Housing Crisis – Article 25 of the UDHR recognizes appropriate housing as a right of all people, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or financial level. According to UN-Habitat, the world requires 96,000 homes daily to fulfill the demand of 3 billion people who will need housing by 2030. According to a recent survey, 90% of the 200 cities questioned worldwide were deemed unaffordable, the benchmark being average property prices should be less than three times median income. Affordability refers to buying or renting a property and living in it. This notion of affordability extends beyond meeting operational and maintenance costs to include transportation, infrastructure, and operations.
Efforts are underway in nations such as the United States, India, Scotland, and Africa to develop more affordable housing. Japan is a crucial example of the dilemma since 360,000 dwellings are added to Japan’s residential stock each year, far more than any other country. Despite all of the theoretical studies on affordable housing, we are still confronting a massive worldwide housing crisis that is nowhere close to being resolved.
History of the crisis | Housing Crisis
In 1946: a period of poor home-building output during the Great Depression (1929-1945) was followed by a demographic boom of youthful first-time home purchasers returning from the war leading to a housing crisis. The fundamental causes of the housing shortfall include a lack of land, lending, labor, and materials since the 2008 financial crisis.
Fewer options – More cost
We have constructed less than 10,000,000 houses each year in recent years (2010-2018), less than half of the peak required for millennials, the most significant demographic in history, who are now entering the first-time home purchasing market and are underserved.
Availability of fewer houses | Housing Crisis
Lack of land to build houses or availability of homes can be explained as rising prices, a scarcity of construction labor, and decreased population mobilization. As a result, just America is 7.7 million low-income housing units short of where it needs to be.
No more ‘cheap’ dwellings
Over the last three decades, 2.5 million low-income flats have become luxury condos, hotels, or offices. From 2010 to 2017, prices in disadvantaged urban districts climbed 50% faster than in wealthy communities, forcing inhabitants to live on a check-to-check basis or relocate.
Solutions – Past and Present | Housing Crisis
Various prominent architects or large firms, such as Charles Correa, BV Doshi, and the BIG group, have worked or are actively working on solving housing demands. The previous typologies concentrated on new technology for building faster, but times have changed, and land is a finite resource. Now, affordable housing requires urban planning and densification as the land and construction rates are much higher.
Post WW – 2
In 1942, private developer William Levitt created Levittown, which significantly transformed housing and placed us on a path to satisfy the need for low-income housing. He altered how we built houses by concentrating on four critical areas: smaller dwellings, efficient construction, mass production of units, and government-backed mortgage financing. The suburb is applauded for fulfilling the American dream of home ownership but criticized for its monotony.
Habitat – 67 ( 50 years ago) | Housing Crisis
Moshe Safdie’s groundbreaking design of Habitat 67 in Montreal has been celebrated for 50 years. This creative cheap housing structure, the architect’s debut project, redefined how metropolitan apartment complexes can be smaller and have a distinct social environment. Safdie envisioned the idea as an alternative to suburban living, which he believed wasted space and resources, and urban high-rise dwelling, which lacked adequate privacy, light, and vegetation. The groundbreaking project humanized massive housing buildings and inspired a new public domain construction method.
High Rise – Via Verde
Grimshaw’s tiered 222-unit affordable housing development in the South Bronx achieved LEED Gold certification while exceeding the NYSERDA Multifamily Performance Program and Enterprise Green Communities criteria for environmental responsibility. A display in the main lobby displays real-time energy statistics, such as solar panel outputs. At the same time, a 6,000-square-foot ground-level courtyard spirals upwards to create a boardwalk of communal areas and 34,000 sq ft of rooftop gardens that offer vibrant greenery, reduce stormwater run-off, and improve building insulation. It builds upon Safdie’s work, increasing but ensuring that quality and community spaces are created. All these examples set a precedent that affordable housing does not mean housing for the poor or a compromised design and structure.
The Future | Housing Crisis
We know from experience that modularity aids in crisis resolution. Thus, innovative approaches such as prefabrication, factory building, and on-site assembly are here to stay. At the same time, individuals want to personalize their surroundings, and a home should feel like one. Ikea, the Swedish furniture firm, is already planning to build such modular homes in the United Kingdom.
Land densification is another essential factor since it allows many people to live close to city centers, lowering transport costs and making it more affordable. It will lead to multiple high rises in the city centers and transit-oriented development in urban planning.
References:
- Charles, A., 2019. 10 ways cities are tackling the global affordable housing crisis. World Economic Forum. Available at: <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/10-ways-cities-are-tackling-the-global-affordable-housing-crisis/> [Accessed 3 October 2022].
- Breach, A., 2019. Can Tokyo show us how to solve Britain’s housing shortage? – Centre for Cities. [online] Centre for Cities. Available at: <https://www.centreforcities.org/blog/can-tokyo-show-us-how-to-solve-britains-housing-shortage/> [Accessed 3 October 2022].
- Masterson, V., 2022. What has caused the global housing crisis – and how can we fix it?. [online] World Economic Forum. Available at: <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/how-to-fix-global-housing-crisis/> [Accessed 3 October 2022].
