THE WINSTON CHURCHILL MEMORIAL TRUST OF AUSTRALIA

Report by RACHAEL BERNSTONE – 2003 CHURCHILL FELLOW

THE AV JENNINGS FELLOWSHIP to study sustainable and affordable housing. I understand that the Churchill Trust may publish this report, either in hard copy or on the internet or both, and consent to such publication. I indemnify the Churchill Trust against any loss, costs or damages it may suffer arising out of any claim or proceedings made against the Trust in respect of or arising out of the publication of the report submitted to the Trust and which the Trust places on a website for access over the Internet. I also warrant that my Final Report is original and does not infringe the copyright of any person, or contain anything which is, or the incorporation of which into the Final Report is, actionable for defamataion, a breach of any privacy law or obligation, breach of confidence, contempt or court, passing off or contravention of any other private right or of any law. Signed: Dated:

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Index

Introduction 3

Executive Summary 4

Fellowship Objectives 4

Fellowship Highlights 4

Key Findings and Recommendations 4

Program 6

Main findings 8 1. The United Kingdom 8

1.1 Key players in affordable housing 8 1.2 Issues and challenges 9 1.3 Policies and strategies 10 1.4 Projects and Programmes 13

2. Finland 39 2.1 Key players in affordable housing 39 2.2 Issues and challenges 39 2.3 Policies and Strategies 41 2.4 Projects 45

3. Sweden 49 3.1 Policies and Strategies 49 3.2 Projects 49

4. USA 62 4.1 Key players in affordable housing 62 4.2 Issues and challenges 63 4.3 Policies and strategies 66 4.4 Projects 69

Conclusions 79

Recommendations 80

Appendices 82

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Introduction Undertaking the 2003 AV Jennings Churchill Fellowship enabled me to investigate the latest policies and practices in the fields of affordable and sustainable housing in the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden and the United States of America. I arranged meetings with representatives of federal, state and local government representatives, architects and planners involved in the design process; and members of the development and construction professions. Topics of discussion included:

• policies and strategies; • current approaches to design, and • advances and innovations in construction techniques

for the provision of affordable and sustainable housing. In addition, I was able to view and experience many first class examples of affordable, sustainable, and affordable-sustainable housing. I hope that my findings and recommendations might prove useful in considering and tackling specific housing problems and challenges in Australia, such as: • Procuring new sources of funding, both public and private, for the provision of new

public housing, • Upgrading existing public housing stock, to enhance social, economic and

environmental sustainability outcomes; • Providing affordable housing for “key” employees, or low to moderate income

earners, in areas where market rate housing is often out of reach; and • Developing and implementing cost effective and sustainable construction methods

for the provision of new public and market rate housing • Improving environmental performance of all housing types, from public through to

premium market rate. I am grateful to both the Churchill Trust and AV Jennings for their financial assistance: the trip was extremely satisfying and would not have been possible without their support. I would also like to acknowledge my employer, Simon Grover at The Intermedia Group, who supported my ambition to carry out research overseas for the benefit of the Australian housing industry, as well as my own professional development. I also received considerable support from generous industry colleagues before I departed, who provided references and contacts that were extremely useful in my application and initial research. All of the people I met with during the course of the Fellowship were extremely generous with their time and knowledge, and I would like to thank them for their contribution and for sharing their experiences with me. Lastly, the support of my family and friends has been extremely valuable, and I am grateful for their encouragement throughout the entire process.

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Executive Summary Rachael Bernstone Editor, Building Australia Magazine PO Box 55 Glebe 2037 NSW T: 02 8586 6118 E: Rachael@Intermedia.com.au Fellowship Objectives To study sustainable and affordable housing initiatives that aim to assist welfare dependent or low- and middle-income residents, with emphasis on environmental initiatives, in the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden and the United States of America. Fellowship Highlights Without exception, everyone I met in the course of the trip was extremely generous with their time, knowledge and access to information. I visited more than 20 individual projects, some of which were strong in their approach to environmental design and construction issues, while others placed more emphasis on affordability. Some of the projects were equally strong on both aspects, and they were therefore the highlights of the trip. They included: • London’s Greenwich Peninsula, where English Partnerships, Meridian Delta, the

London Borough of Greenwich and architects Erskine and Tovatt, Proctor and Matthews and EPR are all dedicated to delivering some of the most exciting affordable and sustainable housing projects in the UK;

• The Peabody Trust’s Murray Grove and Raines Dairy affordable housing projects in London, which have demonstrated that modular housing can combine environmentally friendly construction, affordability, and aesthetic appeal, as well as reducing waste and defects, speeding construction, enhancing the construction working environment, and finally, resulting in places to live that are of higher quality and more affordable than traditional solutions;

• The Viikki Ecological Neighbourhood in Helsinki, Finland – an experiment in green building that is resulting in appealing and environmentally friendly places for people to live, work and study;

• The Highlands’ Garden Village in Denver, Colorado – where new urbanist principles of design have resulted in a genuine mixed use, mixed tenure community of more than 300 homes. It combines environmental building with historic preservation with urban infill and all within 10 minutes of Downtown Denver – truly the most impressive development I saw on the trip; and lastly,

• Colorado Court, in Santa Monica, California – a demonstration green affordable housing project that generates its own energy and is designed to maximise occupier comfort

Key Findings and Recommendations The most advanced sustainable and affordable housing projects I saw while travelling are fundamentally driven by governments that strongly believe in the importance of environmentally sensitive planning and building, and the provision of housing for all. The countries with the best green building regulations and intentions are committed to the

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targets set for them in the Kyoto Protocol, and are actively attempting to achieve them through a combination of regulation and incentives. From my observations, it is possible to create successful sustainable communities through planning and design, by integrating housing with opportunities for employment, education, transport, health and culture. Many communities I visited hoped to foster diversity and understanding among their residents, through the provision of similarly high quality housing for various income and tenure types. Although I had hoped to find that developers overseas had found a way to include green technologies, such as water recycling and reuse systems and photo voltaic energy solutions, in new housing projects with little or no extra cost, I discovered that this has not been the case in most instances. Where green technologies have been incorporated into new projects, developers work hard to educate consumers about the benefits of paying more upfront to reap savings over the course of the tenure there. This means that rather than moving towards a scenario where green technologies are seen to be priced competitively with traditional non-green solutions, there is a growing realisation that it is no longer adequate to consider pure economic outcomes, and that social and environmental factors are gaining more importance, so that a shift towards real triple bottom line reporting is occurring in some places. I have already reported on several key areas from my trip in Building Australia magazine, with articles on three key European sustainable cities projects (Greenwich, Malmö and Viikki) and a Greenbuild conference wrap-up appearing in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue. The March 2004 issue features material from the Fellowship, with a report on modular and prefabricated buildings. I intend to cover other topics such as Affordable Housing throughout the year. I am also planning to present my findings in person to architecture and engineering firms, industry organisations and university students as appropriate throughout 2004.

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Program London and York, United Kingdom: 29 September to 17 October 2003 • Allford Hall Monaghan Morris – Raines Dairy public housing, Hackney • Bill Dunster Architects – BedZed environmentally sensitive housing, Sutton • Cartwright Pickard Architects – Murray Grove public housing, Hackney • Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment – Architecture and housing

policies • English Partnerships – Greenwich Peninsula redevelopment • EPR Architects – Greenwich Millennium Village design and construction • Greater London Authority – Draft London Plan and housing policies • Housing Corporation – public housing funding and policies • Hyde Housing Association – New affordable and public housing • London Borough of Greenwich – local government perspective on the Greenwich

Peninsula redevelopment • London Borough of Islington – Public and affordable housing policy and provision • Meridian Delta Limited – Greenwich Peninsula redevelopment • Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – Government’s public housing finance and policies • Peabody Trust – New public and affordable housing • Proctor and Matthews Architects – Greenwich Millennium Village design and

construction • Yorkon – Modular and prefabricated housing construction • Piercy Conner Architects – the Microflat project – affordable housing for first home

buyers Helsinki, Finland: 20 to 24 October, 2003 • City Planning Department – Viikki Ecological Neighbourhood • Housing Fund of Finland – Public housing funding and policies • Ministry of the Environment – Public housing funding and policies Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden: 27 to 31 October 2003 • City of Malmö – Bo01 City of Tomorrow housing exhibition • BoKlok – modular affordable housing from Ikea and Skanska • Erskine Tovatt Architecture – Masterplan and housing design at London’s Greenwich

Millennium Village New York, NY, USA: 3 to 10 November, 2003 • Lower Manhattan Development Corporation – public housing policies following the

September 11 terrorist attacks • GF55 Architects – new public housing projects in Manhattan • Stephen Tilley Architecture – sustainable and affordable housing in Irvington, NY • Housing Development Corporation – public housing funding and policies for NY City • Housing Preservation and Development –public housing funding and regeneration for

NY City • Housing Finance Authority – public housing funding and policies for NY State • State of New York Mortgage Agency – low cost mortgages for low- to moderate-income

first home buyers • NYSAFAH – New York State Association for Affordable Housing

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Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA – 11 to 14 November 2003 • Greenbuild Conference and Expo, hosted by the US Green Building Council Denver, Aspen, Basalt and Snowmass, Colorado, USA: 17 to 21 November 2003 • Perry Rose LLC – Highland Gardens market rate and affordable housing, Denver • Cottle Graybeal Yaw Architects – Employee housing design and construction for Aspen • Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Office – Employee housing funding and policies for

Aspen • Rocky Mountain Institute – Sustainable housing research and development • Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHAFA) – public housing funding and

policies for Colorado Portland, Oregon, USA: 24 to 27 November 2003 • City of Portland – public housing funding and policies • Portland Development Commission – market rate and public housing development • City of Portland – Office of Sustainable Development – Green Building Division – green

building resources for residential and commercial applications • Gerding/Edlen Development Company – Brewery Blocks adaptive reuse project • Shiels Obletz Johnsen – Museum Place market rate and affordable housing project • SERA Architects – Public housing design • ROSE Community Development Corporation – affordable housing development and

management Los Angeles, California, USA: 1 to 4 December 2003 • Global Green USA – thinktank for greening affordable housing • Community Corporation of Santa Monica – provision of new affordable housing • Pugh+Scarpa Architects – Colorado Court sustainable and affordable housing • Koning Eizenberg Architects – 5th Street sustainable and affordable housing

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Main findings This Fellowship focussed on two key sub-sections of the housing market - sustainability and affordability – and in the main, the people I met with operated in only one of those sectors, although there were several instances where both aspects were given equal weight. Each of the four countries I visited used different methods for the delivery affordable housing, and each featured different levels of regulation for sustainability outcomes. In an attempt to simplify the presentation of my findings, I have chosen to first divide them by country. Within each country, I have provided details about:

a) the policies and strategies that underpin the delivery of affordable and sustainable housing (as developed by government, housing and construction industry organisations, and non-profit and for-profit developers); and

b) the individual projects and programmes that have resulted from their implementation. Each of these outlines provides a summary of the lessons from the individual projects.

In the Conclusion and Recommendations, I have attempted to summarise the findings from the entire trip, and draw out some salient points that are most relevant for consideration and possible application in Australia.

1. The United Kingdom

1.1 Key players in affordable housing The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, announced a new government housing strategy in February 2002. Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future was designed to tackle problems associated with housing shortages in some areas and low demand and abandonment in others. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) oversees the allocation of government funding for construction of new affordable housing, via a non-departmental public body, the Housing Corporation. The Housing Corporation funds and regulates Housing Associations or Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) that build, own and operate affordable housing in England (similar bodies exist in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). During the financial year 2003/04, the Housing Corporation planned to grant about ₤1.5 billion in funds under the Approved Development Program, for the construction of approximately 22,000 new affordable homes throughout England. In the capital, the Greater London Authority (GLA) acts as a strategic planning authority and co-ordinates the activities of local government entities, the London Boroughs. The GLA (established in 2001 to replace the defunct Greater London Council), developed a Draft London Plan under the direction of Mayor Ken Livingstone. The GLA has no direct jurisdiction for housing, except for developments at significant sites where more than 200 units are planned, although its mandate includes a “general duty to promote social, economic and environmental issues of importance to Londoners”, according to Chris Jarvis, a Senior Policy Advisor in the GLA’s Housing and Homelessness Unit. Public or affordable housing is owned by local authorities, comprising 32 London Boroughs and the Corporation of London, Housing Associations such as the Peabody

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Trust and Hyde Housing, and other entities. The London Boroughs administer applications and allocations of affordable housing, according to income and asset criteria and need. They also have responsibility for planning and housing approvals for new dwellings, and can impose affordable housing criteria on private housing developers such as Greenwich Millennium Village Corporation and Meridian Delta Limited through the planning approvals process. English Partnerships is the national government’s agency charged with sustainable urban renewal and regeneration. It oversees the Millennium Communities program that aims to improve sustainability in design and construction; it oversees the 10-year £365 million National Coalfields Programme, which is helping to create more than 40,000 new jobs, more than 6,500 new homes and 2m square metres of commercial and industrial accommodation; and it facilitates the establishment of Urban Regeneration Companies, which bring together local partners to champion and stimulate new investment and plans for regeneration and redevelopment, currently operating in 14 locations throughout the country. The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) is an Executive non-departmental public body, funded by the ODPM and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Key aims include: regenerating places suffering from economic and social decline by restoring community identity and civic pride and attracting investors and visitors; delivering better public services through a direct impact on the quality of healthcare, education and welfare services; promoting value for money by reducing the lifetime costs of buildings and improving their performance; assisting in the reduction of crime and anti-social behaviour by creating places that foster community ownership and eliminate physical opportunities for vandalism, violence and theft; and promoting more environmentally friendly ways of living.

1.2 Issues and challenges Current housing demand According to the ODPM, published projections for household growth suggest that 155,000 additional dwellings will be needed each year in the UK. Across the country, new house building has fallen steadily from a peak of 350,000 annually in the late 1960s to less than 140,000 now. The net figure, taking account of demolitions and conversions, is closer to 120,000, insufficient to meet new demand let alone replace ageing housing stock. Nationally, about 70% of households are owner-occupied, up from 50% about 30 years ago, although this figure is lower in the capital, where only about 50% of homes are owner-occupied. Surveys suggest that up to 90% of people would prefer to own their own homes if possible. In London, the Housing Commission estimates that 25,700 new affordable homes will be required each, to meet anticipated population growth levels, and solve current shortages over a period of ten years, the timeframe set by the Mayor to deal with the current affordable housing crisis. This annual total comprises 11,200 homes for applicants currently waiting for permanent affordable housing; 5,000 new social rental homes to absorb population growth; 2,000 new social rental homes to replace those lost through right to buy schemes; 2,500 new social rental homes to meet new demand as a result of affordability issues, and 5,000 new

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intermediate homes for low to moderate income households. In addition, 15,700 market rate homes will be required each year to account for population growth. Current housing stock In April 2002, there were 3.13 million homes in London, 2.31 million of those in the private sector (74%) and 816,700 publicly owned (26%). The majority of public housing is owned by local authorities, (512,766 units, or 16.4% of total housing stock), while Housing Associations own 291,910 units (9.4% of the total), leaving 12,024 units (0.4%) in ‘other’ hands. Since 1981, approximately 175,000 units of public housing have been lost, mainly as a result of Right to Buy Sales. New housing supply According to GLA’s Housing in London 2003 report [Table 1.2], the volume of new home construction has dropped significantly in the last decade, despite increased demand for housing in the capital. In 1991/92, 17,077 new homes were completed in London (13,357 by the private sector; 3,140 by Housing Associations; and 580 by local authorities), while in 2001/02. the number of new homes completed had fallen to 14,170 (10,324 by the private sector; 3,794 by Housing Associations; and 52 by local authorities).

1.3 Policies and strategies Office of the Deputy Prime Minister The ODPM oversees the government’s Sustainable Communities strategy, which boasts a new regional approach housing policy and a budget of £22billion over three years (2003/04 to 2005/06). It aims to provide more new homes in areas of strong economic and population growth (such as London and the South East), and tackle issues of abandonment and decay in the areas that are currently in decline (such as much of the north of England). It also aims to support people in their aspirations for home ownership. More than £5 billion has been allocated to the regeneration of deprived areas; while £350m will be allocated to speeding up planning systems. A further £5b has been earmarked for more affordable homes, including at least £1bn for key worker housing. The plan will concentrate future growth in four regions nominated in a review of new housing demand completed in 2000: the Thames Gateway in London, Milton Keynes and the South Midlands, Ashford in Kent and the London - Stansted – Cambridge corridor. More than £600m has been allocated to the development of these growth areas. The Sustainable Communities strategy also incorporates the Millennium Communities program which aims to showcase advances in construction sustainability, by reducing construction waste, implementing new construction techniques, reducing workplace accidents, increasing energy efficiency in new buildings, re-using water and demonstrating re-cycling of waste. The government hopes to extrapolate the lessons from the Millennium Communities program to all new construction in the UK. So far, seven neighbourhoods have been selected, including Greenwich (London), Allerton Bywater (near Leeds), New Islington (East Manchester), Nar Ouse (King's Lynn), East Ketley (Telford), Oakgrove (Milton Keynes) and Hastings.

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According to Sue Beaumont, a senior policy advisor at the ODPM, developers were cautious about the first implementation at Greenwich, but the experience there “changed ideas about what can be done”. “Initially the developers that were willing to become involved were small, and the others were wary,” Ms Beaumont said. “That had changed by the time we started implementation at Telford, where 19 out of the top 20 national builders submitted bids. There’s an acceptance now that developers and builders have to be in this game.” Also within the Sustainable Communities strategy, the government intends to overcome some of the difficulties of the current planning system. “Developers tend to buy up land and then sit on it, because the planning systems are too slow, and local authorities have too much control,” she explained. A review of the planning system aims to shift from a “predict and provide” approach to a system of "plan, monitor and manage". A new Planning Bill will introduce a simplified and streamlined planning system and bring greater focus to regional planning through the introduction of Regional Spatial Strategies. Gillian Verrall, a Key Worker Policy Advisor in the Affordable Housing Division at the ODPM, said that the organisation was considering expanding the pool of eligible affordable housing developers to enable private developers to compete with Housing Associations and Registered Social Landlords. That proposal has since been incorporated into policy, through its inclusion in the government’s new Housing Bill, submitted to Parliament in December 2003. A joint venture between government agencies English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation is developing a register of disused or underutilised public land in the hope of maximising funding and speeding the delivery of new affordable homes. It will consider converting surplus office space into housing, making use of space above shops and regeneration of brownfield sites, and aims to forge new relationships with volume house builders and institutional investors. Also in 2003, the UK government initiated two major inquiries into housing. The Home Ownership Task Force included 20 representatives from national and local government, universities, private lending institutions and home builders. It was convened in February 2003 with a mandate to investigate the range of programmes available to help people into home ownership. The group’s final report, released in November, made 45 recommendations in six main areas. These included increasing the supply of affordable housing; implementing a new and simplified framework for low-cost home ownership programs including discounts, equity loans and shared ownership; and providing better information and advice to potential applicants. The report’s executive summary, A Home of My Own, can be downloaded from the Housing Corporation website. Deputy PM John Prescott has already incorporated some of the recommendations into a new Housing Bill, which was submitted to Parliament in December 2003, while others will be considered in 2004. The Barker Review was commissioned by the Treasury in the 2003 Budget, and aimed to determine reasons for a lack of housing supply and weak responsiveness to the housing

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shortage in the UK. It examined the roles of competition, capacity and financing in the house building industry; and the interaction of those factors with the planning system and sustainable development objectives. In her interim report, Kate Barker, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, reported that the supply of new homes in the UK was not keeping pace with demand: only 175,000 houses were built in 2001 – the lowest level since the Second World War – and Barker suggested that another 39,000 new homes would be needed each year to keep up with population growth. As a result of the shortage, housing affordability had suffered, Barker said. A London house that cost around four times the annual income of a low income household in 1993 would cost nearly eight times the same income level by 2002. The Review identified land supply as the main constraint, and suggested that the housebuilding industry contributed to the problem through its response to risk, which leads to a reluctance to build out large sites quickly. The interim report also found that the planning issues, such as the regulatory relationship and control over the use of land, influenced the way land was made available for development. The Review will publish its final report with recommendations for government in the second quarter of 2004. Greater London Authority and the Mayor of London In the Draft London Plan, the Mayor has proposed minimum delivery levels for affordable housing as a proportion of all new home building across the capital: in 19 London boroughs, the target has been set at 50%, while in the remaining 13 boroughs it has been set at 35%. Adoption of the targets would require a public subsidy of between £500 and £600 million for about 10,000 new dwellings per year (for a total of 130,000 dwellings between 2004-16). In 2002/03, the Housing Corporation’s budget for construction of new affordable housing in London was £338 million, so the Mayor plans to put a case to the national Government to increase funding for affordable housing under this proposal. At the same time, the Mayor is working with the Housing Corporation, London Boroughs, housing associations and private developers, to find ways to make more effective use of private and public investment, and to maximise the number of affordable homes delivered through the planning process. The Mayor anticipates that about three quarters of the proposed new affordable homes would be provided on mixed tenure sites, with the remainder on stand alone sites. About 70% of the new properties would be provided as social rental housing, while 30% would be intermediate housing for low to moderate income earners, for sale or rent. The Mayor also hopes to work with local authorities to ensure that where potential development sites are already publicly owned, they are developed to ensure a high proportion of affordable housing instead of simply ensuring the highest financial return through their sale into private hands. The DLP was due to be finalised in December 2003, with supplementary planning guidelines due for release to assist in its implementation by the spring of 2004. If and when

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it is adopted by the London Boroughs in 2004, each will need to ensure that its development guidelines conform with the London Plan to enable its implementation. According to Chris Jarvis of the GLA’s Housing and Homelessness Unit, adoption of the plan would drive the push towards greater housing affordability from the supply side of the equation, thereby eliminating some of the uncertainty inherent in the current planning system. “At the moment, there is a degree of uncertainty for planners in terms of affordability: until they go to the London Borough, and negotiate a Section 106 Agreement, they don’t know what is required,” he said. He added that the GLA was also trying to convince planning authorities to release land that is currently zoned for employment uses to make it available for housing uses. “The GLA’s priority is to make use of every opportunity to provide as much housing as possible and to ensure that it is as affordable as possible,” he explained. To this end, two recent studies have demonstrated the potential for building over existing single-storey developments. The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions commissioned a study into airspace development potential above single storey uses, such as food stores and petrol stations, which concluded that an extra 25,000 units could be provided over 15 years6. The second study, commissioned by supermarket chain Tesco's, investigated housing and regeneration potential in mixed-use developments on existing retail sites, and estimated that an at least 10,000 dwellings could be provided.

1.4 Projects and Programmes Keep London Working research The London Development Agency, through its Single Regeneration Budget, has funded research into the need for housing for London workers. The Keep London Working (KLW) research board comprises employers, housing providers, developers, local authorities and lobby groups, and its main purpose is to clarify the contribution that affordable housing can make to the recruitment and retention of key workers in London and identify ways of procuring it, without grants if possible. KLW has also developed and leased 175 flats and houses in the intermediate housing market to test new solutions. KLW defines key workers according to their industries, which are geographically specific, frequently constrained in wage bargaining, generally labour and skills intensive, and essential to the maintenance and growth of the capital. This includes workers in health, education, transport and law enforcement sectors, although the research has concentrated on teachers, nurses and bus-workers as being representative of most key workers in London. KLW concluded that there were more than 670,000 key workers in London, and that more than 500,000 of them earned less than £30,000 per year. It found that more than a third of nurses and teachers working in the capital would be look for a new job in 2004, and that 50% of those job-seekers were planning to leave London. They cited housing costs and other housing issues as their main cause for wanting to leave, while other reasons included low pay, inadequate pay differentials and difficult working conditions. Although the research conceded that the current housing crises among key workers was partly cyclical (resulting from strong economic conditions and booming housing costs), it

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argued that underlying structural factors were also partly to blame, and that the problem was unlikely to disappear of its own accord. The research suggested that intermediate housing solutions for key workers should be” • affordable: rent should be related to key workers’ incomes rather than discounted

market rates, at levels that are at least 25% cheaper than equivalent private sector furnished accommodation;

• available: key workers should wait less than a year for accommodation; • located no more than three-quarters of an hour door to door from a workplace, ideally

along the route of affordable, reliable and safe public transport; • self-contained: predominantly studios, one and two bedroom flats; and • well-managed for people at work during working hours, and positioned to reflect the

key worker’s circumstances within the housing cycle. KLW also argued that employers should contribute towards making housing more affordable for workers, either immediately in the form of land or rental guarantees, or as the effects of a lower turnover of staff create savings. The report recommended a number of strategies, including providing access to discounted land or property; equity interest in the property; loans to workers; rent subsidies; interest free loans or nomination agreements. KLW does not advocate the diversion of housing related resources away from people in acute need, such as homeless people, and those living in temporary accommodation or overcrowded conditions. Rather it argues that support for key workers should be in addition to social housing, not act as a replacement for it. The Starter Home Initiative In 2001, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister launched the Starter Home Initiative, a £250 million program that aimed to assist 10,000 key workers, (primarily nurses, teachers and police), into home ownership in London and the south east of England where high housing prices were seen to be undermining recruitment and retention of staff. In 2002, the scheme was extended to assist social workers, care workers, fire fighters, transport workers, occupational therapists, and in July 2003, prison and probation staff were added to the list of eligible occupations. The program was administered by the Housing Commission, which allocated funds to housing associations for distribution to eligible key workers. Assistance was in the form of equity loans, interest free loans and shared ownership arrangements, and the type and value of assistance varied according to which housing association administered the scheme, which was administered according to workplace location. The Peabody Trust’s SHI scheme was an equity loan program called First Step, for workers in the London Boroughs of Hackney and Haringey, Kensington and Chelsea and Newham. According to the scheme’s manager, Lucy Chitty, the Trust has received enquiries from 2,000 applicants, and assisted in the purchase of 238 units by October 2004, with five months of the left to run. By October, the Trust had allocated £7.6 million in equity loans: £5.7 m granted by the Housing Corporation and £1.8m from its own funds. When the loans are repaid, the funds will be returned to Peabody’s recycled capital grant fund for three years, before being moved back to general revenue if they are not reused.

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Initially the Peabody targeted 100 health workers, in collaboration with the National Health Service’s housing office. That quota was quickly fulfilled, and the Trust applied for more funding for NHS admin staff and junior doctors, and then for teachers, fire fighters and police, as the ODPM’s criteria expanded. Applicants had to demonstrate that they were unable to buy a home without SHI assistance, and that they were capable of sustaining home ownership. The equity loan is issued as a proportion of the property price, and is repaid to Peabody Trust when the property is sold, with capital gains. Initially, Peabody set its loan limits as a percentage of the purchase price (with a maximum of 35%), but as property prices increased over the course of the programme, it became clear that the Trust would not meet its target number of applicants if that level continued, so a cap of £50,000 was imposed for each application. Chitty said that initially the Trust ran marketing campaigns to alert the target groups to the opportunity of the First Step scheme, including running opening days at hospitals, inserting notes in payslip notes, and advertising in local and trade publications. Once an applicant came forward, their situation, savings and aspirations were reviewed. Some applicants had £2,000-5,000 in savings, and some had loans from parents or other relatives of a few thousand pounds, others had no savings at all. In most cases, Chitty said, the Trust was able to assist single people into one bedroom flats, and couples or single parents into two bedroom flats. However, she said that in determining the mortgage, and therefore equity loan amount, the both the applicant and the Trust needed to be flexible in terms of the preferred unit size and location. “We needed to ensure that we gave them sufficient funding to live near their mother in law, or for kids to get to school, where those things applied,” she said. Some people have criticised the Starter Home Initiative as a scheme that addresses the supply side of the housing shortage, rather than the demand side. The GLA’s Chris Jarvis said that housing solutions in London “needed to increase supply, not fuel demand”. He believes that the SHI “gives money to a lucky few [key workers] to go out and bid and push [housing] prices higher” Chitty countered this view, and said that in some cases, the fact that applicants were recipients of a government grant did not work in their favour. “Also, the market is so high at the moment, that most people are just about scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of the properties they can afford, even with First Steps,” she said. “They are tending to buy flats in the cheaper boroughs, or places that need work to be comfortable,” As part of its First Steps programme, the Trust offered to put its applicants in touch with respected and economical solicitors and financial advisors, to ensure that people were making commitments they could afford and were comfortable with. Chitty said that one downside of the scheme was that it was only open to British or European Union residents, but that the NHS employed a significant number of African staff and foreign nurses who could not be assisted. According to Gillian Verrall, from the ODPM, the scheme will not be continued in its present form after the cut-off date in March 2004. She said that lessons included the fact that there were too many parties administering the scheme, making it difficult for Key Workers to access information and navigate the rules.

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She also spoke of the risk that the Starter Home Initiative would inflate property prices by enabling people to buy homes in the open market. Key Worker definitions had also been contentious, with the ODPM adding new categories to the initial three professions in response to criticism from excluded groups. Ms Verrall said that the ODPM had not yet determined the professions that would be included in any future scheme, although it was likely that the list would include any health worker, state school teachers, police and police administrators, with a focus on London, the South East and the London to Cambridge corridor. Ms Verrall said that a further problem of the first SHI scheme was the fact that it addressed issues of recruitment but didn’t tackle staff retention issues as well, because it was aimed at first home buyers, not potential family home buyers. “Any future scheme should therefore enable people to trade up and purchase family homes,” she said. “Also, we need to look at provisions for social rental at an Intermediate level, because not all Key Workers want to buy homes. For example, we might assist overseas nurses on a four year contract with rental housing. Ms Verrall added that the ODPM was consulting with public sector employers via other government departments, such as the department of health, the Home Office for law enforcement employees, and the department of education and skills, in an attempt to obtain their financial contribution to future schemes. Modular construction for affordable housing projects The UK’s largest builder of portable and prefabricated buildings has made a successful transition into the affordable housing market in recent years, with projects in London, York and Manchester. Yorkon now boasts a dedicated production line for residential projects at its 60 acre factory facility in York, where it also prefabricates buildings for supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and temporary office accommodation. The company’s first room modules, which consisted of two rooms on either side of a 1.2m wide corridor, were developed for hotel clients such as Jarvis, Forte and Hilton. Yorkon’s Commercial Team Manager, Peter Browne, said that the company aimed to complete as much construction as possible in the factory. “That way we can control the cost, quality and the program in York,” he said, “leaving only the site connection and cladding to onsite contractors.” The steel framed modules, with columns on each corner and two or three intermediate columns on the longer sides, are built to a tolerance of 3.5mm, and can be stacked up to six floors high. Under the floor, they feature elastomeric bearing blocks to transfer the load and reduce vibrations between units. Internally, every flat is fully finished at the factory, from the plumbing and fixtures and fittings, to floor coverings, painting and decorating. The completed units are stacked in the factory yard prior to being transported to their intended location on a trailer, and then lifted onto the site by a crane. Services to each room are connected by Yorkon tradespeople via a service riser panel situated in the central hallway, thereby negating the need to re-enter the rooms themselves. Prior to transport, the modules are clad with aluminium, so that final facades can be fitted onsite according to the client or designer’s specification.

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Mr Browne said that it was rare for the units to be damaged in transit. “There is no movement at all in the fixed frame,” he explained. “Occasionally we get a hairline crack between the wall and the ceiling in some modules, but that only happens in 2% of cases, and it can be decorated on the site.” At its headquarters in York, the company employs nearly 900 people, including qualified tradespeople such as electricians, M&E specialists and decorators, and non skilled labourers, who work across the Portakabin and Yorkon business. Office based employees work in design, engineering, sales, marketing and administration roles. Only a few finishing trades, such as tiling and floorcoverings, are carried out by local subcontractors. Once the individual components are completed and internally fitted out at the factory, they are stored in the yard prior to delivery. The main contractor prepares the site and builds the access decks, before up to nine completed modules are landed at the site each day. A team of Yorkon employees then joins the modules together, weatherproofs the buildings, connects the services, and clads the modules before occupation. Depending on the size of the job, the whole process can take less than six months. According to Mr Browne, the company has no problems attracting and retaining staff, particularly tradespeople who appreciate the relative comfort of working in a factory as opposed to working on outdoor building sites. “We also train apprentices here: we’ve taken on six in the last year, mainly in joinery and Mechanical and Engineering positions,” he said. “It’s very easy to attract people to work here, not just in the factory line but also in the office: when we advertise a vacancy it’s a job to sort through them.” The company is currently working on a 102 unit proposal for a Manchester-based housing association, where each module measures 9.3 x 4m and comprises a separate flat. Mr Browne is confident that the commissions will continue to roll in, particularly following the success of Murray Grove in London’s Hackney. “We are working with partners, and we know what schemes they have on the drawing board at the moment, and they know which ones they plan to go modular with,” he said. “We have direct contacts with both housing associations and architects, and don’t tend to do any direct marketing. We actually have more enquiries than we could cope with building, but the difficulty is in translating the right types of enquiries.” The buildings comply with local building codes throughout the country via the company’s partnership with the York Building Commission, and certification from the national code co-ordinator, LANTAC (Local Authority National Type Approval Confederation). Mr Browne said that the major benefit of building in the factory was the ability to “repeat, repeat, repeat”. “That’s not to say that we can’t do a few different modules in one schedule,” he said. “For example, at Raines Dairy, we produced 61 flats, and there were 24 flat types, including one, two and three bedroom units, all with different permutations according to party walls and external walls.”

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Case Studies Project: Greenwich Peninsula Location: Greenwich, East London Client: English Partnerships Developer: Meridian Delta Limited (jv partners Lend Lease and Quintain

Estates) Architect: Masterplan by Richard Rogers Partnership Individual parcels to be undertaken by Builder: subject to public tender Cost: £4.5 billion total investment Commencement date: 1997 – Infrastructure 2004 or 2005 – Residential and commercial development Completion date: 2020 Financing type: Private investment and Housing Association No of units: n/a Unit type/s: 6 – 20 floor apartment towers and townhouses Potential occupants: Owner occupiers, private rental tenants, shared ownership for

key workers, public rental tenants Construction method: tba What makes this project interesting? Greenwich Peninsula is Europe’s largest urban renewal project: it aims to provide a sustainable community for 20,000 residents and 24,000 workers by 2020.

Figure 1 - The Richard Rogers' Masterplan for the Greenwich Peninsula blends homes, roads,

services, shops, transport and leisure facilities into a coherent, ecologically friendly whole.

For more than 150 years until the early 1990s, 70% of the Peninsula was occupied by a gasworks, earning the site the unfortunate title of “the most contaminated site in Europe”. In 1997, the government agency responsible for regeneration, English Partnerships, paid British Gas £20 million for 300 acres (121 hectares), before spending £180 million on remediation and the provision of infrastructure, services and landscaping. The government announced plans to extend the Jubilee Underground Line from Waterloo to Stratford prior to development plans being finalised, and construction commenced in 1995. As a result, the Peninsula boasts a state-of-the-art Tube and Bus interchange, designed by Will Alsop with additions by Foster and Partners, providing a 20 minute connection to the city and west end.

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English Partnerships commissioned architect Sir Richard Rogers to prepare the master plan for the Greenwich Peninsula, and outline planning proposal documents were submitted to the London Borough of Greenwich for approval in 1997. In 1998, the government convened an Urban Taskforce, chaired by Sir Richard Rogers, to identify the causes of urban decline in England, and offer practical recommendations to draw people back into cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods. From this process, Rogers produced a report, Towards and Urban Renaissance, which championed the redevelopment of brownfield sites with an emphasis on design excellences, social well being and environmental responsibility. Rogers’ Greenwich Peninsula master plan aimed to integrate homes, roads, services, shops, transport and leisure facilities into a coherent, ecologically friendly whole, while producing a showcase for British urban regeneration. In 1999, the first land parcels were offered to private developers. Partners Countrywide Properties and Taylor Woodrow acquired the site of the Greenwich Millennium Village (see case study below), where residents have moved into stage one, and construction is continuing on stage two, while stages three and four are in the final planning phase. On the south western part of the site, a new hotel sits alongside the country’s most environmentally advanced supermarket, a multiplex cinema and several home and lifestyle stores. The largest, and most contentious, portion of the site was sold in December 2001, when Meridian Delta Limited (MDL, a joint venture partnership between Lend Lease Europe and Quintain Estates & Development) acquired 190 acres at the northern end. MDL obtained approval from both Greenwich council and the Mayor of London for its development proposals in 2003. What lessons can be learned from this project? Although MDL has not yet finalised its housing designs, it does intend to “match the publicly announced standards of Greenwich Millennium Village” and has committed to achieving BREEAM’s Excellent rating, according to MDL’s Community Development Manager, Susie Wilson. “So we are currently developing environmental building codes for our third party developers,” she explained. “So far, we have defined the overall envelope for each building and resolved worse case scenarios in terms of shadowing, orientation and cross ventilation.” Within the MDL development, buildings along the river front will reach a maximum of 24 storeys, with six to eight floors the average height for interior structures. The delivery of affordable housing within the MDL scheme will exceed GMV’s, following the decision by the Mayor to impose a minimum of 38% on the project. Anna Ladyman, MDL’s real estate solutions expert, said that most of that would be offered as social rental housing to housing benefit recipients. “There will also be a smaller proportion offered as intermediate housing [as defined by salary and job type in the Draft London Plan] for residents who are economically active, but are struggling to get onto the housing ladder,” she said. “Further options will include discounted for sale homes, set at roughly 70% of market value, and other community housing, such as for students, or sheltered or nursing home accommodation.” Prior to MDL acquiring its development parcel, English Partnerships enforced stringent development briefs for the private sector addressing economic, social and environmental concerns, according to EP’s Greenwich Peninsula Marketing Manager, Catherine Snow.

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“These include minimising private car use in favour of public transport, providing local employment, ensuring good quality, strong design and encouraging innovation in construction.” she said. The focus on sustainability is a key aspect of MDL's approach too. According to Susie Wilson, MDL’s Community Development Manager, the company is addressing social and economic factors by working with local businesses and Greenwich council to “ensure employment for local people, thereby improving the skills base for sustainable careers”. “We are working with local colleges, such as Greenwich University, two Beacon [adult education] colleges and the London Leisure College, to provide training to help local people get jobs on the Peninsula,” Ms Wilson added. “In addition, we are working with local business owners in Greenwich, most of whom employ less than 10 people, to facilitate their expansion to the Peninsula as development occurs.” The focus on transport is expected to meet both environmental and social objectives. Millennium celebrations at the Dome set the tone for minimal car access: most visitors arrived by Tube or coach, with onsite parking reserved for disabled users. “MDL is challenging the role of the car, and is attempting to manage car use to the point where you won’t need one anymore,” said Lawrence Robertson, chief architect with the project. “Also, throughout the project, we have incorporated low emission zones, where entry will be controlled according to the age of each vehicle and the type of fuel it uses, as well as controlled parking zones and low car parking ratios, that will probably reduce over time from the current level of .7 spaces per residence,” Mr Robertson explained. While the new public transport interchange provides good links to central London and some neighbouring areas, connections to other parts of the borough are still problematic. “Even though it only takes 20 minutes to get here from Eltham by car, it takes 1 ½ hours by bus,” Ms Wilson said. “So we are working on improvements to accessibility across the borough through new and modified bus routes, we’re addressing signalling and frequency issues on the Jubilee Line extension in conjunction with Transport for London, and we’re collaborating on the provision of a new bridge across the river by 2016,” Mr Robertson added. Other environmental concerns have resulted in significant conservation and remediation, in addition to the initial rehabilitation. In 1997, communications services and utilities were installed in separate troughs at the edges of the new roads to prevent future disturbance and disruption for maintenance and repair. EP also worked with the Environment Agency to conserve 2km of riverside parkland, and a further project restored fendering and salt marsh terraces alongside the Thames, for improved flood defences. Combined with a new foot and cycle path, these measures have resulted in improved wildlife habitats and increased public accessibility to the river.

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Figure 2 – English Partnerships worked with the Environment Agency to conserve 2km of riverside parkland, and restore fendering and salt marsh terraces alongside the Thames, for improved flood

defences.

Sustainability extends to the Peninsula’s new Sainburys supermarket, which opened in 2001, and has already demonstrated energy savings of 50% over a traditional supermarket design. Factors that contribute to energy savings include natural lighting via roof windows, passive ventilation which is operational 90% of the time, the use of earthbanks for insulation, and the installation of energy efficient appliances and low level lighting. The store also collects rainwater and recycles grey water for irrigation, and boasts both photovoltaic cells and a wind turbine, which generate power for all of its exterior signage. It shares one car park with the neighbouring 12-screen cinema complex and non-food retailer, and Sainsburys is applying the lessons learned at new store developments across the country.

Figure 3 - Sainsburys' Greenwich Peninsula store has already demonstrated energy savings of 50%

over traditional supermarket design.

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Project: Greenwich Millennium Village Location: Greenwich, East London Client: Greenwich Millennium Village Limited Developer: Greenwich Millennium Village Limited Architect: Masterplan and Design by Erskine & Tovatt,

Stage 1 in association with EPR Architects, Stage 2 in association with Proctor and Matthews,

Builder: Countryside Properties and Taylor Woodrow Cost: n/a Commencement date: 1999 Completion date: 2007 Financing type: Private investors and Housing Association No of units: 1,600 Unit type/s: One to four bedroom units in multistorey apartments and

townhouses. Potential occupants: Owner occupiers, and market rate and public housing rental

tenants. Construction method: Some onsite prefabrication combined with some traditional

construction What makes this project interesting?

Figure 4 - Ralph Erksine's Masterplan for the Greenwich Millennium Village situated apartments and

townhouses around a series of traditional London squares, which are grouped around a central village green and man-made lake.

Greenwich Millennium Village is the country’s largest green housing development, and has set new benchmarks for environmental building across the country. Architect Ralph Erskine conceived the master plan and designed the first stage of housing for the 13 hectare site. Each section is set around an updated version of the traditional London square, and then grouped around a central village green and man-made lake, with green corridors connecting the river and the rest of the Peninsula.

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Figure 5 - Each of GMV’s four sections is set around an updated version of the traditional London square, and then grouped around a central village green and man-made lake, with green corridors

connecting the river and the rest of the Peninsula.

Erskine’s housing designs emphasise energy efficiency and mixed tenure communities: the entire development will provides nearly 1,600 dwellings in the form of units and townhouses. Of these, about 20% will be offered as social housing and a further 12% as market rate rental accommodation. As well as maximising the advantages of solar orientation and cross ventilation, the development aims to reduce energy consumption through the use of low-embodied energy materials and low energy appliances, and will generate power onsite for central heating, hot water and electricity for all residents, using a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system.

Figure 6 –Greenwich Millennium Village minimises car use and creates opportunities for community

interaction in compact and character-filled streets.

The project uses innovative construction techniques, such as modular bathroom and kitchen pods, and prefabricated cladding and window solutions which are assembled in

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onsite factories prior to installation, resulting in lower costs, better quality finishes, and less construction waste.

Figure 7 - GMV uses innovative construction techniques, such as modular bathroom and kitchen pods, and prefabricated cladding and window solutions, which are assembled in onsite factories

prior to installation.

Although the project is not yet half finished: the first residential stage is complete and occupied, while the second stage was nearing completion around the time of my visit, several community facilities, including a primary school and health centre, have already opened. Public transport, including buses and underground trains are also operational, with further services to be added as the population on the peninsula increases. Local jobs are available at retail outlets, a Royal Mail sorting office and the remaining industries on the western side of the peninsula.

Figure 8 - The new Millennium Primary School is already open. After hours, the school is used as a community meeting place for local events.

What lessons can be learned from this project? According to EPR Architect Brendan Phelan, Greenwich Millennium Village “tries to strike a balance” between ecological objectives, such as water and energy saving devices, and commercial realities. At the same time, the project has been built using new construction techniques that reduce both time and cost, result in fewer defects, and virtually eliminate construction waste (which accounts for 40% of the country’s landfill). Mr Phelan said that GMV’s achievements to date, including achieving an Excellent rating using the BREEAM system for eco-homes, had performed an educational role. “Rather than just meeting existing targets, GMV raises the bar in terms of what other developers could do, and it helps to educate the market in that respect,” he said. Since completing the first stage, development partner Taylor Woodrow has committed to meeting the same ecological standards for all its new homes nationwide, thereby exceeding existing code requirements.

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Mr Phelan also said that in most cases, “socially deprived sectors were living in the poorest quality housing [in England], so they are being doubly deprived”. He suggested that providing ecologically sensitive homes would save those residents money by reducing their utility bills, and therefore contribute to their ability to eventually move out of the social housing sector. Mr Phelan said that while modularised and prefabricated construction was currently more expensive than traditional forms of building (by between 20 and 30%), and needed at least 100 units to be viable, it offered significant advantages in terms of defects and waste minimisation. “For bathrooms and kitchens, for example, there’s a lot of trades concentrated in one area, and it becomes technically difficult to co-ordinate,” he said. “Tiles get chipped, things get stolen, and they are the areas with the most defects, so prefab is great for those rooms.” Mr Phelan also said that the density of the GMV would be an important factor in its success. “In the UK, suburban sprawl means about 26 or 27 houses per hectare, and the knock on effect of that is that you don’t have enough houses for a local shop or to support frequent and reliable public transport,” he said. “Therefore 50 units per hectare is seen as ideal, and GMV should equate to about 170 units per hectare, compared to a maximum density in London of about 800 units per hectare. We think the density at this project will provide an optimum level for the residents without the disadvantages of overcrowding.” Proctor and Matthews architect Stephen Proctor said GMV provided a good example of planning for sustainable communities. “We are interested in creating sustainable neighbourhoods, not through photo voltaics and wind turbines, but by making people responsible for their environment in different ways,” he said. “We want to avoid first home buyer ghettos, or socially deprived ghettos, and build proper communities by design instead. So at GMV, like other mixed income housing projects, we don’t seek to differentiate between private and affordable homes: there shouldn’t be a distinction.” Project: BedZED, the Beddington Zero Energy Development Location: Sutton, Surrey Client: Peabody Trust Developer: Peabody Trust and BioRegional (an environmental organisation

that aims to bring local sustainability into mainstream business and industry)

Architect: Bill Dunster Architects Builder: not known Cost: not known Commencement date: 1999 Completion date: 2000 Financing type: not known No of units: 82 Unit type/s: 1, 2, 3 & 4 bedroom flats and houses for private and public sale

and rent Potential occupants: Singles, families and couples eligible for housing association

accommodation. Construction method: not known

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What makes this project interesting? BedZED is an environmentally-friendly, energy-efficient mix of housing and work spaces, and was the first in the UK to incorporate up-to-the minute thinking on sustainable development into every aspect of the scheme. The development only uses energy from renewable sources generated onsite, making it the country’s first large-scale ‘carbon neutral’ community. It aims to show that it is possible to meet demand for new housing without destroying the countryside, and to demonstrate that an eco-friendly lifestyle can be easy, affordable and attractive.

Figure 9 – BedZED only uses energy from renewable sources generated onsite, making it the UK’s

first large-scale ‘carbon neutral’ community.

Where possible, building materials were selected from natural, renewable or recycled sources, and purchased within a 35-mile radius of the site. The houses were designed to be energy-efficient, and are all south facing so as to most of the heat from the sun, with excellent insulation and triple-glazed windows. Rubbish bins in each home are divided into `four compartments, for paper and card, and glass and tin recycling, as well as green and general waste, while each kitchen features electricity and water meters, so that residents can monitor their own consumption regularly.

Figure 10 - Recycle bins and water and electricity meters in every kitchen make it easy for BedZED's

residents to reduce waste to landfill and monitor resource consumption.

A site wide water strategy, including installing water saving appliances and making the most of rain and recycled water, reduces mains consumption by one third, while a green transport plan reduces reliance on cars by cutting the need for travel (through internet shopping links and on-site facilities) and providing alternatives to driving such as a car pool. Residents can hire electric cars for local journeys, and the nearest major shopping area in Sutton provides car recharging points.

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Residents can reduce their total energy demand by up to 60%, with a 90% reduction in heat demand, compared to a typical suburban home. What lessons can be learned from this project? According to interviews and research carried out by the project’s designers and managers, BedZED’s residents are very happy with the philosophy behind their homes and the practicalities of the scheme. Architect Bill Dunster claims that the project provides answer to many of the problems facing planners and politicians as they try to meet the demand for housing in the 21st century: • The site is an good example of creative use of brownfield land (the site was formerly a

sewage treatment plant); • The mix of living and work space cuts down on commuting and helps boost the local

economy; and • The mix of homes: for sale and rent on affordable and market terms, attracts people

with high and low incomes, creating a diverse and inclusive community. The development generates and uses heat and energy produced onsite by a combined heat and power unit (CHP), which eliminates the use of fossil fuels and avoids carbon emissions. The CHP is fuelled by waste timber from local tree surgery, which would normally go to landfill. The CHP unit generates electricity and distributes hot water around the site via insulated pipes. These deliver heat to domestic hot water cylinders positioned centrally in every home and office, doubling up as heat emitters in cold spells. Excess electricity is exported to the National Grid, to be retrieved at times of site peak electrical demand to supplement the CHP generation. The buildings have been designed to conserve energy: heat loss is drastically reduced by an ‘overcoat’ of super-insulation to the roofs, walls and floors, so that heat from sunshine, lights, appliances, hot water, and everyday activities such as cooking, keep the houses cosy and warm. (The thick walls of the building prevent overheating in summer and store warmth in the winter to be released slowly during cooler periods such as night and on overcast days.)

Figure 11 - Every home has a private garden, even on the upper floors, as well as a cosy sunroom

that is well sealed to prevent heat loss.

The windows are triple-glazed, while their timber frames further reduce heat loss. Well-sealed windows and doors, and the concrete construction stop the heat leaking out. A heat exchanger in the wind-driven ventilation system recovers between 50% and 70% of the warmth from the outgoing stale air. Also, the houses face south and are fitted with photovoltaic solar panels, which generate power for recharging points for electric vehicles. At the time of completion, kitchens were installed with the latest energy-saving appliances,

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while low-energy lighting means that even if a family has a light on in every room, the total use will still only be 120 watts. Water saving measures include the installation of water-efficient appliances, such as washing machines, using lower-volume baths and fitting taps with water-saving flow restrictors, installing dual flush toilets, and collecting rainwater and recycled water which is stored in large tanks in the foundations for reuse. Outside, the development’s car parking spaces were laid with porous block paving over gravel to minimise surface run off, and runoff from sky gardens, roads and pavements is drained to the front of the development where a dry ditch has been enhanced into a water feature specially designed to attract wild-life. BedZED’s wastewater is treated on site by a small-scale sewage treatment system known as the Living Machine. It extracts nutrients for plant food, and treats the water so that it can be recycled back to the underground water tanks to supplement rainwater for flushing the toilet.

Figure 12 – BedZED features water efficient appliances, low flow taps and low volume baths, as well

as energy efficient kitchen and laundry appliances.

Project: Murray Grove Location: Stoke Newington, North London Client: Peabody Trust Developer: Peabody Trust Architect: Cartwright Pickard Architects Builder: Yorkon Cost: £2.315 million Commencement date: Competition held 1998, construction commenced February

1999 Completion date: September 1999 Financing type: Public funding through Housing Association No of units: 30 Unit type/s: One- and two-bedroom apartments Potential occupants: 50% of units are rented at subsidised rates to key workers who

meet eligibility criteria, 50% are rented at full market rates. Construction method: Factory built modules installed, connected and clad onsite

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Figure 13 - Murray Grove was the UK's first modular, multi-storey, affordable housing project.

What makes this project interesting? Yorkon’s first residential project was Murray Grove, an affordable housing development commissioned by the Peabody Trust, for a corner site in Stoke Newington, North London. Peabody held a design competition for the project, which consists of 30 one- and two-bedroom apartments, and specified offsite forms of construction. Half of the units are rented at subsidised rates to key workers, such as teachers and nurses, who have stable incomes but are often unable to meet the rising costs of private rents in London, while the other half are rented at full market rates. According to James Cartwright, architect and partner at Cartwright Pickard Architects, the fact that he had worked in Sweden for two years, where he became familiar with flat packed timber construction methods, helped his six month old architecture firm to win the competition in 1998. The firm’s unique approach to design and construction was also a contributing factor, Mr Cartwright said. “The architecture profession has lost sight of who they are designing for,” he asserted. “They are too focussed on design for design’s sake, and are not solving problems, or arriving at buildings that will be great places to live and work for 100 years. “We don’t see construction technology as an end in itself: the end result of our work is a beautiful and functional building that works, and will last a long time and age well.” The firm’s design for Murray Grove took advantage of the corner site by placing two wings along Murray Grove and Shepherdess Walk, off a central tower that contains a secure entry lobby at ground level, and lift and stair access to the upper floors.

Figure 14 - Murray Grove is situated on a corner site, with a leafy south facing internal courtyard.

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The one-bedroom apartments consist of two 8m x 3.2m modules, while the two-bedroom units comprise three modules. All bedrooms and living rooms have interior dimensions of 5.15m x 3m, and there are no internal corridors. Apartments are accessed via 1.5 metre wide external corridors positioned on the street elevation, while individual balconies, large enough to accommodate a table and four chairs, overlook a central south-facing courtyard. The balconies and access ways were assembled onsite from precast concrete and steel-rod cross bracing. The roof elements and circular entrance tower that contains the lift and stairwell were also delivered as modular elements.

Figure 15 – The street frontage features access balconies, while private balconies overlook the

internal courtyard.

Inside each unit, the front door gives immediate access to the bathroom and kitchen, which are positioned on the street side to provide a buffer from external noise, while bedrooms and living spaces overlook the quieter courtyard. The courtyard elevation was dry clad with red cedar, while the street elevations feature clip-on terracotta panels, with the modular margins clearly expressed.

Figure 16 - The front door opens onto the kitchen and bathroom, eliminating the need for corridors.

The entire project cost £2.315 million and took just 32 weeks to complete. Pile foundations were installed in February 1999, the first 35 apartment modules were landed in three days at the end of March, and the final 39 modules were erected in mid-April. The lift and stair tower erection was next, followed by the access deck and roof, with final completion and handover taking place in September 1999.

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Figure 17 - The entire project took just 32 weeks from commencement to completion, with modules

landed onsite in just than ten days.

All photos of Murray Grove courtesy of Cartwright Pickard Architects and Yorkon. The project has since won ten design awards, including a 2000 Housing Design Award, and was short listed for the Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA) Stirling Prize for architecture, alongside projects such as the London Eye and Canary Wharf Station, in the same year. In 2001, Cartwright Pickard Architects won a second modular Yorkon project, from clients York Housing and the City of York, who commissioned the Sixth Avenue affordable housing scheme. The firm used a similar plan to Murray Grove, with six floors of apartments placed around a private, landscaped courtyard. The £2m project featured 24 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, constructed from 48 modules, and was completed in April 2002.

Figure 18 - The Sixth Avenue project in York features terracotta cladding on the ground floor and

western red cedar above (left). The stair and lift tower gives way to access balconies that overlook the courtyard (right).

What lessons can be learned from this project? Architect James Cartwright said that lessons learnt and improved efficiencies meant that the Sixth Avenue project cost 20% less in real terms than its predecessor, Murray Grove. The firm is now working on a third modular affordable housing project, also for Peabody Trust, featuring more than 200 units. Since working with Yorkon on modular schemes, Cartwright Pickard Architects developed a modular system for housing construction in the USA, with a developer based in Chicago, and has also designed a flat packed timber housing system for distribution in the UK, starting this year “We believe that our primary market for the timber frame product will be low rise family type dwellings and apartments up to five or six stories,” Cartwright said. “We’ll be using the

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latest Swedish technologies, and we’ll be able to undercut traditional forms of construction on cost, and the product will be watertight just two days after starting construction.” Mr Cartwright said another benefit of the new system was that bathrooms and kitchens would be manufactured in pods offsite, improving quality and speed of installation. “Once you own one of these homes and you want to renovate the bathroom or kitchen, you can select your new design from the catalogue, order it from the factory, and then change it out in a day, instead of living through renovations for weeks on end, with no certain completion date,” he said. “Essentially, the whole house is a kit of parts: customers will be able to design a customised house designed by an architect,” he continued. “Then it can be clad according to the client’s choice, so volume house builders could buy our kits and clad them in Georgian brick if they want to.” The main advantages, Mr Cartwright said, were quality control at the site, predictability in terms of program and cost, and the fact that buildings should be almost defect free. Kits will be erected onsite by semi-skilled labourers, but Mr Cartwright said that the company aimed to the housing equivalent of “Volkswagen Golfs, not Ladas”. “We know that our timber framing partner is currently building 2,000 homes a year, and we expect that figure will double in two the three years, and then again in three years after that.” Mr Cartwright said that complete offsite manufacture, like that done by Yorkon, was not as suited to housing as other building types. “The supply is still limited, and their manufacturing capacity is not what it could be,” he claimed. “That means that [those builders] are more likely to go for building types with higher return, such as hospitals and hotels, than housing. That’s part of the reason we’ve established our new product: we don’t want to compete with steel frame companies, though.” Mr Cartwright asserted that Murray Grove had made affordable housing “sexy”. “The vast majority of big name architecture firms didn’t want to touch affordable housing before, because the fees are not high, and it’s not glamorous work,” he said. “Also, you have to really deal with clients and their needs, so other firms have tended to produce lots of big office buildings, but they are turning to affordable architecture now that the office market is declining.” “It helps that the Housing Association is becoming more enlightened,” he added. “The government has encouraged them to employ good architects, and there’s an acknowledgement now that the quality of affordable housing is very important.”

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Project: Raines Dairy Location: Hackney, North East London Client: Peabody Trust Developer: Peabody Trust Architect: Allford, Hall, Monaghan and Morris Builder: Yorkon Cost: £4.9 million Commencement date: 2001 Completion date: 2002 Financing type: Public funding through Housing Association No of units: 61 Unit type/s: Two- and three-bedroom apartments (x 53) for subsidised rent

and shared ownership and Live/Work units (x 8) for market sale Potential occupants: Subsidised units for residents with incomes of up to £25,000

and market rate purchasers. Construction method: Factory built modules installed, connected and clad onsite

Figure 19 - Raines Dairy is the first Yorkon modular project to offer homes for sale.

What makes this project interesting? The success of Murray Grove prompted another affordable housing development in London in 2001. Raines Dairy was also commissioned by the Peabody Trust, and constructed with modules manufactured by Yorkon. Architect Simon Allford said that the process of designing modular units helped to maximise internal space efficiencies, partly because circulation space is virtually eliminated. “You can improve the efficiency of units, in terms of the shape, layout and access,” he said. “I think the key to good design is to stop measuring homes in terms of squared feet, and to start thinking in terms of squared feet of useable space. “We included balconies at Raines Dairy, and used lower quality finishes, because residents can upgrade the finishes down the track, but they can’t add a balcony later.”

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Figure 20 - The modules at Raines Dairy incorporate balconies for each apartment (left) and it

features an impressive, secure lobby.

The project used 127 modules ranging in length from 9.6 to 11.6 metres, with an increased width to 3.8m, which helped to reduce installation and transport costs. The live/work units are located on the ground floor of the T-shaped plan, with five floors of two-bedroom apartments above, and the three-bedroom units in a separate wing at the rear. The entire project was completed in just 50 weeks, a saving of 40% compared to traditional onsite building. The main façade was clad with shiplap profiled zinc panels, with zinc cover strips to mask the modular joints, and painted cladding in the balcony recesses to define each unit. The other elevations were finished in larch timber cladding. The triangular site was bordered by a railway line cutting, a clearway arterial road and existing housing, making it an ideal candidate for prefabricated construction. However, according to Mr Allford, while modular construction offers one solution to London’s housing affordability problems and tight sights, it should not be seen as the only option.

Figure 21 - The triangular site's location, bordered by a railway cutting, a busy arterial road and

existing housing, made it a prime candidate for offsite construction.

“Prefab produces boxes, not flats,” he said. “You still need the same trades in the factory as you would need for construction from scratch onsite, but you do improve worksite conditions, so its easier to encourage people to work in a trade. While the lead times can be longer for prefabrication, the process is better for the surrounding areas than traditional construction.” AAHM is now working on a project called MoMo, short for Mobile Modular, which uses office technologies and is designed to be moved to different sites every five years or so as land uses change. What lessons can be learned from this project?

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Architect Simon Allford said that the use of prefabricated modules called into question fundamental architectural issues about land and place, and that architects and clients needed to be attentive to avoid producing housing solutions that were not site specific. He also added that there was too much emphasis on construction time and cost when assessing the practicality of modular construction. There’s “too many glib comments about on time, and on budget,” he said, arguing that modular housing offered other benefits that were not so easily quantified, such as internal space planning efficiencies and suitability for difficult infill sites. Mr Allford also argued that the Mayor of London’s 50% affordable housing target for new construction was “killing off schemes”. ”We are currently looking at a [mixed tenure] scheme with 60 private and 25 affordable units, and on top of that, the planners want the developer to deliver £1 m in landscape improvements,” he said. Housing for key workers would be one of the biggest challenges in the future in London, Mr Allford said, wondering which agency or level of government would accept responsibility for providing it. “You really need subsidised land to make it viable,” he said. “We need to rethink land use, and work to renew existing land in the inner city. If there was a clear and straightforward system for calculating land tax, that would make development easier: at the moment planning requirements differ from site to site, and the greatest uncertainty is not the build cost but the development cost.” Project: Microflat prototype Client: not yet secured Developer: not yet secured Architect: Piercy Conner Architects Builder: The Microflat Company Cost: for sale at less than £100,000 per unit Commencement date: prototype designed in 2002 Completion date: n/a Financing type: Seeking public financing solutions to ensure eligibility criteria

are in place and affordability is maintained over time No of units: Multiples of 18 Unit type/s: One bedroom units Potential occupants: Key workers who meet eligibility criteria Construction method: Modularised steel framed construction What makes this project interesting? Architects Stuart Piercy and Richard Conner came up with the Microflat prototype as a solution to their own affordable housing problem in London – they were unable to find suitable housing in inner London that they and their friends could afford to buy. The Microflat is a compact but space-efficient flat that they hoped to develop on a small but central site. When they realised the potential of the design to address London’s shortage of housing for key workers and young professionals, the pair decided to streamline the construction process to produce a modular product, before securing a construction and development partner, with a view to developing sites across the capital. The architects are partners at Piercy Conner, which they established in 1999. The firm now has about 16 staff, and according to architect Leonard Milford, is primarily interested in exploring housing solutions to address sustainability and affordability issues, while

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taking into account changing demographics and market forces. The firm has entered many housing competitions, and developed several new housing types, including the Flexible Living Opportunities (FLO) project, based on Victorian townhouses and the Microflat. While the latter began life as a private project, the firm has worked tirelessly to promote its ability to deal with a shortage of affordable housing for key workers in London. The one bedroom Microflat measures just 32.5m2, about two-thirds of the size of an average one-bedroom flat in London. Taking inspiration from yacht design, the architects made use of every available inch of space, incorporating a small double bedroom, a pod containing a shower and toilet, storage space, and a kitchen / living area that provides access to a small balcony. Ceilings are 2.8 metres high to provide an enhanced feeling of space and maximise natural light from floor to ceiling windows, the walls are heavily insulated to keep noise at bay, and the interiors are attractively fitted out with laminated floors, architectural ironmongery and kitchen fittings from market leaders such as Neff.

Figure 22 - The Microflat measures just 32.5m2, but includes a small double bedroom, kitchen and

bathroom pod, and a living area with a small balcony.

Prospective developments might include up to 40 units, sited for solar orientation and passive ventilation. The proposed developments would also include facilities for residents such as gardens, barbecues and tennis courts, to foster interaction and provide outdoor leisure space.

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Figure 23 - Microflats could be stacked on top of each other, for privacy and optimum solar

orientation, on small central sites, with community facilities on the roof.

To demonstrate the feasibility of the Microflat, a prototype was installed in a store window at Selfridges, a department store on London’s Oxford Street, in January 2002. Two single 24 year old professionals, a male bank worker and a female market researcher, spent a week each living in the unit, in full view of passers by. Participant Helene Cacace said that she aspired to own her own home, “but on my present salary there's no way I'd be able to buy anything in central London. However, I could get a mortgage for something like this. I think it would be very popular: there's definitely a market for it.”

Figure 24 - A Microflat was installed in the window at Selfridges department store to demonstrate its

viability to prospective developers and residents

The demonstration generated mountains of publicity, with newspaper, magazine and television coverage, including a documentary, appearing through the UK, Europe, USA and Asia. It also generated plenty of enquiries from potential residents, and there is now a 2,500-strong waiting list of key workers eager to own a Microflat in central London. The success of the installation gave the architects the impetus to establish The Microflat Company with a builder, and to start looking for suitable sites. They hope to develop sites above council-owned car parks and new supermarkets, but would require changes to planning consents to increase densities before proceeding. Piercy Conner also hopes to secure government support for the Microflat project, to ensure that the units would be sold to owner occupiers who were otherwise unable to purchase a home on the open market in London. The units are expected to sell for less than £100,000, well short of London’s average price of £150,000 for a one-bedroom

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apartment. With assistance from the government and housing associations, the affordability of Microflats could be preserved for future buyers, with appreciation tied to inflation and new buyers also required to meet eligibility criteria. Despite much negotiating with both councils and developers, the project is stuck on the drawing board, although the firm continues to enter housing competitions in the hope of winning a commission for the product. Piercy is cautiously optimistic, but acknowledges the problems. “The challenge is to find appropriate sites close to the city and convince developers to go with the idea,” he said. “That may be difficult because they have a ready market for expensive apartments in central London. Building these would mean reduced profit margins.” What lessons can be learned from this project? It is possible to combine good design and efficient construction to arrive at affordable housing solutions for first home buyers, who are often hardest hit when housing affordability is compromised in large cities. Piercy Conner’s Microflat solution is environmentally sensitive (taking in solar orientation, energy and water conservation and landscaping and biodiversity considerations), economically viable (by partnering with government to establish eligibility criteria and long-term affordability objectives) and space efficient (both inside through careful architectural planning, and outside via installation in ‘air-right’ spaces above ground floor commercial developments or above public carparks. The modular system saves on design and construction costs by saving money through repetition, and aims to use ecologically friendly materials in its construction. Also, the units could be reused or recycled, thereby reducing the cost of the embodied energy. The fact that the prototype has not yet been implemented in London, where the demand for housing for working, young people in the city centre is so severe, speaks to the requirement for government co-operation and backing for solutions such as the Microflat. Governments at all levels can assist in delivering these types of solutions: local governments can facilitate the development of projects of this density within their jurisdiction; state governments can establish and enforce eligibility criteria so that ownership is restricted to residents who are otherwise priced out of the home ownership market, and both state and local governments can provide access to public sites where developments of this type can take place.

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2. Finland

2.1 Key players in affordable housing The Finnish Government’s Ministry for the Environment sets the country’s housing policies and strategies, and is responsible for housing legislature, housing subsidy systems and budget planning. The Ministry’s operative arm, the Housing Fund of Finland (ARA), grants state housing loans, approves interest subsidised commercial loans, monitors quality and cost control attached to subsidy systems, and allocates grants for regeneration and renewal of existing housing. ARA also designates and monitors the non-profit organisations that construct and manage social housing throughout the country (15% of total housing stock nationally). There are more than 400 independent and autonomous muncipalities, such as the City of Helsinki, which play a significant role in housing policy and development: they oversee land use planning for both social and market housing, and provide new infrastructure where necessary. In the case of social housing, municipalities also determine both the housing type and the form of tenure, and collectively, they own about 60% of all social housing. A range of housing loans, interest subsidies and grants are financed from an off-budget fund, the State Housing Fund. Its revenue is derived from cash from interest payments and amortisation of existing state housing loans, as well as external sources such as securitisation or borrowing.

2.2 Issues and challenges Current housing demand Finland has a population of about 5.2 million people, with net growth of about 10,000 people each year, half of that resulting from international migration. The country has approximately 2.3 million households, and housing demand is strongest in major cities, largely as a result of migration from the country areas, that originated in the early 1990s. This shift has contributed to a housing shortage in some metropolitan areas, particularly the capital, offset by a housing surplus in some rural parts. Currently the population of Helsinki is 550,000 (greater area population is 1.2 million): this is expected to grow by another people by 150,000 by 2030, while some provinces will lose up to one quarter of their existing population in the same timeframe. International migration is also contributing to demand for housing in the capital: even though foreign born residents account for only 2% of the national population, they are largely concentrated in Helsinki, where they account for about 5% of the total. Another factor contributing to housing demand is a steady decrease in average household size: from 3.34 in 1960 to 2.25 in 1998. In 1998, Finland had approximately 10,000 homeless people, with more than half located in greater Helsinki. Current housing stock Finnish society is characterised by equal opportunity for all, and housing, education and health policies have all been formulated to reflect this. While the majority of Finns are

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owner occupiers (64% in 2001), social rental housing plays a significant role, accounting for 17% of all dwellings, with the remainder falling into free market rental (15%) and ‘other’ categories (4%). According to Mr Tuevo Ijas, Director-General of the Housing Fund of Finland, the role of social housing has been crucial in improving housing standards generally, through the establishment of quality and space standards for social housing, that have also been met in the public sector. “We have no slums in Finland, our social housing is of the same standard as private housing, and from the outside you can’t tell whether housing is social or private,” Mr Ijas said. More than half of Finland’s total housing stock was built between 1970 and 1990, and about 50% of these homes were built with government subsidies. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the housing sector was dominated by a boom in the private sector, when single family houses dominated new construction (66% of all new homes). Following a downturn in the private sector that began in the early 1990s, government funded housing has again dominated construction, with more than 70% of new dwellings funded by government loans or interest subsidies. As most of the government subsidised dwellings are flats, the number of new single family homes has dropped to less than 50% of total production. New housing supply In 2002, 28,000 new dwellings were built in Finland: 69% were market financed (19,400 units), and the majority of those were owner occupied dwellings (18,000) with a small number of market rate rental units (1,400). The state subsidised construction of 8,600 dwellings in 2002: 4,600 were social rental units, 1.400 were social rented for elderly people or students, 1.500 were right of occupancy units and 1,200 were owner occupied. The majority of new units were in apartment developments (46%), while detached houses made up 39% of the total and terraced houses 15%. According to Timo Tähtinen, Senior Advisor, Housing Finance at the Ministry for the Environment, and Teuvo Ijas, the Director-General of ARA, low interest rates (generally set at less than 3%) and extended mortgage terms (now 20 years, up from an average of 8 years in the 1980s) have both contributed to a shift towards home ownership in Finland. “It is easier to service a loan now than it was in [the housing boom of] the early 1990s,” Mr Tähtinen said. “Between 1990 and 2000, the cost of renting has actually increased as a proportion of income, while the cost of mortgages has decreased as a proportion of income.” Developers are also taking advantage of low interest rates. “At the moment, private money is cheaper than ARA Funding, so borrowers are less inclined to use ARA funding and those that have are paying back our loans quickly,” Mr Ijas said. “We actually have funds in State treasury that are not being used at the moment.” Mr Ijas said that this situation was the main cause of the government failing to reach its target of 10,000 new social units per year in 2002, with a shortfall of 1,400 dwellings, despite the ever increasing need for more social housing.

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A negative impact of the shift towards home ownership has been the increase in housing costs in both owner occupier and rental markets. Housing costs in Helsinki are now double the national average on a per square metre basis.

2.3 Policies and Strategies Social housing The state provides housing subsidies of €1.6 billion (1.2% of GNP): 83% linked to housing demand, in the form of housing allowances and tax-relief for interest on housing loans, and 17% linked to production in the form of government loans (ARAVA loans), interest-subsidy loans and renovation grants. In the past 50 years, state subsidised loans have been used to finance 42% of all new dwelling construction, resulting in the production of: • 400,000 new rental dwellings • 430,000 owner occupied dwellings • 23,000 right of occupancy dwellings; and • 225,000 dwelling renovations. Key objectives of the country’s social housing policy include: • Maintaining the role of housing as a core element in ensuring the welfare of all;

Planning and delivering integrated residential areas, with social stability and no slums; • Maintaining housing affordability; • Ensuring cost effectiveness in the construction of new housing; and • Ensuring comparable architectural quality for social and market rate housing. The majority of ARAVA loans, approximately 60%, are taken out by Finnish municipal governments, or companies owned by them, as developers and owners of new social housing. The remaining 40% of loans are allocated to designated borrowers, such as non-profit social housing developers (whose profit margins are currently set by the state at a maximum level of 8%) and special purpose associations (which provide housing for targeted groups, such as the elderly and students).All developers are required to maintain affordability of ARAVA funded housing for 45 years. Many non-profit developers are part of larger organisations that also operate in the public sector, and when the housing market is buoyant, as it is at the moment, the home ownership development market is more profitable than social development, leading to a fall in the supply of social housing. Therefore, political debate revolving around encouraging more developers into the sector, for example by increasing the profit levels from 8% or shortening the term of affordability, are ongoing. In the development phase, ARA maintains responsibility for monitoring and approving the cost and quality of all projects built with its financing schemes. Design selection is based on an architectural competition, and the construction contractor is selected following a public bidding process. During the construction stage, Municipalities hold responsibility for monitoring compliance with state government construction codes, and for authorisation of any variation to the approved design or plan. A government imposed cap on price increases of 10% per year is designed to ensure cost-effectiveness in the delivery of new social housing, but it may also be responsible for reluctance among developers and builders to incorporate new environmental measures in

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social housing. In many cases, the cost of new technologies required for energy production and water management, such as photo voltaics and grey-water recycling systems, fall outside the threshold. Housing Allowance Finland’s most important housing support system is the Housing Allowance, which was paid to about 475,000 recipients in 2001, at a total cost of €890 million. Of the total number of recipients, 158,500 received general housing allowance, 165,000 received pensioners’ housing allowance and 151,000 received housing supplement for students. About 95% of recipients were accommodated in rental housing, 55% of the total in ARAVA social housing, with the remaining 5% in shared ownership schemes. The General Housing Allowance is available to all types of households (families with children, single persons, couples and communities) and for all types of tenure (rental, owner-occupied and right of occupancy). In 2001, 64% of recipients of General Housing Allowance were unemployed, while 36% of recipients were low income employees. Under the Housing Allowance program, the Ministry of the Environment sets a maximum figure for rent payable according to location and household size, and meets 80% of that total, with recipients liable for 20%. Above certain income thresholds, recipients can also pay top up amount should the rent exceed the limits set by the program. Shared ownership schemes The Ministry of the Environment has introduced two main shared ownership schemes to assist traditional social rental clients into partial home ownership. The first was the Right of Occupancy scheme, established in the early 1990s and still operational. Residents buy into the scheme by paying a specified percentage of the home value (currently set at 15%), which is redeemable at any time adjusted by the construction cost index. They then pay a monthly charge, similar to rent, based on the cost of housing, for the life of their tenure, although they are not able to ‘staircase’ out of the program into full home ownership. While applicants do not have to satisfy income criteria, they must demonstrate that they are not capable of purchasing a dwelling to meet their households’ needs. Upon satisfying the criteria for Right to Occupancy housing, applicants are placed in a queue before being allocated a place in the program. Since its introduction, the scheme has been used for about 1% of all new housing construction, resulting in the provision of about 30,000 new dwellings. Mr Tahtinen said that the scheme was seen as a step towards homeownership, and offered benefits to householders because the investment was not as great as for a full mortgage, but the tenure was more secure than traditional rental accommodation. However, he admitted that while the scheme had been well received in Helsinki, it had not been widely used in other parts of the country, and was perceived to have competitive problems in the market. A second scheme of state subsidised shared ownership was introduced in 2001. Households can pay a share of the accepted building cost (generally 20%) while the developer takes out an interest subsidised commercial loan for the remaining 80% of the cost. The household then pays rent to the developer, and after five years but before 12 years, the householder can opt to purchase the dwelling from the developer. Households are selected on the basis of social appropriateness and financial need, although the income limits are higher than those that apply to social rental dwellings. Mr

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Tahtinen said that the scheme aimed to balance the requirements of both homeowners and developers, but added that in the current housing market, it had not been well received, with less than 100 projects completed so far. He suggested that its popularity as a stepping stone to home ownership may increase when interest rates start to rise and outright home ownership options are not as attractive as they are currently. State Mortgage Guarantee In the 1970s and 1980s, prospective owner occupiers were required to procure deposits of up to 4- or 50% in order to secure a loan to buy a home, and many younger buyers relied on personal guarantee arrangements with family members to enable them to become owner occupiers. In the early 1990s, a recession resulted in spiralling housing costs, thereby creating a disastrous situation not only for young owner occupiers but also for their family members who had provided personal guarantees. As well as forcing many owner occupiers to sell their homes, the recession impacted on the housing construction market, and new commencements had largely stalled. The government, through the Ministry of the Environment, developed a strategy to tackle these two issues: it aimed to assist young buyers back into home ownership and to stimulate the construction of new dwellings in a soft market. The State Mortgage Guarantee was established in 1996, and is available to households or individuals for the purchase of a primary residence. Borrowers must put forward 15% of the purchase price as a deposit, and the SMG is available for 20% of the loan amount (to a maximum of €25,250). When the property is sold, the SMG reverts to the state, with capital gains based on the purchase and sale price of the property. When it was first introduced, the cost of the SMG was 1.5 of the loan, which has since been increased to 2.5% in light of the upturn in the housing market. At the end of October 2003, 134,472 State Mortgage Guarantees had been issued, with about 3,000 new guarantees taken up each month (about 20% of all new housing loans). The state has €84 billion invested in the scheme. In the eight years since its inception, the there have only been about 20 defaults, where the state has been called upon to pay the guarantee to the lending institution. Maintenance and repairs Since the early 1990s, the Housing Fund of Finland has expanded its remit to grant loans and funds for the renovation of existing public and private dwellings, in line with new environmental, health and changing population objectives. Although 85% of Finland’s housing stock has been constructed since 1950, and is therefore modern in comparison with many other countries, the same amount is now spent on renovation and modernisation of existing residential buildings as is spent on construction of new dwellings across the public and private sectors.. Building authorities and the property and construction sectors are collaborating towards goals of sustainable development. Experimental building is taking place to research and develop appropriate solutions for the Finnish environment, and to speed up the introduction of technical innovations across the construction sector. In the social housing sector, funding for repairs and maintenance has been allocated to assist in the country’s compliance with its Kyoto Protocol obligations. Some social housing projects have received funding for maintenance or repairs to improve energy efficiency

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and indoor air quality. Works include upgrading central heating systems to reduce energy consumption; replacing leaking windows to improve building envelopes; eliminating mould and damp problems; and installing low emission finishing materials. The Housing Fund has also allocated funds for improvements to housing for elderly people, with the goal of enabling them to age in their homes for as long as possible. Projects include installing elevators into walk-up apartment blocks in both public and private buildings (ARA provides grants for 50% and 40% of the cost respectively with tenants paying the rest), and installing technical equipment such as handrails and mobility aids. Changing household requirements The Housing Fund is also working to provide adequate housing for changing household demographics. Mr Ijas said that the Housing Fund was conscious of the need for smaller rental dwellings, and was responsible for 70% of all new multi-storey housing. The Housing Fund is also working to assist single tenants or couples who are living in large flats to find suitable smaller accommodation, thereby freeing up larger properties for families in housing need. Review of ARA In 2002, an independent evaluation of the Housing Fund of Finland was carried out, to ascertain the views of key stakeholders such as municipalities, developers, construction industry representatives and state administrators, and to provide recommendations for the future. Overall, Mr Ijas said, the results of the review were positive, with respondents suggesting that ARA was a professional organisation that maintained good relationships with outside parties, while being flexible and easy to cooperate with. Constructive feedback suggested that ARA needed more authority to affect change in housing policy and activity more readily. “The Housing Fund of Finland was found to be a good tool in housing policy, and it was suggested that the government should use that tool more effectively,” Mr Ijas said. “We face new challenges in terms of managing our existing housing stock, and maintaining people and communities to prevent the emergence of slums. It’s important therefore to admit that new production of housing does not play the key role that it used to” As a result of the review, Mr Ijas hopes to develop the agency’s expertise in other areas outside its remit of developing and financing loans. He suggested that ARA could become an expert on meeting the housing needs of the elderly, including through the provision of new equipment and co-ordinating the provision of food services, care visits, shopping, healthcare and technical equipment; providing better solutions for homelessness; and providing more advice and action on energy issues. He also suggested that ARA could play a more proactive role in land planning and use, through greater collaboration with Finland’s autonomous municipalities. “At the moment ARA is just financing and constructing housing, but we could work with the municipalities, which have significant landholdings, to help them in the construction of schools and day-care centres for example,” Mr Ijas explained.

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2.4 Projects Case Study Project: Viikki Ecological Neighbourhood Location: Helsinki, Finland Client: City of Helsinki Planning Department Developer: various Architect: City of Helsinki Planning Department and others Builder: various Cost: n/a Commencement date: 1994 Completion date: 2010 (estimated) Financing type: Private investors and ARAVA loans No of units / residents: n/a / 11,000 people: Housing type/s: One to four bedrooms in single family houses, attached

houses, apartments Potential occupants: Private owner-occupiers, private tenants, subsidised part-

ownership (right of occupancy) and public rental Construction method/s: Traditional masonry, concrete and steel build on site

techniques with some part prefabrication, multistorey timber framed houses

What makes this project interesting? By 2010, it is expected that the Viikki Ecological Neighbourhood and Science Park will accommodate 6,000 workers and 6,000 students, and provide homes for 11,000 residents. The neighbourhood project was initiated in 1994 by the City of Helsinki, with support from the Finnish Ministry of the Environment and the Finnish Association of Architects. Viikki is located just 8km from the centre of Helsinki on a former greenfield site incorporating 1,132 hectares, one third of which will be built on, with the remaining two thirds set aside for conservation and parkland. Prior to the development, the landscape consisted mostly of fields, with a smaller rocky forest area, and a nature conservation area in the form of low lying wetlands. It is bordered by the Vantaanjoki River, the northern reaches of Helsinki Harbour, and the Ring Road 1 motorway. The area had been used as farmland since the city was founded in 1550, firstly as part of the royal estate before being let to private tenants. Since 1931, the land has been managed by the University as a teaching and research facility.

Figure 25 - Viikki is located on a former greenfield site, two thirds of which will be set aside as fields

and a nature conservation area.

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The main objective of the neighbourhood was to combine ecological, social and economic principles in the practice of actual building, and the City’s master plan aimed to deliver an environmentally conscious town plan and housing structure. The neighbourhood is well served by public transport: frequent bus services connect it to the city centre and cross city bus routes connect it to other suburbs. In future, a tram service will be extended to the main residential area. By road, the site is connected via two major arterial roads to the city, and is just 20 minutes from Helsinki’s Vantaa International Airport.

Figure 26 – Viikki’s housing types include apartments, attached houses and single family dwellings,

all of which incorporate ecological factors such as wintergardens (above left and below), passive cooling (above right) and solar collectors.

The site is divided into several key areas, including the University Science Park, which is already occupied, and the Latokartano and Viikinmaki residential neighbourhoods, where construction is continuing. The Science Park focuses on biological sciences and biotechnology, and incorporates the University of Helsinki’s campus areas, private office accommodation and business incubators, as well as the University’s experimental farm. It also features a town square shopping centre that will include a department store and supermarket, specialty shops and other services. The town square is already home to the Viikki public library, and will eventually incorporate a hotel.

Figure 27 - Viikki University Science Park

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Some of the Neighbourhood’s first homes were built in this area in 1997: the 64 units are owned by the University and provide tied accommodation for its staff. The units were among the first timber framed multistorey dwellings constructed in Finland.

Figure 28 - Timber multistorey houses at Viikki

Within the Science Park, the Korona InfoCentre houses two libraries, lecture and conference facilities, and private offices and admin areas. The building features double skin facades, heat recovery from ventilation, and solar hot water. In the winter, the air supply is preheated via solar energy, reducing the building’s heating load. Construction at Viikki’s largest residential area, Latokartano, commenced in 1998 and will be completed by about 2010, with 700 new residents moving in each year. The area will eventually house 10,000 people, and it already offers community facilities such as a newly opened school for grades 1 to 12, a childcare centre, a health centre and youth club, with a church, facilities for senior citizens and further shops, including a full line supermarket, to be added in future.

Figure 29 - Viikki's new school caters for grades 1 – 12.

Figure 30 - Viikki's new childcare centre is already open.

What lessons can be learned from this project? All residential buildings in the Neighbourhood are designed for optimum environmental performance, in addition to meeting the basic requirements for obtaining a building permit under the Finnish building codes. They must demonstrate ecological viability against five main criteria: pollution; natural resources; health; biodiversity; and food production. Assessments based on analysis of design schemes indicate that the neighbourhood will consume nearly 50% less heating energy, use one third less water and produce one third less waste than conventional residential areas in Helsinki.

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According to Markku Siskonen, from Helsinki’s Planning Department, while the cost of meeting the basic ecological requirements set by the City has been estimated at an additional 5% of total construction costs, those costs have been met by owners and residents, who will recoup them in the form of savings on utility bills over the life of the dwelling. Viikki also features the country’s largest solar heating experiment, with nine separate heating systems installed to date, as part of the European Union’s THERMIE programme. Approximately 400 dwellings are part of the experiment, which uses 1,246 m2 of collectors to provide nearly half the energy required to heat domestic hot water, and about 13% of the annual heating load. Solar collectors are integrated within roof structures, wall structures, balconies and as stand alone units in carparks and on local streets. The experiment is co-ordinated by Finnish company Solpros, in conjunction with two Austrian energy companies and the Helsinki Energy Board.

Figure 31 - Solar collectors provide nearly half the energy required to heat domestic hot water, and

about 13% of the annual heating load.

Figure 32 - Solar collectors are integrated within roof structures, wall structures, balconies (left) and

as stand alone units in carparks (right) and on local streets.

Conservation efforts at the site have seen the Viikinoja stream, a former drainage ditch, repositioned and rebuilt to resemble a natural waterway. It now collects rainwater and acts as a detention facility in local floods, to slow down the movement of water across the site and thereby improve the quality of water before it reaches the bay. The site also features extensive paths for walking, cycling or skiing during winter, taking in residential and commercial areas, open fields and the bay waterfront.

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3. Sweden

3.1 Policies and Strategies In Sweden, I met with architects and planners from the City of Malmö, to discuss local initiatives for sustainable development, so this section is not a comprehensive overview of the entire country. The city has a new development area, the Västra Hamnen (Western Harbour), which features new affordable and market rate housing, in an ecologically sensitive design and setting. More details are provided below. The city is also working to improve existing affordable housing neighbourhoods, such as Augustenborg, a public housing project constructed in the 1950s. The city intends that landscaping, building and social works in the neighbourhood, local schools and industrial and business areas, will create a more socially, economically and ecologically sustainable neighbourhood. One of the key aims of the project is to enable residents to take a leading role in the ideas, design and implementation of the project. The Ekostaden Augustenborg project is one of Sweden’s largest urban sustainability projects, funded by the government’s Local Investments Programme, local partners within Malmö City and the MKB housing company (a statutory body for the construction and maintenance of public housing). More details are provided below.

3.2 Projects Case Studies Project: Augustenborg Location: Malmö, Sweden Client: City of Malmö and MKB Developer: City of Malmö and MKB Architect: City of Malmö Planning Department Builder: n/a Cost: n/a Commencement date: 2000 Completion date: Ongoing Financing type: Local Investments Program and other public and private

funding No of units: 300+ Unit type/s: One, two and three bedroom units in medium density blocks Potential occupants: Existing occupants – low to moderate income single people,

couples and families Construction method: Buildings dating from 1950s with new upgrades What makes this project interesting? The project has placed a heavy emphasis on landscape and environmental issues, and local residents, school students and employees have been consulted and involved in the design and implementation of new outdoor environments, to improve habitats and increase amenity. As a result, new plantings of flowering perennials, native trees, fruit trees and wetlands have been carried out, with the addition of bat and bird boxes throughout the housing estate.

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In the past, local flooding during heavy rainfall resulting from the combined sewage system has caused major problems in cellars, underground car parks and on roads and paths throughout the Augustenborg estate. To minimise these problems, a series of new canals and detention basins have been cut throughout the estate, to collect run-off from most hard surfaces and take it to a number of holding ponds and flooding ponds before some of the water leaves the area. During this process, a local resident and amateur water enthusiast started his own business to work with Malmö´s Water Works to design and develop a unique system designed to be partially self-cleaning.

Figure 33 - A series of new canals and detention basins have been cut throughout the Augustenborg

estate, to collect run-off from most hard surfaces and take it to a number of holding ponds and flooding ponds before some of the water leaves the area.

The project also features the largest Green Roof scheme in Scandinavia, which has been laid on 9,500m2 of roof surface at Augustenborg’s industrial estate. It is part of a research and development project with funding from the European Union’s LIFE program, and it aims to study different growing angles and conditions. To date, the use of sedum and mosses to create light weight roof covering has had several benefits, including run-off minimisation, extended roof life, insulation, improved microclimate, increased biodiversity and aesthetic improvements. The project was developed in partnership with Nordisk Gröntak AB. Some of the estate’s buildings have also undergone significant aesthetic and functional improvement as part of the recent works. In the 1970s, many buildings received new facades of external insulation and steel sheeting which had a negative impact on some homes over time, causing problems with damp, ventilation and temperature control. In the latest renovations, the five worst affected buildings had those outer coverings removed and replaced with a new layer of insulation and a covering of skimmed painted concrete. The remaining buildings will be tackled in a rolling program over a longer period.

Figure 34 – The five worst affected buildings at Augustenborg have received a new layer of insulation

and a covering of skimmed painted concrete.

Other aspects of the Augustenborg project have tackled resource use and waste management, in both the industrial and residential areas. These have included the installation of a new ventilation system with a heat exchanger, and the replacement of conventional petrol vehicles with electric vehicles in the Kommunteknik’s (Public Works Dept) fleet, which now boasts Sweden’s largest electric vehicle fleet. These works aim to decrease resource use by 20% and consumption of water, electricity and hot water in the residential area by 10%. Meanwhile, 90% of household waste from Augustenborg is now collected and recycled or reused. To facilitate this process, 13 new Resource Houses were built throughout the estate so that residents have a dedicated place to separate general waste from compost

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organic waste. In addition, a central collection point for the separation of large items of rubbish, waste and hazardous waste from the industrial area also features an exchange room, where residents can leave unwanted furniture, such as an old sofa, and take someone else’s discarded TV. The recycling and waste collecting system is operated by a new resident’s co-operative company. According to the residents of Augustenborg, traffic was a significant problem before the latest project, partially as a result of a dysfunctional one way system, and through traffic and heavy vehicles serving the industrial estate. Consequently, a local speed limit of 30 km/h was introduced throughout the entire area, and a new entrance to the industrial area was opened for use during evenings and weekends. In addition, parts of the estate were converted to Garden Street status, where pedestrians are prioritised, thereby deterring commercial and through traffic. The area is also served by the world's first electric street trains, which offer improved public transport opportunities for local residents and new connections to local services such as health centres, chemists and banks. The trains are powered by eco-labelled energy in a battery unit, and are quiet, emission free and narrow enough to run on adapted cycle tracks along short stretches of their routes to reduce travel times. The trains were designed and manufactured locally, thereby generating new employment opportunities.

Figure 35 - New electric street trains, built in Malmo, now provde eco-friendly transport in Malmo.

What lessons can be learned from this project? By carrying out remediation and upgrading work to older affordable housing estates, residents and owner/managers can reduce energy consumption, conserve water and minimise waste. By involving local residents in the process, from the identification of problems, to the design of solutions and finally, implementation of works, governments and housing managers can achieve more wide ranging and effective solutions, and generate an increased feeling of ownership and investment by those involved. Using a triple bottom line approach, the City of Malmö has provided a more functional and aesthetically appealing neighbourhood, with enhanced environmental attributes, and increased awareness and improved responses to energy, water and waste issues. It also offers new abilities for community interaction, and new employment opportunities, resulting in a greater feeling among residents of investment and involvement in the neighbourhood. Rather than being seen as an eyesore and a place of despair and isolation, Augustenborg is now perceived as a progressive environmental area, with improved social and economic opportunities.

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Project: Bo01 – City of Tomorrow and Västra Hamnen (Western Harbour) Location: Malmö, Sweden Client: City of Malmö Developer: City of Malmö Architect: City of Malmö Planning Department Builder: Bo01 Expo area – 18 developer/builders, 22 architectural firms,

plus other builders and architects for the remaining Västra Hamnen area

Cost: not known Commencement date: 2000 Completion date: 2010 expected Financing type: City of Malmö funding (290 million Swedish Krona - about $A60

million) for environmentally related investments at Västra Hamnen, through the Local Investment Programme. Further support from the European Union, for some of the energy measures. Private investment for housing and commercial developments. Public funding for university campus.

No of units: 600 completed to date, 10,000 residents by 2010 Unit type/s: One to four bedrooms in single family houses, attached

houses, medium and high density apartment blocks Potential occupants: Private owner-occupiers, private tenants, subsidised part-

ownership and public rental Potential occupants: Singles, couples, families Construction method: various What makes this project interesting? In 2001, the City of Malmö hosted a European Housing Expo, which aimed to become an internationally leading example of environmental adaptation of a densely built urban environment. The city hoped that the project would also become a driving force in the region’s shift towards environmental sustainability. The Bo01 project occupies 25 hectares within the western harbour region, known as Västra Hamnen. The 160 hectare former industrial and port facility is located beside a popular beach, less than two kilometres north west of the city centre. The rehabilitation of Västra Hamnen required a significant soil remediation program to eliminate contaminants from previous industrial uses. The master plan for the Housing Expo site and the remainder of Västra Hamnen was completed by the City Planning Department. The architects aimed to deliver an attractive new neighbourhood that could compete with other types of new developments in the city, where ecologically sustainability was seen as an added bonus. They took into account research findings that demonstrated that close contact with green areas, sun and water could contribute to people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing.

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Figure 36 - Västra Hamnen Masterplan - the Bo01 Expo site is located at the bottom left.

At the southern end of the Bo01 exhibition site, alongside one of the main entry points to the area, a new marina brings the water into the urban environment. Across the whole site, a complex configuration of streets, pedestrian walkways, alleyways and open squares maximises access to water views and sunlight, and provides character and variety for residents and visitors.

Figure 37 – Within the Expo area, small scale streets, pedestrian walkways, alleyways and open squares maximises access to water views and sunlight, and provides character and variety for

residents and visitors.

A total of 18 development and construction teams won tenders to develop individual parcels for the Bo01 exhibition. The housing itself was designed by 22 different architecture firms, with a focus on contrast and diversity. Each project had to comply with a design and environmental quality program, which was devised in partnership by the City, the Bo01 Expo and property developers. It measured 150 factors including architectural standards, choice of materials, energy production and consumption, water collection and recycling and biodiversity and landscape. A major initiative was the City’s commitment to renewable energy and associated measures that aimed to reduce energy consumption within the buildings. Energy consultant Sydkraft devised a 100% local renewable energy concept that provides all the power for the Expo homes, using solar energy, wind power and a heat pump that extracts heat from seawater and a bedrock aquifer. The system is linked to the city electricity grid, so that it can ‘bank’ energy when excess is produced, for use at times of the year when more energy is needed. The energy concept also set a maximum energy consumption

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level of 105 kWh/m2/year for residential use. The wind power plant, called Boel, is 120 m high to the tip of the wings, and is located in the northern harbour at Malmö. The maximum effect is 2 MW and the calculated annual electricity production is 6300 MWh. In the Expo area, 1400 m2 of vacuum solar collectors have been installed on ten buildings, with an annual heat production of 500 MWh. The open stormwater run-off system is also an important contributor to the ecological profile of the Bo01 area. Rain is delayed on green roofs and in ponds in private courtyards and public spaces, before being transported via open channels to the sea. The visible waterways combined with trees and lush undergrowth serve as dynamic and attractive features in what might otherwise have become a sterile urban environment. The area’s waste management system aimed firstly to minimise waste generation, as well as facilitate recycling and enable the use of waste and sewage as energy sources. Waste separation units within each home or development make it easy for residents to sort paper and packaging materials, while each home features one of two food waste reuse systems: in-sink disposal units or a centralised vacuum waste chute system. To date, nearly 600 dwellings have been completed with further residential and commercial construction continuing beyond the original Expo site, to provide new dwellings for an anticipated total of 10,000 residents. Taller buildings painted in pale colours have been positioned along the outer edges of the area to serve as protection against strong winds for the small-scale interior, where more vibrant colours were used for the buildings.

Figure 38 - Along the waterfront, tall buildings painted in pale colours provide a buffer against sea

breezes, while the small-scale interior buildings are painted in more vibrant colours.

Currently under construction adjacent to the Bo01 site, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s Turning Torso is already seen as a new architectural landmark in Malmö. The ‘twisting’ building will reach a height of 190 metres, making it the tallest structure in the city. It will provide 150 apartments and office space over 54 floors, and is due for completion by late 2005. The city’s recently established university is currently building a campus at Västra Hamnen, which will also be occupied in 2005. Eventually the area will accommodate 20,000 workers and students: already 80 large and small businesses have set up premises in the area, employing 6,000 people. The Bo01 Expo site already boasts four restaurants and cafes and six new shops, while a new private school that opened in 2002 will be joined by a public school in 2006.

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The entire area was planned to encourage inhabitants and visitors to use environmentally-friendly transport modes: pedestrians and bicycles have been given priority in the Bo01 housing area, which is car free and boasts just 0,7 parking spaces per household. In future, the city intends to establish a local car sharing facility, using environmentally adapted vehicles, which will enable residents to book a car for a nominated period via the Internet or phone. Every dwelling is located within 300m of a bus stop, which connects the area with several central parts of the city in a service that runs every seven minutes. As part of the Bo01 development, the city trialled a ‘green space’ factor system, which ensured that every private outdoor space, including courtyards and gardens, provided as much vegetation as possible on the ground, walls, roofs and in ponds. The system also promoted the provision of suitable habitats for local flora and fauna, with bat nesting boxes, butterfly flower beds, wild Swedish flower meadows, country gardens and enough soil depth to grow vegetables. As a result of its success at Bo01, the ‘green space’ factor system has been adopted for use at all new residential developments in Malmö, and nearby Lund and Helsingborg. To date, the City of Malmö has granted 290 million Swedish Krona (about $A60 million) for environmentally related investments at Västra Hamnen, through its Local Investment Program (LIP). The funds have largely been used to offset extra costs that have resulted from the City’s high standards for the development, as well as for informative and educational projects. Further support has been given to the project the European Union, for some of the energy measures. The LIP funding was granted on the proviso that scientific reviews and evaluations of Bo01’s urban sustainability initiatives would be carried out, with the intention of capitalising on the experience in the Västra Hamnen area for use in other projects locally and globally. More than 10 universities and colleges are currently involved in evaluating the site, looking at new technologies and how they are used by residents, and perceptions of the housing and surroundings. Other studies are focussing on soil decontamination, traffic, energy, green structures and storm water, building and living, recycling, environmental information and education, and sustainable development. What lessons can be learned from this project? The City of Malmö worked hard to incorporate environmental factors into its newest and largest development area, with excellent outcomes in relation to energy generation and consumption, water collection and runoff, landscaping and biodiversity and public transport and traffic calming. While some of these measures required extra funding at the outset, they have resulted in a more attractive and appealing neighbourhood, and will deliver significant cost savings for residents in future. A further aspect of the planning saw the co-location of public and private homes with commercial and industrial precincts, and educational institutions including two primary schools and a university campus. These mixed uses ensure the area is constantly populated by residents, employees, students and visitors, who act as consumers for local businesses, users of an extensive and frequent public transport system, and as a steady flow of pedestrians who contribute to a sense of public life and the ‘eyes on the street’ approach to security.

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Project: BoKlok Location: Malmö and other parts of Sweden, as well as Finland, Norway

and Denmark Client: Commissioned by private and public clients Developer: BoKlok is a joint venture between construction company

Skanska and furniture company Ikea Architect: BoKlok Builder: BoKlok Cost: 20% less than traditionally constructed homes in Sweden. Commencement date: Concept commenced in 1995 Completion date: ongoing Financing type: Private investment and housing co-operative developers No of units: 6 units per ‘house’ Unit type/s: 2 x 1, 2 and 3 bedroom units per ‘house’ Potential occupants: Private owner occupiers and rental tenants Construction method: Modularised and prefabricated timber framed construction for

erection onsite What makes this project interesting? Two of Sweden’s most successful companies, which both operate globally, have joined forces to develop and build more than 1,500 affordable, modular, timber framed homes across Sweden. Demand is so high for their popular product that BoKlok homes are now allocated by a lottery system. Furniture giant Ikea and construction company Skanska first teamed up in 1995 for a one-off housing exhibition, when the country’s housing sector was depressed and building costs were high. They aimed to demonstrate that it was possible to build houses at a lower cost than current market offerings, with Skanska responsible for construction and Ikea in charge of furnishing the demonstration model. According to Ulrika Nordeberg, Head of R&D at BoKlok, the collaborators turned the practice of home building on its head in the process. “Skanska generally acts as a speculator: they build a product and hope the market will buy it,” she said. “Ikea, on the other hand, starts with market research, and that’s what we decided to do here. “We approached a bank to conduct some customer research, and found that the average household consisted of between one and three people, with one income. We worked backwards, by asking ‘After spending on clothes, childcare, food and bills, what amount is left for living?’” According to responses from 1,000 participants, most people wanted to live in a small development of just a few houses, which offered contact with the garden and a fence around their own yard, as well as an apple tree and room to grow vegetables. Survey respondents also suggested that they wanted to know their neighbours, not live in an anonymous environment; and that cars should be parked nearby but not necessarily in front of houses, with child safety an important consideration. In addition, most participants said that they preferred a maximum height of two floors for flats. Inside, they wanted light filled spaces with big windows, timber floors and quality materials, such as tiles in the bathrooms and ‘nice’ kitchen cabinets.

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Nordeberg said that in the south of Sweden, the most densely populated part of the country, houses tended to be built with brick or stone, and the partners wondered how they could achieve this with a low cost product. “So we looked to Ikea, and the car industry, because normally the building industry designs a new product every time, even for flats,” she said. “We knew that to maintain low cost, we needed volume, and we recognised that there was room in the market for products at both ends of the cost spectrum, like there’s a market for cars from Audi and Skoda, for example. “We asked ‘Who builds for the many people and households with regular income?’” she continued. “We decided therefore to target singles with or without children (given that the divorce rate in Sweden is higher than 50%), couples with or without children, first time buyers, seniors, and people who wish to spend less on housing costs.” Nordeberg said that there was a concern in the early stages of development that the low cost homes would attract only low income residents, and could therefore contribute to the creation of deprived neighbourhoods. “But that proved not to be the case,” she said, “because some people who buy our homes have average to high incomes, but would rather spend their money on other things, such as expensive motorbikes or a flat in the Canary Islands.”

Figure 39 - Each BoKlok 'house' contains a one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartment on the ground

and first floors.

The partners came up with a ‘house’ that contains three different units types arranged in an L-shape, repeated over two floors: a 74m2 three bedroom flat;, a 59m2 two bedroom flat and a 48m2 one bedroom flat. While they are slightly smaller than traditional homes (by comparison, the average three bedroom unit is 78m2 in Sweden), the flats appear more spacious through clever design.

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Figure 40 - Each house contains a one-, two and three-bedroom flat on each floor, and every unit

boasts access to the garden or a balcony.

Each ground floor unit has a door onto the garden while first floor homes all have balconies, and they all boast windows on three sides. Ceiling heights are taller than the 2.4m average, at 2.6m, a fact that Nordeberg said contributed to an extremely positive reaction from potential customers. “In 99.9% of cases, people said ‘I thought it would be much smaller!’, Nordeberg claimed. “We are able to fool the eye into thinking the homes are larger than they are, through the use of natural light and high ceilings. Also, because of the planning expertise that Ikea brought to the project, the homes could be furnished very well and still feel spacious.”

Figure 41= Every room in the apartments benefits from natural light and high ceilings, giving the

illusion of extra space.

By deciding to develop and produce a volume product in a factory, the partners discovered an advantage” we had “time to design the details that you might not have in one off projects,” Nordeberg said. “So we have a product that is of very high quality, because we have time to build up systems you wouldn’t have with one-off homes.”

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In Sweden, factory built houses are common for single family homes, but not so common for multistorey dwellings, although timber framed houses of up to five storeys are built from scratch onsite. Based on their research and subsequent development, Ikea and Skanska commenced phase one of their project in 1996, completing the first three developments in three locations in 1997. Those first sites were developed as rental units, owned and managed by Skanska, with Ikea responsible for post occupancy evaluations and ongoing research. “The first stage that we opened to the public was a very big success: it proved that we could calculate and build for lower costs, and consumer liked how they looked,” Nordeberg said. “In fact the positive response and resulting publicity was so strong that the partners thought ‘What have we done?’” she laughed. In 1998, with a proven business case, Skanska and Ikea formalised their joint venture by establishing the BoKlok brand (which translates as Live Smart) and started building more homes. Originally, the homes were built as flat pack products, where they walls were constructed in a Skanska factory and then assembled onsite. “But in time we realised that that wasn’t the best system, because the onsite stage was not properly industrialised: we still had to rely on the local plumber, painter and electrician, and we couldn’t guarantee the quality or price, which increased the risk,” Nordeberg explained. “So now we build in volume units with another Skanska company, to the point where the kitchen cabinets are installed and the painting is done in the factory, and that gives us much more control over price and quality. BoKlok then has a team of tradespeople who connect the modules onsite.”

Figure 42 – Originally BoKlok homes were flat-packed and assembled onsite (above), but streamlining of the construction process means that houses are now built in modules and

transported to site for installation.

Following the introduction of the second, modular system, in mid 2002, the first method was due to be phased out, but demand for BoKlok homes is high. Nordeberg said that both production lines had sufficient forward orders to run at maximum capacity for at least a year, and to cope with that demand, the flat packed models are still being produced for delivery to Northern Sweden, as they are easier to transport. “One advantage of building homes in the factory means that we can circumvent the retailers when buying building materials, which saves money,” Nordeberg said. “We can also achieve economies of scale by sourcing materials from outside Sweden, because they only have to be delivered to one place. We’ve managed to cut the cost of house building, not through skimping on design or construction quality, but by repetition.”

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What lessons can be learned from this project? Nordeberg said that while it was hard to provide an indicative price for a BoKlok home, because of the impact of variable costs on each development, the homes initially sold at prices 20% lower than traditionally built homes, regardless of the location. She added that BoKlok aimed to reduce the price for consumers even further in future. “There are still a few factors that we can’t control, and we are working to resolve them with external partners,” Nordeberg said. “They include ground preparation at the site, transport, and land costs, and they mean that the cost of a BoKlok home varies according to the site, it’s hard therefore to give an average cost. “Most land in Sweden is owned by the municipality, so we are working with local governments to identify potential sites close to cities, schools, public transport and shopping areas, with the intention of obtaining land at a lower cost so we can pass those savings on to consumers,” Nordeberg said. “We are also in partnership with a bank brand to manage loans for BoKlok homes, so that there is consistency across Sweden: streamlining the cost of finance also lowers the end cost for our consumers.” Currently, once building permissions have been granted, it takes about six months to complete each development, with most of that time spent on ground preparation, Nordeberg said. “The house construction is actually very quick, it’s just two weeks from delivery of the houses to handover to customers, and the roof is on within first day.” By the end of 2003, the company had built more than 1,500 BoKlok homes across Sweden, and had expanded the concept to neighbouring Norway and Finland, with Denmark to be added this year. According to Nordeberg, customer research in each new market had concluded that the concept was suitable for the other Scandinavian countries, although slightly different building regulations in Norway necessitated a change to the layout of the houses. BoKlok is now considering launching the product in the United Kingdom, although Nordeberg said that it might need to be adapted for that market, following customer research. In Sweden, BoKlok developed half of the completed projects and then sold the homes as company title properties, while half were overseen by third party developers and are rental properties. The popularity of the BoKlok product means that both types of development are now in such demand that a lottery system is necessary, whereby new purchasers or tenants are randomly selected from a list of interested parties. Each development features between three and seven ‘houses’, which consist of a one, two and three bedroom flat on the ground and first floors, resulting in between 18 and 42 units per site. Car parking for all the units is at a central point away from the houses, and each unit has its own apple tree and outdoor bench in the garden, as well as storage space on the ground floor. Community facilities include gardens for growing edible plants, and a recycling and garbage unit, and the residents are responsible for managing the communal garden areas, which saves on body corporate fees and assists in community building.

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All new purchasers are entitled to a free consultation with an Ikea interior decorator, who can assist with minor changes to the plan and selection of colours and fittings. Each flat purchaser also receives an Ikea voucher for 3,000 SEK (about $AU650) for new furniture. Nordeberg said that BoKlok homes were guaranteed for 50 years, “and they will last a lot longer than that”. As for working towards ecological sustainable building, she suggested that there was room for improvement. “We acknowledge that our buildings are not the best [in terms of ecological sustainability] because that costs money,” Nordeberg conceded. “If we can incorporate new green building methods without it costing more, we will. At the moment, we meet the Swedish regulations for building, and we are continually assessing new technologies through Skanska’s ISO4000 Quality Assurance programme.” Ultimately, though, the success of the homes is measured in terms of customer satisfaction. “We conduct a telephone interview with all customers three months after they move in,” Nordeberg explained. “We ask them ‘What is the most important quality for your in your home?’, and then ‘How does your BoKlok flat fulfil your expectations?’ Mostly our results are in within the 90-100% range, and twice we have achieved results of 100%,” which is extraordinarily good feedback,” she said.

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4. USA

4.1 Key players in affordable housing The federal government’s Housing and Urban Development (HUD) department sets nationwide housing policy, and provides funding for affordable housing to each state based on its population (at the rate of $1.25 per person per year). It also conducts research about housing need and supply, and publishes national income tables by area, which are used to determine eligibility for affordable housing nationally. State and city governments also have housing and finance agencies that raise funds and administer HUD funding, as well as work with non-profit and for-profit developers to deliver affordable housing, either in stand-alone developments, or as a proportion of market rate developments of a certain size. These government agencies include New York State’s Housing Finance Authority (HFA), New York City’s Housing Development Corporation (HDC), the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHAFA) and the Portland Development Commission (PDC). HDC is a mortgage lender for affordable, multi-family housing that works directly with housing developers and other mortgage lenders to structure low-cost mortgage loans for many different types of affordable housing. HDC raises funds for its mortgage program through the sale of both tax-exempt and taxable bonds in the municipal bond market. Owners of rental affordable housing stock include state or city governments, for profit or non-profit developers, such as Portland’s Rose Community Development Corporation and the Community Corporation of Santa Monica, and corporate entities that develop affordable housing for tax credits. People who require housing assistance generally apply to the city or county government agency responsible for managing affordable housing, such as the City of New York, City of Portland or the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Office. These agencies assess eligibility according to income, against HUD’s published media income data, and need. Within the City of New York, a further agency, Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) uses federal, state and city funds to facilitate the remediation of existing dwellings and the production of new housing, ranking housing alongside bridges and roads in terms of infrastructure priority. While New York City is one of just a few cities that allocate their own capital to housing (most cities use only federal and state funding), this type of agency and its approach may soon be replicated in Boston and Chicago. Another agency that is unique to New York City is the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was established after the terrorism attacks of September 11, 2001, to encourage residents of the lower Manhattan area to remain in the vicinity during the recovery and rebuilding period, and to entice new residents into the area during that time. Industry organisations involved in the delivery of affordable and sustainable housing include the US Green Building Council, which is based in Washington DC and has chapters in more than twenty states. The GBC hosts the annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo, which was held in Pittsburgh in November 2003. In New York, the NY State

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Association for Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH) is a trade organisation for the for-profit development community. There are many housing and sustainability research and development institutes across the USA, including the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) in Colorado, which promotes sustainable building through its Green Building Group, and Global Green USA, which is based in Santa Monica with offices in other cities. One of its four areas of expertise is green building, and it acts as a clearing house for the affordable housing community nationally, and provides consultancy services for affordable housing developers.

4.2 Issues and challenges Current housing demand New York City currently has one of the USA’s most acute housing shortages, and its unique approach to tackling housing problems means that many of its methods are now being replicated in other American cities. The fact that federal spending on public housing has dropped by 66% in real terms of 25 years means that city and state governments have been forced to find alternative funding sources for public housing, and in NYC, there is an acknowledgement that housing is as important as other types of infrastructure, like roads, bridges and schools, and it has been prioritised accordingly. Every city in the USA faces its own set of challenges in meeting housing demand, and factors such as climates, economics and demographics play a different role in each place. In NYC, there is a high level of foreign migration so a significant proportion of housing demand is generated by people who are economically active but earn low to moderate incomes, while on the south west coast in cities like Los Angeles and San Diego, the warmer climate attracts homeless people from across the country, so there is significant demand for housing and support programs for people who have been used to sleeping rough. Because NYC faces many challenges that are similar to those faced in Australia, particularly in Sydney, I have chosen to provide statistics and data about its current housing conditions as a snapshot of the situation in the USA. The city has a population of about 8 million people, and approximately 40% of residents are foreign born. While the USA has an owner-occupier rate of about 68%, the figure is much lower in New York City, at about 30%, meaning that a lot of people rely on rented accommodation. In the past, the city faced issues associated with housing abandonment (like many other major cities in the USA), and many of the agencies and policies of the last 30 years were established to deal with those problems. Today, NYC faces a housing shortage as a result of significant net migration, both from within America and overseas, resulting in a huge demand for both public and private housing. At the same time, the city is constrained by the fact that its most populous borough is an island, and the boundaries of the four other boroughs are also fixed, so that further expansion and infrastructure development is limited. All of these issues combine to create a high problem in the area of housing overcrowding and affordability. For example, nearly half of all New Yorkers pay more than 30% of their income in rent, and nearly 500,000 households pay more than 50% of their income in rent, according to a 1999 Housing and Vacancy Survey by the US Census Bureau. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people live in crowded (more than one person per room) and overcrowded (more than 1.5 persons per room) conditions, and this problem is increasing. The same

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survey found that the number of crowded families increased to 75,715 from 1996 to 1999, and the number of severely crowded to more than 215,000. In addition, the number of doubled-up households increased from 203,000 in 1996 to 221,000 in 1999, an increase of 9.1%. An article written in 2002 by Boston Mayor and President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Thomas M. Menino, about the need for affordable housing across the USA, appears in Appendix B. Current housing stock Housing stock in NYC is in the best physical condition that it has been in since it was first measured in 1965, with only 1% of the housing stock in dilapidated condition. Like many American cities, New York suffered from ‘white flight’ in the 1970s and 1980s, where well-off, generally white, middle class residents fled inner the perceived ‘danger’ of inner city areas for the ‘safety’ of the suburbs. About 27.8% of New York City residents now reside in areas where significant occurred at that time. The City of New York established the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 1978 to deal with this crisis. According to Ilene Popkin, who has been with the agency since that time, 329,000 apartments were lost, forcing 800,000 people from their homes. “Landlords stopped providing services, such as heat and hot water, so tenants fled the buildings, and then the buildings were torched by landlords for the insurance,” Ms Popkin said. She added that parts of Brooklyn, east Harlem and the south Bronx “looked like Dresden after World War II” as a result of the damage inflicted by landlords. The City amended its abandonment laws to enable it to seize possession of buildings whose owners had failed to pay city taxes for 12 months (previously 3 years), and became the owner of 100,000 units overnight, half of which were still occupied and half of which were vacant or derelict. In 1986, the Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch, outlined a 10 year plan to restore and renovate the city’s stock of units, which had by then grown to 179,000 dwellings. The plan was administered by HPD. Popkin said the agency created a pipeline of programs to use public funds and make direct loans to developers for the rehabilitation of buildings. Developers included non-profit organisations, tenant cooperatives and entrepreneurs, and they purchased city-owned buildings for $1, with tax abatement for 10 years, starting with vacant properties, before moving on to occupied unit blocks. Mayor Koch’s plan has been carried forward by every mayor since, regardless of political persuasion, and Popkin said that there were now less than 10,000 of the original units still awaiting redevelopment. This process has resulted in the preservation or creation of more than 200,000 units of affordable housing and spurred a community of academic and financial institutions, not for profit housing and community development organizations, and local and citywide real estate development and management professionals. The entire approach was unique to NYC, and consequently, no other city in the USA boasts the same extensive experience or resources in this area. New housing supply Most housing in New York City is built by the private sector, it is generally priced to exclude the majority of low to moderate income earners, where the Area Median Income is

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$62,800. Both the state and city governments are actively involved in the provision of public housing, and in December 2002, the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, unveiled a new housing policy to address housing issues in the city. The New Marketplace: Creating Housing for the Next Generation plan aims to use public funds to stimulate private investment to the tune of $3 billion over five years, to produce 65,000 new and rehabilitated units, for low- and middle-income New Yorkers. National demand and supply According to an article written by Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston and president of the US Conference of Mayors, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 31 July 2002, the lack of affordable housing was becoming a national crises at that time. Menino wrote: “The poor, the homeless and low-income working families continue to struggle to find decent affordable housing. What is new is the effect of the housing crisis on the nation's middle-income families. The number of middle-income families spending more than half of their income on housing increased by 74 percent between 1997 and 1999. More than 14 million Americans are now forced to spend more than half of their income on housing. In no state today does a full-time minimum-wage job enable most families to pay fair market rent for a moderate two-bedroom apartment. He referred to the capacity of some professional groups to afford housing, and found that janitors were only able to afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment in six of the 60 largest housing markets in the US, while retail salespeople were only able to afford rent in just three of those markets. Also, teachers and police officers could not afford to buy a median-priced home in most major housing markets. Menino argued that “no one can deny the important role that local governments, businesses and nonprofits must play in meeting the housing crisis. Yet it is equally essential for the federal government to address this problem. Drastic housing budget cuts in the 1980s were followed by small budget increases in the 1990s, spurred in part by the rising cost of government-funded housing vouchers. Few resources were devoted to producing new housing. For two decades now, the federal government has walked away from its obligation to preserve the housing we have and build the housing we need. As our mothers taught us, ignoring a problem will not make it go away.” Menino said that America's mayors were united in recognising an affordable-housing crisis and also in demanding action. “Working together, we have proposed a number of steps, including: creating a national homeownership tax credit to make buying a home more affordable; establishing a national affordable-housing trust fund to provide a steady stream of revenue to deal with critical housing needs, as Los Angeles and more than 200 other cities do; promoting expanded housing assistance by employers in the form of down-payment help, low-interest loans and home-buyer education. These proposals alone may not solve our affordable-housing crisis, but they will help. And, equally important, they reflect the mayors' belief that affordable housing is a national priority.”

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4.3 Policies and strategies The City of New York’s New Housing Marketplace The five year plan includes new strategies and existing programs, and will devote more than $3 billion of public funding, from city and federal sources, to affordable housing in New York. The plan aims to bring about the construction of 27,000 new units and the preservation of 38,000 units, for a total of 65,000 dwellings. It represents an increase in production of 25% over the previous five years, and includes new initiatives to encourage private sector investment in housing. The plan is administered by two key housing agencies. Firstly, the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) is responsible for the allocation of approximately $500 million in public funds, which is being used to leverage more than $2.5 billion of private financing, to construct and preserve 17,000 units, as follows:

• The New Housing Opportunities Program (New HOP) The majority of HDCs funding, $350 million, is being channelled through its existing New Housing Opportunity Program (HOP). Under the New HOP, the Corporation issues taxable bonds to provide long-term fixed-rate permanent financing to developers, in addition to providing subsidies of up to $45,000 per unit. In the past, the Program was used to develop rental projects for middle income families who earned between 100% and 250% of the area median income (about $62,800 in 2002), but under the Mayor’s new plan, $60 million worth of New HOP funding was set aside for low- to middle-income families, who earned between 60% and 100% of median income, such as teachers, police officers, fire fighters and health care workers. The Program assists housing developers for new construction, substantial rehabilitation and conversions of non-residential buildings, where projects contain at least 20 units. It is limited to projects located in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island and northern parts of Manhattan.

• Low-Income Affordable Marketplace Program (LAMP) HDC has also committed $100 million to its LAMP scheme, which combines the use of tax-exempt bond financing with Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits and other subsidies, to encourage developers to provide 100% affordable, rental accommodation for people who earn less than 60% of median income. Under the LAMP scheme, HDC provides subordinate loans of up to $50,000 per unit, or $7.5 million per project, which can be utilised with subsidies from other agencies. The Program assists housing developers for new construction, substantial rehabilitation and conversions of non-residential buildings.

• Preservation of existing affordable housing

In the 1960s and 1970s, state and local governments undertook large scale financing of affordable housing projects, such as the Mitchell-Lama developments in New York City. These were developed on 30 year mortgages, after which time ownership and the ability to set market rate rents reverted to the owner of the project. HDC has therefore set aside $50 million to provide funds for the repair and preservation of Mitchell-Lama and other affordable housing resources. It is being used to upgrade heating systems, elevators, windows and roofs in the 30-year old projects,

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and the Corporation is working with the owners of the properties by offering low interest loans, to enable them to renew the properties as affordable housing resources for future generations.

Secondly, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) has redirected $555 million from housing maintenance to new investment in 8,000 units, and its existing budget of $2 billion from the City's housing capital and expense budgets will ensure the creation and preservation of some 40,000 units. Many of the projects that will be funded with the redirected budgets will be made feasible with creative use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits, which will generate more than $200 million in direct equity investments. The Mayor’s plan also aims to provide access to new development sites, to attract private investment in affordable housing across the city by reducing building and land acquisition costs through legislative and administrative changes. These include facilitating the remediation of brownfield sites, implementing rezoning from commercial to residential, increasing density limits, and reforming land disposition policies and regulations. HPD will administer the New Venture Incentive Program, which will provide $200 million in low-interest loans for acquisition, site development and environmental work necessary to accelerate development for new construction. Eligible developers will receive up to $20,000 per unit for a total of approximately 10,000 units. The Department is also responsible for carrying out the Mayor’s plan to work with private housing owners to return about 20,000 vacant units, many of them located above ground floor retail uses and requiring renovation or remediation, to the marketplace, and is collaborating with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to develop affordable housing on NYCHA property that is currently vacant or underutilised for housing purposes.

• Home Ownership The Mayor’s plan also includes incentives to assist New Yorkers into home ownership, such as the HomeFirst Down Payment Assistance Program. Funding totalling $25 million over five years is assisting 2,500 working families in New York City to purchase their first home in targeted neighbourhoods. HPD administers the program and helps families to improve their credit and save for the down payments. New Housing, New York The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the City of New York teamed up to run an architectural competition for affordable housing in 2003-04, in an attempt to showcase innovative design ideas and promote sustainability and architectural quality in affordable housing. According to competition organiser and AIA president-elect, Mark Ginsberg, the competition should prompt the development of “different housing types that are economically viable within existing zoning frameworks”. “It’s alarming to see how many affordable developments look the same,” he said. The competition was framed around three existing development sites in the city, all of which offered different design and construction challenges. “The first site is in East Harlem, and it’s a small plot of 75’ x 100’, surrounded by brownstones that have largely been renovated. The main dilemma there then, is how you build modern housing in an

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existing urban fabric?” Ginsberg said. “The second site is in Brooklyn, where the zoning permits a mid-rise apartment block of seven to 12 floors, with commercial opportunities on the ground floor. The third option is in Queens, and that’s a 10 acre waterfront site: a former industrial site with remediation issues that becomes a site planning exercise, requiring new streets and new thoughts about affordable housing.” American and overseas architects were asked to register their interest by mid December, with final designs for one or more sites due at the end of January. Mr Ginsberg hoped to see developments that tackled ecological sustainability, but acknowledged that it was hard to implement ESD in affordable housing in the city. “The agencies that fund affordable housing in New York place great emphasis on the cost per unit and the number of units they can deliver, so cost becomes the most important factor,” he said. “That makes it hard to incorporate sustainable design in affordable housing: there are some things that you can do without incurring extra costs, but there is much more scope for improvement by spending more upfront.” Mr Ginsberg hoped that a secondary outcome of the competition would be to contribute of the debate about the city’s existing zoning and building codes, which are currently under review. “The city implemented its zoning policy in 1961, and since then there have been piecemeal updates. The building code was introduced in 1968, and has seen updates every three years,” he said. “New York is in the process of is adopting a national model code, as are 26 other states, but that’s an 18 to 24 month process.” He also hoped to challenge the builders and developers, claiming that it was hard for architects to convince their colleagues to implement new ideas, because “people build what they know”. “As an example, the building and planning codes mean that projects tend to have double loaded corridors for efficiency, and we are required to have a corridor on every floor for accessibility, so you can’t design for cross ventilation or duplexes,” he said. ““We hope that the competition might flag some good ideas that might then be used to alter or vary the codes by proposing innovative solutions. “An architectural competition for housing in New York in 1900 spurred on new the law on tenements which were passed in 1903,” he added. “We may be overly ambitious, but we hope to have a similar impact with this competition.”

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4.4 Projects Case Studies Project: Highlands’ Garden Village Location: Denver, Colorado Client: Perry Rose Developer: Perry Rose Architect: Masterplan by Peter Calthorpe, with various firms responsible

for individual housing projects Builder: Wonderland Construction, Mendel Allison Construction

Company (Cottage Hill Senior Apartments) Palace Construction Company (Trocadero Apartments) and others

Cost: $US93.5 million Commencement date: 1998 Completion date: expected – 2005 Financing type: Private investment combined with public funding in the form of

Local tax credits for affordable housing, Historic Preservation Tax Credits, Historic Preservation grants and Environmental sustainability grants, and tax free city, state and federal loans for affordable housing

No of units: 326 Unit type/s: Single family homes (x 52), including some with self-contained

carriage houses (x 20), townhouses (x 54), apartments and loft apartments (x 124), apartments for seniors (63) , cohousing (x 33) as well as retail, live work spaces and community areas

Potential occupants: Market rate owner occupiers, market rate and public housing rental tenants, cohousing owner occupiers

Construction method: Various What makes this project interesting? According to Shelly Poticha, Executive Director of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Highlands’ Garden Village combines more elements of smart growth, such as environmentally friendly construction, affordable housing, parks and walkways, a variety of housing styles, preservation of historic sites and easy access to mass transit in an urban setting, than any other development in the USA. Built on the former site of Denver’s 100 year old amusement park and Botanic Gardens, Elitch Gardens, which moved to a new site in the Platte Valley area in the early 1990s, the project is located just ten minutes drive from the centre of the city, and is situated adjacent to two city bus routes. When the developers purchased the site in 1998, it still contained the carousel and heritage theatre building, which were both preserved for community use, and rollercoasters, and other seasonal buildings which were demolished. The master plan by new urbanist authority Peter Calthorpe combines several housing types, including single family homes, townhouses, apartments, live/work spaces and one of America’s few cohousing communities. It also features community buildings, significant open parkland, and in 2004, a retail offering including a major supermarket and speciality shops will be completed. The development has been knitted into its surrounding neighbourhood by extending existing streets through the site and positioning single family homes on the boundaries, with apartments and townhouses located within the site.

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Figure 43 - 36th Street - Highland's Garden Village has been knitted into its surroundings by

positioning single family homes on the edge of the development, and extending neighbourhood streets through the site.

A significant contributor to the success of the plan was the decision to reduce the width of streets from the Denver minimum of 36’ to 32’. While the developer struggled to obtain consent from the approval authority for this measure, it was eventually granted, and in fact has set a precedent for two new major urban developments in Denver, at Stapleton and Lowry. The narrower streets, which wind across the site, help to calm traffic, and garages are alley loaded so as to minimise the impact of driveways and garage doors on the streets. The calmer streets offer enhanced opportunities for walking throughout the site, and most roads were designed to terminate with views, of the theatre, carousel, cohousing, and parklands. Following on from the environmentally sensitive master plan, the homes themselves are also designed to be 25% more energy efficient than their counterparts in Denver, even exceeding Colorado’s Build Green standards and Energy Smart program. As a result, residents can expect to save up to $US525 a year on their utility bills.

Figure 44 - Live Work Apartments opposite the Plaza, nearing the end of construction in November

2003.

Figure 45 - Inside, the Live Work Apartments feature energy efficiency measures which could save

their owners up to $525 a year on utility bills.

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Green building design and construction attributes include: • Energy efficient mechanical systems, water heaters and household appliances • Built-in kitchen recycling centres • Double glazed energy efficient windows • Wind generated electricity for use in community buildings and parks • Advanced sealing of units to minimise heat loss during winter and gain during summer • Recycled materials used for outdoor structures, decking and landscaping • Low VOC paints and glues • Low water use plumbing fixtures • Compact fluorescent lighting • Use of farm produced engineered wood and engineered wood I joists in floor and roof

trusses • Use of flyash concrete • Recycled materials such as OSB for sub flooring and exterior walls, reconstituted

siding for exterior walls, recycled carpet and padding, recycled content insulation Green landscape attributes include: • Community parks and gardens feature edible plants, increase permeable surfaces and

encourage walking and jogging • 30 tonnes of concrete recycled for reuse as road base • Conservation of many existing gardens and trees • Xeriscaped tree lawns and water conserving vegetation throughout the development Accommodation at Highlands’ Garden Village was designed to cater for a range of household types and income levels. One third of the 52 single family homes also include self-contained carriage units above the garages, which can be used as home offices, or to provide intergenerational living options for grandparents or teenager or young adults, or rented to third party tenants for extra income. At the Cottage Hill Senior Apartments , 40% of the units are subsidised rates for people whose income is 60% or less than the area median. They range in price from $US523 per month for a one bedroom low income unit to $1,075 for a market rate two bedroom unit.

Figure 46 - Garages are accessed from rear alleys, and one third feature carriage houses above

them: self contained units for accommodation or home offices.

The Hearthstone Cohousing Community provides 33 homes in townhouses and single story units, built around a central community house that includes a gourmet kitchen and dining facilities so that all residents can eat meals together. It also features a playroom and laundry facilities and is located on the edge of a private park. Hearthstone is the only cohousing community within a new urbanist development in America.

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Figure 47 – Heathstone Cohousing offers 33 dwellings set around a private park and community

house (above right), where a kitchen, dining room, laundry facilities and playroom can be enjoyed by all residents.

The Trocadero Apartments comprise 74 units in four three-storey buildings, which were designed to resemble individual townhouses. Residents of the one and two bedroom apartments also have access to a clubhouse with health facilities, and a conference and business centre. At the Trocadero, 25% of apartments are affordable for people whose income is 50% of the area median income.

Figure 48 - Trocadero Apartments were designed to resemble individual town homes, and feature

some undercover car parking (above left).

The project also provides a range of community facilities including the Elitch Gardens Theatre, built in the late 1800s, which is currently awaiting renovation (a non-profit heritage group has already raised $2m of the $7m needed for the job); the Carousel, which is used for weekly Growers’ Markets in the summer, as well as jazz and chamber music concerts; and the Plaza, which is used for open air movies in the summer and other community events throughout the year. The floor of the Carousel is painted with a medieval labyrinth for meditation, which is used by some residents on a regularly basis. A children’s playground is located near the middle of the site, adjacent to the cohousing development,

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Figure 49 - Community facilities include the historic Elitch Theatre (top left), Carousel (top right) and

children's playground (bottom).

The park at the north east corner of the site, which was the main entrance to the amusement park, was fully retained, and still acts as the main pedestrian entry point. It was renovated and replanted with assistance from the Denver Botanic Gardens, who helped to design a water conservation landscape. The same principles have been used across the site, which features many small open spaces, and places to grow edible plants.

Figure 50 - Highlands' Garden Village provides open spaces, including places to grow edible plants

(above left) and for informal community interaction (above right).

In the Plaza in front of the theatre, buffalo grass was used in preference over bluegrass, as it requires only 1/6 of the water needed to keep it green, and is more drought resistant. As the lowest part of the site, a detention basin sits below the Plaza, to collect stormwater runoff from the entire site for slow release into the city’s draining system. Another collection point, in the form of an attractive wetlands pond, sits within the car park that serves the Trocadero Apartments.

Figure 51 - The rear car park at the Trocadero apartments features a landscaped detention pond for

stormwater collection.

The site is well served by public transport, with two major bus routes connecting it to the city. Initially, the developers sponsored the use of the Zipcar system, a car pool service

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using electric vehicles that members can rent for $US4.00 per hour plus 40 cents per mile, but with only 14 members after two years, it became unviable to continue. According to Charles Perry, one of the development partners, the project was seen as risky when it was first announced. “We took it to market in late 1990s, when the housing market in Denver was very strong, and local homes were selling for $75,000 to $80,000,” Mr Perry said. “Homes at Highlands’ Garden Village were priced between $210,000 and $400,000, and they all sold.” As a testament to the success of the project’s unique design and environmental attributes, sale prices increased 25% per year between 1999 and 2002, against a neighbourhood average of just 10% growth. On the rental front, apartments at HGV boast a 99% occupancy rate, compared to a Denver average of 88%. “Sometimes in these urban infill sites, you take a risk at the front end,” Mr Perry said, “and this time we got lucky.” What lessons can be learned from this project? The Highlands’ Garden Village is an extremely successful example of how new developments can meet environmental, social and financial objectives. By adopting energy efficient design principles and through the extensive use of ecologically sensitive and recycled materials, the homes save their owners money and reduce their impact on the environment. By using all of the available public funding and resources, the project provides affordable homes for a range of people from young couples and families to seniors. Best of all, the developers, who put together what seemed to be a high-risk program on an infill site with heritage considerations, expect to make a 10% return per year on their investment. According to development partner Charles Perry, the company’s operations in four main areas are key to its success. Perry Rose is mainly engaged in: 1. Developments on its own behalf. Starting with the Denver Dry Good Store redevelopment using Affordable Housing and Historic Preservation Tax Credits in the early 1980s, it has since completed 20 projects in Denver alone using those combined sources of public funding; 2. Fee-based developments for third party clients 3. Planning and design projects for third party clients, and 4. Property and Asset Management, with 750 units under its control at present. Mr Perry said that the firm was currently looking for a new site to carry out another project like Highlands’ Garden Village in Denver, and is also active in New York City and Sante Fe, Albequerque, where current projects include tribal housing for native Americans. The company is also looking to buy existing housing projects that were developed 30 years ago as Section 8 housing with a 30 year affordability mortgage, to rehabilitate and preserve them for future affordable use. Mr Perry said that while every kind of development had its own set of risks, the firm had become expert at affordable housing developments. “For a private developer, affordable housing actually has less market risk than market rate rental properties,” Mr Perry said. “For example, the Denver private rental market is at its worst ever point at the moment, with only 88% of private rental homes currently leased. When the private market suffers higher vacancy rates, they have to accept lower rental returns. However, in affordable housing, you have more predictable rents and the occupancy rates are higher, so you can use affordable housing to provide a cushion from market rate slumps in the downtimes.

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Effectively you create a rate of return that is a little bit lower than the private market rate, but is a lot more stable and predictable.” Mr Perry said that it was important to combine affordable housing projects with market rate housing to ensure the success of the development over the long term. “We don’t like 100% affordable housing developments, because projects that are just for one market don’t age well, and they become stereotyped by the community,” he said. ”Also, they don’t create sense of community, and the sense of diversity that people who want urban lifestyles desire. “So we have come up with a set of techniques where we combine affordable housing with market rate homes, which provide a marginal subsidy for the affordable component,” he explained. “For example, we might take a profit of $40,000 from a market rate townhouse lot, and only $10,000 from an affordable housing lot, so there’s some degree of internal subsidy that you’re able to accomplish through mixed use and mixed income developments.” Mr Perry said that ultimately, the intricacies of putting together a deal were more subtle than straightforward subsidies though. “It’s more a question of understanding the [various government] financing programs, and using them to fill the gaps between the rate of return on an affordable housing product, and the market rate product,” he asserted. “Despite the complexity of the affordable housing development framework, the end product can help you weather downmarket cycles in the private sector.” Project: Colorado Court, Location: Santa Monica, California Client: Community Corporation of Santa Monica Developer: Community Corporation of Santa Monica Architect: Pugh+Scarpa Builder: Ruiz Brothers Construction Company Cost: $US4.3m Commencement date: not known Completion date: April 2002 Financing type: City of Santa Monica – affordable housing finance and land

provision, City of Santa Monica and Regional Energy Efficiency Program funding for energy efficiency elements (approximately $US500.000)

No of units: 44 Unit type/s: Studio units over 5 floors Potential occupants: CCSM clients who meet eligibility criteria who earn less than 35% and 40% of median area income. Rents are between $337 and $386 per month, compared to $1,100 for a market rent studio flat. Construction method: Ground floor concrete, wood stud framing first floor and above with prefab concrete panels. What makes this project interesting? On an awkward site with three street frontages, including one on the Santa Monica Freeway, Pugh+Scarpa Architects have created an energy efficient affordable housing complex that makes the most of Californian sunshine and Santa Monica breezes. The architects first applied passive solar and ventilation principles to achieve internal comfort. Large access balconies on the south front provide shading, while operable windows

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positioned above the front door provide access for cross ventilating breezes. The apartments feature 10’ ceilings to enhance the sense of space, and there are few windows located on the western façade, while large openings on the north side provide light without heat. These measures mean that air-conditioning is only required in one small area of office space. In addition, the building employs active energy efficiency measures that result in the project generating 50% of its electricity requirements, and producing all of the domestic hot water needed for sinks, showers and radiators from waste heat. It uses a 30KW photovoltaic system, with panels on three of the site’s four buildings and the rooftop, and a 28kW gas-fired micro turbine with cogeneration (heat recovery) system. This combination makes the system more efficient than a single mode system, according to architect Angie Brooks. “Photo voltaic systems have a long payback period, while the payback for the micro turbine is short,” she said. “’It therefore makes financial sense to increase the efficiency of the PV through the addition of a micro turbine”.

Figure 52 - Colorado Court features PV panels on three western walls and the roof, as well as a gas-

fired micro turbine, to make it 92% energy self sufficient.

According to project architect Angie Brooks, external materials that would require little long-term maintenance were specified, such as exposed concrete, precoloured concrete blocks, stucco with integral pigment that never needs painting and shade screening made from galvanised metal. Outside, long-lasting compact fluorescent lights were installed, with motion sensors in public spaces to further save energy. Inside the units, materials included low VOC paints, 25% recycled carpet, cabinets that use plastic laminate and formaldehyde free MDF for low off-gassing, which all combine to improve indoor air quality over traditional materials. Refrigerators are provided in each unit, and super high energy efficient models from GE were purchased, at a comparable cost to regular fridges. The development features a permeable gravel alley and underground stormwater retention system to collect 95% of rainfall, enabling slow percolation into the ground water, rather than running off via stormwater drains. Landscaping uses drought tolerant plantings, and the garden is watered via a drip irrigation system with seasonal adjustment. Careful design meant that all of the existing trees on the block were preserved, with just one palm relocated during the course of construction. Parking spaces are located underneath the building to reduce the heat island effect. What lessons can be learned from this project? The combined passive and active energy efficiency measures at Colorado Court mean that the “payback for the whole project is les than ten years”, according to architect Angie Brooks.

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By partnering with local utility companies, the developers were able to offset the additional cost of some of the environmental measures. The Regional Energy Efficiency Initiative (a joint program of Southern Californian Edison and the Cities of Irvine and Santa Monica) uses a public goods surcharge from utility bills to fund energy efficiency demonstration projects, and committed $250,000 to this project, while the City of Santa Monica contributed a similar amount to the cost of the energy generation systems, ie the PV and micro turbine elements. The City’s Public Works Department paid for the stormwater retention system as part of its program to capture stormwater on key sites to prevent urban pollution runoff into the bay. While the developer had hoped to export net energy to the grid for monetary credit, the energy utility has a policy in place that only allows credits to accrue from one renewable energy source, and Colorado Court uses two (PV and the gas-fired micro turbine) so is ineligible. Even if it had been able to export energy to Southern California Edison, there is a disparity in the cost, with the utility paying less than 2 cents per KWH, while it charges customers 15 cents / KWH for electricity. Ms Brooks said that the architects would have preferred to provide polished concrete floors in the project, over carpeting, to avoid the health problems associated with carpets, and to save money. However, she explained, it is common for affordable housing projects to offer carpet for perceptions of comfort, and for extra soundproofing. The architects also suggested natural linoleum flooring in place of synthetic vinyl in kitchen and bathroom areas, but initially the first cost of linoleum was seen as prohibitive. Eventually the developer was able to negotiate a lower cost for the lino, by purchasing it from the same supplier as the partially recycled carpet. The site demonstrated that it was possible to save 75% of construction waste, and the City of Santa Monica has since introduced legislation to force all new construction projects to achieve recycling targets or pay financial penalties for non-compliance. Project: 5th Street Housing Location: Santa Monica, California Client: Community Corporation of Santa Monica Developer: Community Corporation of Santa Monica Architect: Koning Eizenberg Architects Builder: not known Cost: $US3.52m Commencement date: not known Completion date: April 1998 Financing type: Tax credit funding for affordable housing No of units: 32 Unit type/s: 22 x three bedroom townhouses at ground level, 10 x two and four bedroom disabled access units located above the townhouses Potential occupants: Moderate income families, and disabled people requiring modified homes Construction method: not known What makes this project interesting? The 5th Street family housing project provides affordable accommodation in the heart of Santa Monica, with ten units specifically designed and offered to disabled residents,

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According to architect Julie Eizenberg, the location of the disabled access residents on the top floor may seem counterintuitive, but residents on the third floor can access the ground and lower parking levels via an elevator, and the complex only requires one above-grade access walkway. The ground floor townhouses are thereby able to take advantage of large side yards to provide generous outdoor spaces for the majority of the units, while the footprint of the townhouses is generous enough to provide large decks for the third floor units. The buildings are organised around a common courtyard which features play equipment for children, and an internal walk street. This area is overlooked by front doors and kitchen windows, thereby providing “eyes on the street” and increased community interaction. The project won an AIA California Design Merit Award in 2000. What lessons can be learned from this project? 5th Street uses passive solar and cross ventilation to create comfortable apartments with an abundance of natural light. Drawing on environmental design principles, it also provides family friendly accommodation with semi private and private spaces for each unit. The project cleverly combines large family homes over two levels with single level apartments for disabled residents, offering potential social benefits from increased interaction among a diverse population. Underground car parking keeps the ground level free for community interaction and play areas, while providing ample space for planting of large trees for shade and amenity.

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Conclusions The most successful affordable and sustainable housing projects I saw during the course of my Fellowship were mixed tenure, mixed use projects, which benefited from considerable government support. That support took the form of assistance with planning and development or financial assistance via grants, or incentives through tax credit programs or tax abatement, or a combination of all these factors. The sustainability of such projects was often measured in a triple bottom line sense – taking into account environmental, social and economic factors. To this end, some projects were not the greenest in terms of construction, but combined access to transport, jobs, schools and health facilities to provide comfortable, safe, and convenient places for people to live. The people I met with agreed that in order to create the foundations for sustainable communities, it is imperative that amenities such as transport, health facilities, schools and childcare, and formal and informal meeting places, are provided when the first residents move in. Otherwise, they argued, new residents form detrimental habits, such as driving to buy groceries when they could work, or driving to work instead of taking public transport, which are hard to break once the facilities are provided. The projects that were the most green, in a planning, design and construction sense, had moved away from purely financial reporting, to a position of acknowledging the higher upfront cost of the green attributes and selling the benefits of lower operating costs over the life of the building. Many of the people I met during the course of the trip emphasised that residents of public or social housing projects have the most to gain from living in environmentally sensitive homes: by paying less for utilities, those residents can reduce the proportion of their income spent on housing related costs, and thereby potentially accelerate their transition into private accommodation. It became apparent that new construction methods, such as flat-packed homes and modular construction, are offering real benefits that go beyond simply being cheaper (which in some cases, they are not). They encourage people to work in construction trades by providing better quality working environments; they are often more suitable for tight or difficult sites, or infill construction where nearby residents would be disturbed by noise and dust over a long period should traditional construction be employed; they are often faster, and offer significant savings through repetition; quality can be controlled in the factory ensuring fewer defects upon completion; and materials can be sourced more efficiently because they only have to be delivered to one site. Of course, some of the savings are offset by transport costs (which would be more significant in a country as large and sparsely populated as Australia than in Sweden or the United Kingdom), and it is possible that unforeseen problems during the installation process can negate the earlier gains. Architect Julie Eizenberg warned against adopting change too easily, and reminded me that new policies have to consider all the players, from developers to buyers, governments to residents, banks to insurance companies. As for disseminating my findings, to date I have included some of the largest projects Iv visited (Greenwich Peninsula, Malmo’s Bo01 Expo and Vastra Hamnen and Helsinki’s Viikki Ecological Neighbourhood) in Building Australia’s Jan/Feb 2004 issue. The same

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issue also included an eight-page section on the Greenbuild Conference and Expo, for the benefit of the construction industry readers who will profit from it most. The March 2004 issue will include a special report on modular and prefabricated construction, and other topics of interest, such as affordable housing, will feature throughout this year. I also intend to present my findings in person to university students and professional colleagues this year. Lastly, I would be pleased to make myself available to any reader of this report who wishes to know more about any project or policy that I learned about during the course of my trip.

Recommendations • First and foremost, Australia needs underlying support from the federal government

for the concept of sustainable development. It is imperative that national leaders believe in the cause, and act appropriately. In a big picture sense, Australia needs a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, more renewable energy R&D and implementation, strategies and policies that aim to reduce consumption of water, energy, waste and resources, and changes to financial structures that will incentivise industry and the community to pursue sustainable goals.

• In areas where land supply for further housing development is limited, national and

local governments could conduct surveys of existing uses and vacant sites to maximise density and provide new opportunities for affordable housing. Sites that offer opportunities for development of air space are worthy of particular investigation, such as supermarkets, petrol stations, low rise retail strips etc.

• Dense sites and neighbourhoods have more chance of achieving sustainability:

large populations are need to support local shops, schools, public transport options, health facilities and other community amenities. Governments need to ensure that future development sites are planned to achieve densities that will support the infrastructure that is needed to make local communities sustainable.

• Some governments, such as the Greater London Authority, have mandated the

inclusion of an affordable housing component in EVERY new development of a certain size (in this case, 15 units). While developers argue that the regulation is in effect just a tax on their profits, if is worthy of consideration. From discussions with government representatives and developers in London, the key to its success is to level the regulation consistently across the entire area, so that the costs are known upfront and can be incorporated in the project, rather than dealing with councils on a case-by-case basis on each application, which creates uncertainty and increases risk for the development community, and can result in stifling development.

• As for the provision of adequate affordable housing, state governments have an

obligation to work with private developers who wish to purchase publicly owned land, to ensure that affordable housing is provided as part of a mixed use, mixed tenure development, rather than simply focussing on maximising financial return through private sale.

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• In most countries I visited, the development of public housing has devolved from government responsibility and is now carried out by specialist for profit and not-for-profit agencies. The fact that state governments are still the major procurers of public housing in Australia means that they have an incredible opportunity to push the adoption and implementation of green building techniques and technologies. If state government housing providers were to mandate the inclusion of renewable energy systems and water recycling solutions on all new public housing, and renovations of existing homes, they could contribute to the creation of critical mass for those technologies, thereby making them more accessible for everyone. Government also has a significant opportunity to test and trial new technologies, as the owner of large tracts of rental accommodation, and could conduct ongoing user research for the benefit of industry and the community generally over time.

• The rehabilitation of public and affordable housing neighbourhoods in Finland,

Sweden and the USA is providing an opportunity to revitalise down-at-heel areas and give residents a new reason to be proud of their surroundings. In Finland, the government is investing money in new environmentally friendly technologies such as heating and hot water systems, while in Finland and Sweden, the owners of public housing are working to eliminate problems associated with indoor air quality through eradicating damp and mould. Simple measures can have significant impacts on the lives of residents.

• The federal government should consider the efficacy of the First Home Owners

Grant, and consider the introduction of other mechanisms to assist moderate income residents into home ownership. Some examples include low-cost mortgages, state mortgage guarantees, shared ownership schemes, assistance with closing costs, tied-employee housing etc. I am eagerly awaiting the report from the Productivity Commission inquiry into Affordable Housing, and any subsequent action, in this regard.

• Advances in modular and prefabricated construction offer the Australian

construction industry plenty of scope for improvement, for example, providing enhanced working conditions, improvements to quality and defect control, and through cost and efficiency measures. While Australia probably doesn’t have the population or geographical suitability for a Yorkon or a BoKlok-type product, the industry could benefit from efficiencies arising from modularisation and prefabrication of many elements of the traditional building process.

• At a community level, companies and organisations of all types and size can adopt

a Fully Sustainable Workplace policy, like the Portland based architecture firm SERA is currently implementing. Personal responsibility can go a long way towards reducing waste, saving water and electricity, and contributing towards the reduction of greenhouse gases.

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Appendices Appendix A – London housing statistics 1. Homelessness According to the London Housing Board’s Homes and Communities in London report of 2003, London has the highest concentration of families in priority need in England: At the end of March 2003, there were nearly 59,000 households living in temporary accommodation in London, amounting to 60% of the national total. The need for additional affordable housing is borne out by the number of people on council waiting lists for social rented housing – more than 226 households in London in April 2002 – representing a 25% increase in five years. About two-thirds of homeless households need a permanent home with two or more bedrooms. 2. Housing Affordability House prices and rents in London have increased at faster rates than incomes, leading to serious housing affordability issues in the capital. Between 1995 and 2002, the average house price in London increased by 115%, from £96,000 to £205,850. In 2002, a single annual gross salary of more than £55,000 would be needed to buy an average home: the average London salary is £34,777. The households most adversely affected by these changes to the housing market are those with low to moderate incomes between £15,000 and £35,000. These households are generally unable to afford market rate housing but do not qualify for social rented housing either. According to the Housing Commission, this situation is creating profound recruitment and retention difficulties for London’s key public services and some private firms. For example, primary school teachers earn an average salary of £26,360, staff nurses earn about £21,900 a year, postal workers earn about £21,180, and bus or coach drivers earn £19,430. None of these workers could afford to buy an average priced home, even in London’s cheapest borough. The Housing Commission concluded that the lack of affordable housing in London has become a fundamental market failure, which is undermining the region’s sustainable economic development, and is unlikely to improve in the future without urgent and significant strategic input from all levels of government. 3. Population growth According to the GLA’s Draft London Plan, London’s population is expected to grow by 700,000, or 311,000 households (based on current average household sizes) between 2001 and 2016. This equates to 20,700 new homes per year to handle population growth alone. Research conducted by the Housing Commission suggested that 24% of those new households (approximately 5,000 units) would require social rented housing.

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Appendix B Web addresses for organisations and projects featured in this report: United Kingdom Allford Hall Monaghan Morris www.ahmm.co.uk Bill Dunster Architects www.zedfactory.com Cartwright Pickard Architects Not known Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment

www.cabe.org.uk

English Partnerships www.englishpartnerships.co.uk EPR Architects www.epr.co.uk Greater London Authority www.london.gov.uk Housing Corporation www.housingcorp.org.uk. Hyde Housing Association www.hyde-housing.co.uk London Borough of Greenwich www.greenwich.gov.uk London Borough of Islington www.islington.gov.uk Meridian Delta Limited www.meridiandeltaltd.com Office of the Deputy Prime Minister www.odpm.gov.uk Peabody Trust www.peabody.org.uk Piercy Conner Architects www.piercyconner.co.uk Proctor and Matthews Architects www.proctorandmatthews.com Raines Dairy www.yorkon.com/rainescourt Yorkon www.yorkon.com/ Finland City of Helsinki Planning Department www.hel.fi/ksv/english Housing Fund of Finland (ARA) www.ara.fi Ministry of the Environment www.environment.fi Sweden BoKlok www.boklok.se (Swedish text only) City of Malmö www.Malmö.se, www.ekostaden.com New York, NY City of New York - Housing Preservation and Development

www.nyc.gov/hpd

GF55 Architects www.gf55.com Housing Development Corporation www.nychdc.com Housing Finance Authority www.nychomes.org/hfa/hfa.htm Lower Manhattan Development Corporation www.renewNYC.com NYSAFAH www.nysafah.org Stephen Tilly Architecture www.stillyarchitect.com State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA)

www.nychomes.org/sony/sonyma.html

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Green Build Conference and Expo www.greenbuildexpo.com Denver, Colorado Aspen / Pitkin County Housing Office www.aspenhousingoffice.com Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHAFA)

www.colohfa.org

Cottle Graybeal Yaw Architects www.cgyarchitects.com Perry Rose www.rose-network.com Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) www.rmi.org

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Portland, Oregon Brewery Blocks, Portland www.breweryblocks.com City of Portland www.ci.portland.or.us/mayor Gerding/Edlen Development Company www.ge-dev.com Portland Development Commission www,pdc.us Environmental Building Supplies www.ecohaus.com Office of Sustainable Development www.green-rated.org ROSE Community Development Corporation

www.rosecdc.org

SERA Architects www.serapdx.com Shiels Obletz Johnsen www.sojpdx.com Los Angeles, California Community Corporation of Santa Monica www.communitycorp.org Global Green USA www.globalgreen.org Koning Eizenberg Architects www.kearch.com Pugh+Scarpa Architects www.pugh-scarpa.com

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Appendix C Other policies and strategies Some policies and strategies I came across didn’t make into the Fellowship report, but I would be happy to provide readers with extra information about the following programs: NY’s Housing Development Corporation is assisting in the creation of affordable housing in some of the most desirable locations in the city, to ensure low-income residents can live near where they work, through the Tax-exempt 80/20 Program. Developers can access low cost finance, providing 20% of the units in their project to low-income tenants earning no more than 50% of area median income in exchange. Alternatively, 25% of the units may be reserved for low-income tenants earning no more than 60% of area median income. To date, the program has been successful in creating affordable units in otherwise high-cost areas, but it is limited by the availability of tax-exempt bond allocations each year. Therefore, HDC created a Taxable 80/20 Program, whereby it offers a subsidy, in the form of a second mortgage at 1% for 20 years, of $20,000 per low-income unit. This enables the building owner to keep 20% of the units reserved for low-income tenants earning no more than 80% of area median income, thus making those units affordable to low and moderate-income tenants. In August 2002, the New York state and city governments announced a new federal funding package for Lower Manhattan, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The $US8 billion Liberty Bond Program initiative provides low cost, tax-exempt bond financing for major projects to revitalise the affected area, which has been defined as south of Canal Street, East Broadway (east of its intersection with Canal Street), and Grand Street (east of its intersection with East Broadway). Up to $US1.6bn has been earmarked for residential development within the zone, with the New York State Housing Finance Agency (HFA) and New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) each responsible for issuing $800m. The housing sector of the program seeks to create multifamily residential rental and complementary retail development, attract new residents to New York City, and encourage environmentally responsible design and construction. Eligible projects may consist of new construction, conversion of a commercial facility, or substantial renovation of an existing residential facility. Rehabilitation expenditures must equal at least 50% of the amount of New York Liberty Bonds. Both HDC and HFA are requiring an additional public benefit as part of the Liberty Bond Program: HDC will impose additional fees to be used to preserve and create affordable housing throughout the City, while HFA will require that at least 5% of the units be affordable to moderate income families. The State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA) administers a Low Interest Rate Mortgage Program for low- to moderate-income first home buyers, and the Achieving the Dream Program for low-income first home buyers. Mortgages can be taken out for up to 97% of the purchase value and have an interest rate 1-2% points lower than market rates. Eligibility criteria include credit standards and maximum purchase prices. Some programs also offer closing cost assistance loans for amounts up to 5% or $5,000 to cover attorneys fees, taxes etc, that are only repayable if the property is sold within the first nine years. SONYMA completes about 5,000 loans every year, with a total value of about $450 – 520 million, and they are funded through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. Successful borrowers who put down a deposit of 5% or less are compelled to attend a homebuyer education course.

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In Denver, Colorado, CHAFA runs the state’s affordable housing program using federal Low Income Tax Credits, to encourage the construction, rehabilitation and preservation of rental housing for low and moderate income households, who earn up to 60% of the area median income. It also administers the Colorado Brownfields Program, using a Revolving Loan Fund, to assist with environmental remediation of contaminated commercial sites for new uses including housing. CHAFA also runs programs to assist low and moderate income residents, and disabled citizens, into home ownership, using programs such as MRB First Step, Taxable Income Opener, Home Access and Home Access Plus. Eligible applicants must initially attend an education program to learn about home ownership and how to maintain a home. The Authority also publishes guidelines and resources for employers in rural resort regions about housing employees, providing information about how to access to programs and funding streams. The Rocky Mountain Institute, in Snowmass Colorado, is a research organisation that develops blueprints for a sustainable future, and acts as a consultant to private clients in green building. Huston Eubank, an architect with RMI’s Green Development Services, is the secretary of the World Green Building Council, and is working to establish new GBCs in countries around the world, as well as facilitating the global sharing of information and research about green building. In Aspen, Colorado, where median house prices are between $5 – 7 million, the Aspen/Pitkin County Employee Housing Program provides housing for workers at all income levels, ranging from cleaners and babysitters to doctors and lawyers. The program uses funds from a real estate transfer tax and city taxes, and builds new affordable housing as well as buying existing housing for affordable use. The county’s green building guidelines mean that all new affordable housing developments must comply with an Efficient Building Program Checklist, which measures indicators such as construction, demolition and use of resource efficient materials, land use and water conservation, framing and materials, energy measures, insulation, HVAC, solar, indoor air quality and rewards projects that demonstrate innovation. In Portland, Oregon, the Portland Development Commission (PDC) oversees the implementation of the Green Building Policy for all new and major retrofitted buildings, and all city-funded projects, such as affordable housing developments, which must comply with standards set out in LEED. Working with the city’s Office of Sustainable Development, the PDC has published guidelines for affordable housing, called Greening Portland’s Affordable Housing. The PDC also carries out research into green buildings, and acts as a disseminator of information about improve environmental performance in all types of buildings, including housing. The city’s Office of Sustainable Development conducts research, development and education programs to encourage home owners and builders to adopt green building practices, and maintains the G-rated website for that purpose.. The Portland based architecture firm SERA is involved in the design of green buildings, including affordable housing, and has adopted an internal office policy to ensure a sustainable workplace. The SERA Fully Sustainable Workplace was developed with employee input, and addresses aspects such as energy, chemicals, plastics, metals and glass, travel, paper, food, furniture, fixtures and equipment, materials library and human resources. To date the office has eliminated harmful products such as foam core, plastic cutlery, drinking vessels and lunch wrappings, and intends to add disposable writing implements to its banned list. The firm has also implemented a worm bin, tracking of daily

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transportation for CO2 offsets, and is currently working toward energy efficient lighting, a sustainable library, energy star appliances and minimising plotting and printing. Global Green USA, based in Santa Monica, California, is the US affiliate of Green Cross International, and organisation established by Mikhail Gorbachev to create a sustainable future, by cultivating harmonious relationships between humans and the environment. GG USA works with the designers, developers and operators of affordable housing across the country to encourage the adoption of green building strategies and materials. The organisation developed the Greening Affordable Housing Initiative and conducts workshops around the country, collaborates with other organisations such as Habitat for Humanity, acts as a consultant to affordable housing developers, shares information on financing streams and funding resources among housing developers, and lobby’s governments on policy initiatives such as tax credits. It also publishes leaflets, such as 8 Steps to Funding Green, and case studies on green projects such as Colorado Court, to promote green building among the affordable housing development community.

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Appendix D Other projects Some projects I visited didn’t make it into the Fellowship in the report, but I would be happy to provide readers with extra information about the following developments: 1. Madison Court, East Harlem, New York

2. Burnham Factory - Affordable Housing and Public Library, Irvington, New York

3. Benedict Commons, Aspen

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4. Burlingame, Aspen, Colorado

5. Museum Place, Portland, Oregon

6. Brewery Blocks, Portland, Oregon

7. Rose Community Development Corporation projects in Portland No pictures available