A plan to build millions of affordable high-tech housing units can be the basis for social-democratic political renewal, Part 2
Most live and work in major metropolitan areas across the U.S. and Europe, but the majority of working and middle-class families can’t afford it.
Our last post looked at the crisis in affordable housing from the standpoint of the individual or family needing the housing, an “affective” approach. It first described the burdens and stresses facing those trapped in the crisis, such as the tens of thousands of low and middle-income wage earners who work in the businesses and institutions located in the central urban core of metropolitan areas in the U.S. and EU.
For trapped low-income families, housing costs, which can reach over 50% of household income, start to crowd out essentials like food, clothing, medicine, tuition, and childcare. They may be forced to add another earner from the household, perhaps causing someone to drop out of school or college. Or it could mean doubling up with an individual or family, or moving to less-costly housing in a less desirable neighborhood. For some it could mean moving out of town and adding time and money to their commute. For still others, it can mean intermittent homelessness.
Such is the dismal reality of the affordable housing crisis as seen by low-income families at the ground level.
Middle-income families in the urban core can also become trapped and burdened with housing costs frequently rising above 30-40% of income. They may take on too much debt or give up on vacations or other non-essential but desirable goods and services.
A huge obstacle to addressing the problem: No one likes big government housing projects
While social democrats can point to their role in reconstructing Europe and Japan after the war, the more recent history of government-constructed or managed public housing in large metropolitan areas has not been good. We are endlessly confronted with photos, videos, and stories of decaying public housing rife with graffiti, drugs, crime, and pest infestations. Most large public housing projects built in the 1950s and 60s inevitably reached a turning point when middle-income families moved out in high numbers and lower-income families replaced them, particularly recent immigrants with few choices. This created permanent enclaves of poverty and segregation and led to diminished investment in repairs and upgrades, a decline in political support, and, eventually, to early demolition. Nearly all large metropolitan area projects in the U.S. were demolished within 30 years of being built. The few remaining viable communities suffer from maintenance backlogs and most of those moving in do not treat the community as permanent but as a way station.
Sweden’s “million homes” project has lost its shine
Even the successful project in Sweden that built one million decent housing units between 1965 and 1974, led by the ruling Swedish Social Democratic Party, has come under increasing criticism.
Like most advanced nations, Sweden urbanized over the course of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Urbanization became even more rapid after World War II as Sweden became involved in producing the goods needed to rebuild Europe. The old cities could not handle the growth, however, and the social-democratic government won support for demolishing 350,000 decaying housing units and building one million new units over ten years to replace them and handle new growth. This was the most ambitious such project at the time and the million-home target was indeed reached, and on schedule.
Unlike more limited projects elsewhere, aimed mostly at cheap housing for immigrants and the poor, the Swedish project was to be a shining example of universalism and solidarity. The new units would be open to all and income diversity was strongly supported through various subsidies and financing schemes that were largely invisible to residents.
To be attractive to higher-income families, the government understood that the units would have to be of a high quality and residents would have access to all necessary community services. Only one-third of the units were in less-desirable high-rise towers with the remainder a mix of low-rise and single-family homes. They even built student housing to handle the rapid growth in university attendance. The goal was to establish communities with a rich and diverse mix of incomes and cultures.
Today, many inside Sweden and out, still look to this project as a model for addressing the affordable housing crisis currently facing large metropolitan areas in the U.S. and Europe. Unfortunately, the Swedish effort has an increasing number of detractors. It has been criticized for being architecturally monotonous but the greatest concern is the inability to respond to changing social and material conditions, most notably the seemingly inevitable slow-moving decline that follows when housing stock ages and higher-income residents begin to move out and are then replaced by lower-income residents, including immigrants, who are less upwardly mobile.
This incipient segregation creates a downward spiral that impacts the local community as investment in businesses and services gets less government attention. Trust and belief in big government projects slowly erodes and private enterprise gets more heavily involved in providing public goods, demonstrating the continuing impact of Third Way politics.
Yet, the private sector, whose primary interest is making a profit, cannot be the basis for addressing the affordable housing crisis. Private companies can play a useful role, but only government has the fiscal resources and legal power to seriously dent the problem.
This creates a dilemma. If no one likes big government projects but the private sector cannot be relied upon to address the crisis and raise living standards, how can we move forward?
The green housing movement does not address the crisis
Some believe we can address the housing crisis by incorporating housing into strategies aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Progressives promoting a Green New Deal have made a variety of proposals for how this might be done. Their emphasis, however, has been on making existing housing more energy efficient and sustainable. Since new housing construction in metropolitan areas would necessarily require massive amounts of steel, concrete, aluminum, copper, and carbon-intensive industrial processing, they argue for moving in the opposite direction by focusing on renovating and retrofitting existing structures. This could involve improved insulation, the tightening of the housing envelope, installation of solar panels and heat pumps, and incentivizing the use of energy-efficient appliances, among other things. By reducing dependence on carbon-intensive industry and saving money through increased energy efficiency, there would be enough savings to reduce home prices and rents.
In 2021, for example, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a Green New Deal for Public Housing Act which calls for investing up to $172 billion over ten years in sustainable retrofits and rehabilitation. They claim this would dramatically improve the living conditions for the nearly 2 million people living in over 950,000 public housing homes in the U.S. But the primary goal does not directly address living conditions and instead aims at reducing the cost of water and energy, i.e., making the existing, aging housing stock more affordable. Similar approaches have been widely promoted in the EU.
Other strategies involve converting unused office, hotel, and warehouse space into housing units, and promoting sustainable neighborhoods through sponsoring community gardens, cooperative markets, and local environmental initiatives, including recycling and composting facilities.
While well-intentioned, this is a poor substitute for building new houses. Such green housing legislation will not solve the deeper problems associated with the housing it intends to refurbish. Such housing is simply not desirable and has mostly already succumbed to the inevitable cycle of decay and segregation. New York City, a liberal mecca, is considered the most segregated city in the U.S. As for abandoned warehouses and office buildings, New York has led the way in turning such spaces into expensive, trendy condominiums that anchor neighborhoods with accelerating gentrification that has actually worsened the affordable housing crisis.
Governments should not be spending many tens of billions trying to rescue public housing projects or repurposing aging, abandoned warehouses and office parks. While families affected by the crisis may nominally support infrastructure legislation, green or otherwise, they are more deeply interested in having a decent place to live, raise a family, and travel to work. To win their political loyalty, social democrats must acknowledge their burdens and stresses, and address their needs directly.
Which creates a new dilemma: Can governments design and direct programs that address the affordable housing crisis at the needed scale of many millions of units, and as it impacts real people, without conflicting with other infrastructure needs and with obviously necessary efforts to reduce carbon emissions?
I believe this is possible and that trust in government can be renewed, but it will require transforming the housing industry. By sponsoring the most advanced available housing technology and manufacturing processes, governments can oversee the production of millions of new high-tech housing units that are affordable, sustainable and, importantly, desirable, breaking the cycle of deterioration and segregation. It can be done rapidly, as was shown by wartime industrial mobilization and postwar reconstruction.
Using advanced technology to reimagine government’s role in addressing the affordable housing crisis
The quantity, quality, and durability needed cannot be delivered by today’s antiquated housing industry. There have been, however, many important innovations in housing construction technology, innovations that can make producing large quantities of low-cost but high-quality housing a reality.
A major role for factory-built housing
The invention of the automobile itself was not the primary driver of the dramatic social transformation that brought us national highway systems, suburbs, and vacations. The transformation was brought about by the assembly line, which standardized and increasingly automated the factory production of automobiles. Achieving the capacity to produce millions of automobiles quickly and efficiently brought the unit price down to a level that was affordable for the majority of populations.
There is no fundamental reason why housing cannot be transformed in a similar fashion. Given the political will, and the opportunity presented by recent technological innovations, new, decent affordable housing can be available to all.
Factory-built housing has been around for years and has proven to be efficient and cost-effective. Components and even whole units, or modules, can be built in a factory and then transported and assembled on site. Companies using these techniques are becoming ubiquitous across the advanced sector.
Unfortunately, these companies, mostly small, see opportunities for profit primarily in either the lowest end of the market or the highest. At the low-end are mobile homes or cheaply constructed boxes that can be stacked to create residences for mostly government subsidized low-income workers, the poor, and the homeless, i.e., more of the same failed approach.
At the high-end are high-tech “smart” luxury homes marketed to the rising urban professional class and the wealthy. The companies involved in this market sector do not have the capacity to take on large-scale production, however, and few have seriously explored what it would take to do so. Governments, while supportive of the industry, have not paid enough attention to the potential and government housing R&D has been dominated by the green housing strategy.
If we look closely at the luxury side of factory-built housing, however, we can see the potential for transforming the industry in a major way. As with many new technologies, what was once a luxury can become the standard for the majority as production processes reach maximum efficiency.
Here are just a few of the ways that factory-built housing has been made attractive to high-end consumers, ways that, using government resources, can quickly become the norm for all:
Safety and security: Fireproofing would be standard for all components; units would be equipped with hookups to electronic security technology including cameras, alarm systems, and secure building entry systems.
Privacy and comfort: Soundproofing would be standard for all units; HVAC core assembly and advanced window technology would allow for effective, electronically-controlled, interior temperature and humidity management; construction materials would be tightly sealed and impenetrable to microorganisms, insects, and other pests.
Connectivity: All units would have access to a standard, universal telecommunications core to include cable, telephone, and internet.
Utilities: Water, electricity, sewage, and waste management systems would be part of a standard, factory-built universal core to be installed onsite and hooked up to external public utilities; space would be available for laundry and dishwasher installation; electric stoves and energy-efficient appliances would be standard.
Aesthetics and design: Homeowners could choose in advance from among a variety of standard floor plans and interior design options for flooring, wall colors, lighting, shelving, and kitchen and bathroom elements; interior dimensions could be adjusted in some units through movable interior walls.
Sustainability: Low-rise and single-family homes would be factory-equipped with low-carbon energy sources best suited to the location, including solar panels and heat pumps; “smart” technology would automatically adjust for optimal energy efficiency and allow individuals to manage energy use from a distance.
While incorporating such technology may appear to be expensive, factory mass production has the potential to bring the expense down considerably, far enough to accommodate a middle-income owner or tenant as well as a lower-income resident with an acceptable level of government financial support.
Factory production of high-tech housing units will be a central feature of a viable plan, but we need to consider other factors when dealing with the space and time dimensions of large, sprawling metropolitan areas.
Getting scientists, architects, planners, and engineers involved
In our previous post, we proposed that major metropolitan areas of the U.S. and Europe become the initial targets for producing and locating large numbers of affordable housing units. These settings are integrated urban-suburban regions with common business, transport, communications, educational, and cultural connections. The specific project sites would then be based on several factors, including: 1- the number of units needed; 2- the availability of useable government land, 3- the availability of accessible transportation, especially light rail service to the urban core, 4- the feasibility of building out the necessary public utilities; and 5- the feasibility of creating convenient access to community services such as shopping, schools, parks, cultural and recreational resources, and police and fire departments.
Assuming a national government commitment to financing such projects, the first step would be to pull together scientists, architects, planners, and engineers to evaluate the available and emerging technologies and systems for suitability. The scope of review should be international and those carrying out the evaluation should serve the public interest and not have conflicts with the many private companies who might be interested in securing government contracts. These companies emphasize the positive aspects of their technologies and systems, but often hide the questions and concerns. The evaluation team should be able to provide the pros and cons of all options before achieving consensus.
A good example of where such balancing has become essential is the increasingly common use of treated wood to build affordable multi-family housing in Scandinavian nations. Construction-grade wood is readily available in this part of the world, of course, and certain types of treated wood have the strength needed for structural integrity. Most importantly, production and construction processes have far fewer carbon emissions than processes involving concrete and steel. This has driven opinion to favor wood-based construction and a number of attractive private and public housing developments have already been built and more are planned. Moreover, other countries have been looking closely at this approach and the technology is rapidly catching on.
A number of issues have arisen with respect to multi-unit construction using treated wood. Twenty years ago, certain treatments were banned because the wood was found to be leeching toxic chemicals. Today, there are further questions relating to moisture resistance. While structural wood can last a long time in dry climates, they are still trying to figure out how various wood types and treatments will react to climates with more precipitation and general humidity. High moisture content can attract microorganisms which might compromise long-term durability. Before relying too heavily on the technology, therefore, we would need to have independent experts advise as to the possible trade-offs, in this case trading a lighter environmental impact for a potentially shorter building lifespan
This is the kind of question that teams of experts would need to review and present to planners for decision-making. Nations involved in large-scale projects would do well to create centers for R&D relevant to the advanced manufacturing and materials technology needed. National laboratories in the U.S. are well-equipped to lead such inquiries as are national research centers and universities across Europe and Asia.
In addition to materials and manufacturing, these centers would also need to look closely at site selection. Sites should need as little remediation as possible, have low environmental impact, and be suitable for laying infrastructure such as water and sewage lines, electricity, and fiber.
New manufacturing facilities will be needed to anchor the new housing developments and should be built as close to the construction site or sites as possible to facilitate the shipping of components and modules. They should also be able to easily receive shipments of raw materials for production.
Local community, technical, and state colleges can be enlisted to train the many technicians and management personnel that will be needed to carry out and then maintain these new developments.
Achieving political consensus for building millions of high-tech homes
Given the widespread skepticism associated with expensive large-scale government-managed public projects, there are several ways that social democrats can rally public opinion and convince legislators to move forward. The most effective advocacy would come from those most likely to benefit, i.e., the families of low and middle-income workers whose livelihood is connected to the high-priced urban core, but who are priced out of decent housing and trapped in the cycle of decay and segregation associated with aging urban housing stock.
A vote for social-democratic candidates should be seen as equivalent to signing up for buying or renting in the newly built communities. Ideally, there would be brochures and model homes and apartments available for inspection, along with campaign literature that would engage these voters as potential future tenants.
Social-democrats should also have the expert scientists, engineers, architects, and planners speak to lawmakers about the technical viability of the program and especially the potential economies of scale achievable through high-tech production techniques, materials, and components. They could also speak to the short and long-term environmental sustainability of the projects.
Finally, social democrats should sponsor economic studies that would estimate the true cost of such projects, both initially and over longer time horizons. They could also present one or more options for financing the projects, whether through taxation, resident cost-sharing, the use of bonds and other long-range instruments, or some combination of methods. Economists can boost political prospects by presenting realistic cost-benefit analyses.
In the end, however, social-democrats must emphasize not the cost of doing something about affordable housing, but the cost of doing nothing, or not enough, and letting the crisis continue to eat away at the living standards of ordinary people.