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4. Alternative Financial Structures for Affordability
Architects are not in a position to reinvent the world’s economic system, but they can challenge the way buildings are design, financed, procured, rented, and sold in order to provide affordable housing for poorer communities and ensure that public spaces remain free to all.
To achieve alternative financial structures, architects will need to work closely with the government, ethical investors, NGO’s and philanthropists to ensure that capital is leveraged to its greatest effectivity to design healthy and comfortable buildings for those in need.1
Housing is the typology mostly attributed to concerns of equity and availability, but commercial spaces in gentrifying areas are also becoming unrentable to small business owners who are forced to move away from their clientele.2 Low income earners must be provided with various alternatives for purchasing a home.
The Nightingale model offers reduced prices for traditional ownership methods by minimising the overall expense through cutting out middlemen and carefully selecting materials and construction methods.3 Assemble’s rent to buy model, and other build to rent schemes are two alternative options, however they still don’t provide affordability for the lowest income earners or homeless demographics.4
Collaborating with the government to increase council and social housing is imperative. Architects must lead the way in ensuring legislation that reduces the amount of investment homes and protects low income first home buyers.5
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In the case of disaster relief, architects must work with communities to ensure government and NGO participation translates to meaningful, long lasting infrastructure. What must be avoided is what Naomi Klein labelled ‘disaster capitalism’ where NGO’s turn third world disasters into economic gains.6
In many cases, it will not be feasible to completely boycott private sector capital, but architects must work closely with government and planners to create regulations and caveats on resale value and property prices that ensure that there is equity for all stakeholders.7
Every person deserves to have a home!
[1] Johnson, “The Urban Precariat, Neoliberalization, and the Soft Power of Humanitarian Design,” 440.
[2] Karen Kubey, and Robert Fishman, “The Global Crisis of Affordable Housing: Architecture Versus Neoliberalism,” Architectural Design, 4: 22 (2018), 24. doi:10.1002/ad.2317.
[3] “Nightingale homes are delivered at-cost,” Nightingale Housing, published 2020, https://nightingalehousing.org/pricing
[4] “The Assemble Model,” Assemble, published 2020, https://assemblecommunities.com/introducing-the-assemble-model-2-2/
[5] Ostry, Loungani, and Furceri, “Neoliberalism: Oversold?”
[6] Johnson, “The Urban Precariat,” 447.
[7] Hursh & Henderson, “Contesting global neoliberalism,” 182.