedestrian-oriented estates in the outer suburbs the modern high-rise towers in the city was matched by a belief that public housing could be a genuine stepping stone or even alternative to ownership this was a time when public housing was as essential to the city and to city building as public architecture this is the serious building one of Sydney's great modernist icons right on Sydney Harbour and built for public housing but this idealism was lost in the 90s when governments began to turn to the market for affordable housing and social housing became the tenure of last resort in other countries government's use the market to cross subsidized housing for lower-income people in Hong Kong nearly 50% of all new homes of public rental housing or affordable home ownership financed through development on public land in the UK public grant and planning requirements mean that nearly 30 percent of all new homes are affordable but in Australia social housing is woefully underfunded new initiatives aimed to attract private investment into affordable housing projects but without proper public investment these projects will not get off the ground so in episode one rather than turn our remnant public housing into real estate we revive and extend social housing as part of purpose-built mixed income rental communities providing secure leases to people across the income spectrum this would be a genuine alternative to ownership beyond the current private rental treadmill but even if we fix renting many Australians will still want to own our research at the University of Sydney shows that our key workers our teachers nurses police will travel more than 100 kilometres from city jobs in order to buy a home of their own so in episode 2 we increase the supply of homes that these essential workers can afford this is where urban planning comes in well planned and designed communities are valued highly by the market and in Sydney as in other major cities these high market prices now exclude first homebuyers on average incomes inclusionary planning fixes this by preserving affordability the idea is simple when land is rezone door we invest in new infrastructure like a new rail line land values rise benefitting owners but not renters inclusionary planning fixes this by coring back from some of this benefit for the local community requiring affordable homes to be included as part of future development the homes are dedicated or sold at discount prices to lower income first home buyers or to social housing associations so the builders are paid for the housing and the land costs absorbed as part of the larger development this idea of inclusionary planning is standard in cities throughout the world in London New York San Francisco but so far aside from small pilot schemes Adelaide in South Australia is the only city to properly do it here go Adelaide we can also help people do it for themselves the old-school housing co-op has been reimagined as new generation co living projects which completely bypass the commercial development process groups of like-minded people design and commission their homes collectively saving the developers premium from the project cost take fibre toon Amsterdam one of my favorite examples the 52 apartments in this project were designed and commissioned by their owners who not only built wonderful homes at a lower cost but also created a thriving community but fixing the housing problem is not just about building lower cost rental housing or helping first homebuyers into ownership as important as those things are we need to fundamentally rethink where and how we accommodate our growing population that's episode 3 Australia is one of the most urbanized nations in the world with 40% of our population living in Sydney and Melbourne alone and rising we can't keep squeezing this growth into towers above railway stations and the ever spreading urban fringe wreath expanding the geography of Housing Opportunity in Australia must be the long-term plan we can already say urban refugees bringing creativity and entrepreneurial ISM to regional towns like beechworth in Victoria and Bellingen in northern New South Wales and revitalizing former industrial cities like too long and Newcastle these efforts need support through quality transportation and telecommunications through decent hospitals education research arts facilities the ingredients every city and town needs to grow Australia is dividing into a nation of those with housing wealth and those without from a country where achieving the dream of homeownership was possible from most Australians to a society obsessed with property speculation as competitive sport but it's not too late to change our path the solutions already exist rebuilding social housing as part of mixed income rental communities affordable home ownership or regional Renaissance but to realise their solutions we need to recalibrate our thinking about housing rather than potential profit we need to revalue homes for their purpose as a place to live thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 28,124

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Architecture, Cities, Design, Population, Public Policy, Society, Urban Areas, Urban Planning

Id: TWmszutZJkg

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018