The search for solutions…
The housing crisis: time to adopt alternative solutions?
It is time to start treating Australia’s housing situation for what it is — a crisis. Rather than applying the same old less-effective solutions, perhaps it is time to look to new housing models and building technologies. In this story we look first at the problem then at possible solutions. Photos: ©Russ Grayson
WE’VE been building in the same way for a long time. Thousands of years of a long time. The methods are time-proven whether they be constructions in wood, brick, cement or mud. Problem, is, building this way is too slow if we are to effectively deal with our present housing crisis.
The problem
Let’s take a look at the current housing crisis in Australia. It takes two forms:
- a shortage of properties for sale and their escalating prices
- a shortage of rental accommodation and the associated increase in rentals.
An ABC article by Carol Rääbus in February 2021 highlighted the crisis: “While more than 60 per cent of Australians own their own home, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows home-ownership rates for people aged under 40 are declining, part of a trend of intergenerational inequality and a growing gap between the haves and have nots.”
The crisis is now receiving increasing media attention, a necessary spur to political action:
- social services fear the number of people sleeping rough around Queensland will continue to rise, with the end of pandemic financial support occurring at the same time as a crush on rental availability
- a 6 May report in the Guardian revealed that the Reserve Bank has refused to raise interest rates to reduce the escalating price of houses because it could cost jobs; the same report said that the median price for a house in Sydney has reached $1.31 million after an 8.5 percent quarterly increase
- an ABC story warned of the intergenerational consequences of housing unaffordability: “What can we do with Australia’s property market, with soaring prices and rental shortages in many regional areas of Australia, from WA’s Pilbara to Hobart in Tasmania? Experts warn housing inequality and intergenerational poverty is increasing in Australia; they say urgent action is needed to mitigate the Covid-led crisis in housing”
- the trend was clearly visible in April 2019 when the Canberra Times surveyed 69,000 rental listings across the country and found that only six percent were affordable for people on the minimum wage. The situation is worst in the cities, the newspaper reported. “Here in Canberra, a couple with two children earning the minimum wage would find that not a single rental listing is affordable. It’s no wonder that record numbers of people who work full-time are in rental stress. But they are not the worst off. For people on income support, rental stress is not so much a crisis as a way of life. There is not one affordable rental listing for a person on Newstart or Youth Allowance in any major city or major regional centre”
- an ABC story of 23 April this year reported that with Sunshine Coast (and Tasmanian, according to a comment) rentals increasing by up to $100 a week, a not-for-profit lobbying for affordable housing access, National Shelter, will begin lobbying for rental control legislation
- another ABC news report of 29.04.21, entitled Byron Bay property prices push local workers out of town, reports a respondent saying that some of her friends moved out of town “like literally in droves to move out to up to an hour away and still work in Byron” because of accommodation costs; another said that even working two jobs, rent would cost him three-quarters of his income; a real estate agent reported that in the last year house prices have gone up 40 percent, nearly 50 percent; Byron Shire Council said it wants to establish a community land trust that would see affordable accommodation built on council-owned property; all of this is in addition to people priced out of the rental market and who are living in vans and vehicles, which is illegal in Byron Bay unless in a caravan park (see review of Jessica Bruder’s book, Nomadland, to learn how Americans are living in vehicles because of economic conditions).
City to rural drift worsens housing costs and pushes people out
In March 2021, senior journalist with the real estate industry’s Domain reported that: “As Australia’s housing affordability worsens, the flood of people to regional cities is adding more pressure to renters on a low income, new research shows.
“It’s a problem that looks to be growing as the coronavirus pandemic saw thousands of renters and buyers flee the cities to find a new home in regional areas with more room to breathe. Even before the pandemic, there was a shortage of 173,000 homes affordable to low-income earners, the research found — an issue that will be in the spotlight as crisis-era eviction moratoriums soon expire.
“The lack of affordable homes was forcing workers into longer commutes or expensive rentals, meaning some may find it hard to stay in work. The findings were part of the study — Urban productivity and affordable rental housing supply in Australian cities and regions — undertaken with the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and academics from Swinburne University of Technology and RMIT.”
There is little good news to be found in the housing crisis across Australia. The only good news is that of people finding a home to buy or a rental, fewer that they are.
People trying to enter the Australian housing market, to buy their first house or apartment, have been thwarted by rising home costs for some years and, in some cities and states, by the shortage of homes to buy. Rental properties are likewise in very short supply and this is driving up rental costs. It’s about the law of supply and demand. The more the demand, the lower the supply, the more house prices and rents rise. It’s a zero sum game. People are being pushed out of the housing market.
Tasmania — a case study in crisis
He booked for an overnight at a friend’s AirBnB in Launceston, Tasmania. Just one night, the man told her, because next day he would go and find a rental property and bring his wife and young son over from the Australian mainland. It sounded a good plan. Until it wasn’t.
Why? Because next day he found he was one of 20 to 30 people applying for each rental property notified. People would submit their details and landlords would select the one they most liked. The young man’s experience was in no way unusual in the city’s and the state’s worsening accommodation crisis.
The housing crisis is especially acute in Tasmania, Australia’s offshore, big-island state. Uncertainty about the housing market is discouraging homeowners selling, leading to a nearly one-third drop in homes on the market compared to March 2020. The rapid turnover in the market may have something to do with this. Mainlanders are buying homes from the internet, sight unseen, according to comments on the That’s It — I’m Moving to Tasmania — the unedited truth facebook.
Until recent years, the low cost of buying a home attracted mainlanders ready for a change of life to what they saw as a more relaxed pace. The new reality highlighted was in a report in the end-of-April 2021 edition of the real estate industry’s Domain Price House Report:
“House prices in Tasmania’s Hobart rose an extraordinary 15.9 per cent last year — the second sharpest increase of all the nation’s capital cities — to reach a record median of $601,567, now topping that of Perth, Adelaide and Darwin.
“Outside the capital, there’s been an even more massive surge in prices in some areas, with one suburb north-east of Hobart recording an incredible 26.8 per cent rise, Launceston seeing a 23 per cent jump and the Derwent Valley, 22.8 per cent.
“The rocketing price trend… is great news for homeowners but grim for renters.” The ABC reported that Burnie, the northern Tasmanian city on the Bass strait coast, has a rental vacancy rate of 0.5 percent.
Even when people find a house to buy, it might be the start of their financial woes. In late May this year Digital Financial Analytics data commissioned by consumer advocate, Choice, reported that 55 percent of Tasmanian homes suffer mortgage stress. Mortgage stress occurs when more than 30 percent of pre-tax income is spent servicing a mortgage. When additional fixed costs such as repayment of other loans, energy, water, car registration and insurance and health and home insurance are accounted for, the area where people economise is on food purchases. The supermarkets are important to people who have little wriggle room when it comes to expenditure.
The reality of the state’s housing crisis was brought home only a couple years ago when families were living in vehicles and tents in the campground at Hobart Showgrounds. There was nowhere else to go. Rentals were hard to come by and very expensive, especially for a state with the lowest salaries and wages in the country. Some have been living in tents and vehicles in caravan parks and continue to do so. This the author of this piece learned while living in a caravan park through the spring and summer of 1999–2000. One single parent pensioner with a teenage child living there in a small car camping tent couldn’t afford the going price for rentals, even were they to be available to low-income earners. They had been given a week to vacate their rental property. At the same caravan park, a young woman and her three young children were living in their small caravan while she looked for a rental. She was still there when my partner and I left.
In Tasmania, local folklore has it that the shortage and affordability of rentals and houses for sale is at least partly driven by people moving from the mainland. It’s that drift from city to rural areas again, or from mainland cities to Tasmanian cities and towns. The story goes that before the Covid pandemic it was fears over changes likely to be brought by global warming, fears furthered by the devastating bushfires of the spring and summer of 1999–2000 and the preceding drought that were pushing what Tasmanians call ‘mainlanders’ across Bass Strait in search of somewhere safer to live. Locals call them climate refugees. The search for a slower way of live was also a driving factor. Then came Covid, and the number moving to Tasmania accelerated as the threat from the virus declined.
It was a trans-Bass-Strait version of the movement out of the cities to rural towns reported on the mainland. It is not only the big cities that people have been leaving to move to Tasmania. Comments on a Tasmanian facebook offering advice and commentary on moving to the state suggest a significant number come from mainland regions outside the big cities. The discovery during the pandemic lockdowns that people can work remotely via a broadband connection facilitates the city-to-rural drift.
Aggravating the housing crisis in the state is a reported reluctance of home owners to sell despite the higher price that are likely to get for their home, although there are reports that some are selling their second homes to cash in on the high prices. The reported reluctance to sell is put down to the difficulty of finding a new home because of the reduction in the number of properties for sale and their high cost. Sellers are unlikely to come out any better financially unless they downsize, however even small cottages now sell for a premium. Property market analyst, CoreLogic, reported that new property listings were eight percent lower than the previous five-year average, and, as late May this year, listings across Tasmania were 46 percent lower than would be expected. Now, there are reports of real estate agents discounting their commission to encourage home owners to sell, and of agents leaving or preparing to leave the business because of the shortage of propeties being listed for sale.
It’s difficult to discern how much the desire for a smaller, slower, safer place to live is driving the move across Bass Strait and the housing crisis. It does figure, for sure. You can pick that up in conversations and between Tasmanians and mainlanders seeking advice about accommodation and jobs on the That’s It — I’m Moving to Tasmania — the unedited truth facebook. The facebook was set up to report the real situation around moving to Tasmania. Many of the conversations focus on the challenge and sometimes the successes of finding a rental, buying a home and finding work.
Evidence that a population movement out of the cities is happening now that the Covid lockdowns are eased was confirmed in a story entitled ABS data confirms a city exodus during COVID, with biggest internal migration loss on record. ABC business reporter Emilia Terzon wrote that ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) data “shows Australia’s capital cities had a net loss of 11,200 people in the September (2020) quarter, the largest quarterly net loss on record. The quarter coincided with the end of Australia’s first COVID lockdown.”
The exodus is now impacting regional cities and towns, pushing up real estate and rental prices and pushing out low-income earners and pensioners. The Domain Price House Report of late-April 2021 mentions that house prices in New Norfolk, a town in the Derwent Valley in commuting distcnce of Hobart, have increased by 22.8 percent. “Shearwater, in the Mersey-Lyell region, has gone up 22.7 percent to $460,000, and Penguin on the north-west coast has jumped by 22.4 per cent to $416,000… Launceston’s 23 per cent increase has brought it to a median of $570,000, only $31,000 behind Hobart.”
In Dodges Ferry, a coastal town of 2500 40 minutes east of Hobart, the median price has shot up by 26.8 percent year-on-year, says the report… a 79.7 percent rise over the past five years. While mainlander immigration to he state accounts for some of the price increases, so do Tasmanians looking for their first home. Dodges Ferry is an example of how high housing prices in the city are driving people to look for more-affordable homes outside the city but within commuting distance. This also increases reliance on vehicles and brings greater traffic densities to the roads. As people move into outlying towns and buy-up the homes for sale, a shortage develops and prices are driven up by increasing demand. It’s the supply-demand spiral familiar in market economies.
Buyers’ agent Angie Roberts of My Hobart Home said limited housing supply is resulting in vendors receiving up to 20 competing offers on their homes, and it is not unusual “for properties to go 40 per cent over the price that’s been put on a guide for houses around Hobart… and prices are spiralling as a result… prices are going crazy.”
The ABC story quoted her saying around 80 percent of the buyers are local, the rest being mainlanders who “are definitely having to reset their expectations of what their money will buy in Hobart now. They’re having to go further out, or spend a lot more money than they would have done even six months ago.”
The Tasmanian government has responded to the state’s acute housing crisis with an accelerated housing program, however this is likely to have limited effect given that the accommodation crisis is a function of the economic system — supply and demand. No Liberal government is likely to tamper with market mechanisms despite the social cost they bring to families and individuals.
When just getting a roof over your head is the priority, considerations of orientation, energy and water efficiency seldom get a look in.
Amid this tale of accelerating prices, shortages and people being forced out of the housing market, where can we look for alternatives, and how viable are they in a time of mortgage stress and accommodation crisis?
The solution
Alternative models
Australia has a long history of housing alternatives which in the modern period extend back to the alternative movement’s pioneering intentional communities in rural areas during the 1970s.
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Community land trusts
Community land trusts (CLTs) are a model which works overseas where they are used to provide affordable accommodation. Wikipedia offers a working definition: “A community land trusts is a nonprofit corporation that holds land on behalf of a place-based community, while serving as the long-term steward for affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community.”
There are a small number of CLTs in Australia. They offer viable solutions, however raising funds to buy land, then constructing housing on it remains a big challenge. Where members finance their own home, the preceeds of the sale go to them, however the land remains the property of the CLT.
If Byron Council does go ahead with its own CLT it will open a new avenue for local government intervention in the housing market. That would be a good thing because the current price bubble and shortage clearly signifies that the market is incapable of providing housing for all.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: Limited in the short term. Has longer-term potential.
More on CLTs:
Louise Crabtree from Western Sydney University has researched affordable housing and community land trusts.
The Australian Community Land Trust Manual. Crabtree, L, Blunden, H, Phibbs, P, Sappideen, C, Mortimer, D, Shahib-Smith, A & Chung, L 2013.
Caravan parks
They seemed content living in their caravans with attached annexes. People in late middle age, the caravan park near Warragamba Dam to the west of Sydney was their home of choice. Well to the north in the forested foothills of Barrington Tops, the caravan park has a six month limit on residencies, so at the end of the period the man I spoke with leaves his shack and goes to his other accommodation in a caravan park closer to the coast. Life in caravan parks takes different forms in different places. Some cater to long term residents while others offer only short term tourist accommodation.
The camp kitchen and shared garden with its vegetables and fruit trees at Seven Mile Beach caravan park, twenty minutes along the highway from Hobart, suggested ideas for caravan parks as permanent accommodation either in mobile wellings or cabins.
The idea of caravan parks being the model for people living in tiny houses, whether mobile or fixed, has been mooted. Developments like this would be land and facility sharing arrangements not unlike co-housing developments or intentional communities, but with people living in cabins, vans and motor homes. In a time of accommodation crisis, the idea had merit. What it needs in legislative go-ahead.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: High.
Tiny houses
Tiny houses are free standing fixed or mobile homes for one or two people. Mobile versions are mounted on a trailer chassis and are towable. They enforce a minimalism of possessions, there is no space in them for a lot of stuff. Where the dwellings are fixed they can be equipped with renewable energy systems such as solar hot water, photovoltaic panels feeding a house battery and a water tank.
The advantages of tiny houses include their lower cost due to their smaller size and the use of less material in construction compared to conventional housing.
Barriers to their adoption as a solution to affordable housing include:
- government regulation hampering residency, which varies state-by-state and by local government; regulations for tiny houses on vacant land would likely stipulate the installation of a septic system and other requirements
- those on a wheel-mounted chassis are considered to be caravans by local government, placing them under local government regulation limiting the period of time they can be occupied, according to the Australian Tiny House Association, an organisation advocating for tiny houses as permanent accommodation
- “a lack of security for permanent dwelling is proving a significant barrier to the uptake of the tiny house living”; the Australian Tiny House Association says that if a neighbour complains about the tiny house, “the occupant may be asked to either remedy the situation or remove the tiny house within a short timeframe”
- the need to purchase or rent land for a tiny house.
Tiny houses built in a backyard adjacent to an existing home are regarded as ancilliary buildings, what are commonly known as granny flats. These, too, have potential as affordable housing.
The idea of villages of tiny houses has been proposed as an approach to affordable accommodation. The traditional Australian caravan park serves as a model of how this could be done. Residents would share common property facilities such as open space, communal eating places, perhaps a camp kitchen and community garden space.
At present, the costs involved and government regulations limit their application as affordable housing. The level of interest in tiny houses is another example of how people lead and government follows.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: Currently low. Potentially high.
Tiny House Planning Resource for Australia: https://tinyhouse.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Tiny-House-Planning-Resource.pdf
Co-housing
The Scandinavian co-housing that started to spread to other countries around 30 years ago is a form of land-and-facilities-sharing community which could offer less-costly housing. Shared facilities include a community kitchen and dining area — although dwellings have their own kitchenette — laundry, outdoor space, possibly a community food garden, water and energy supply. Co-housing, a form of cooperative housing, offers both community living and private life. Accommodation can be in separate dwellings or in small-scale apartment buildings.
The challenge in remaining affordable would require the housing association to limit housing costs while retaining links to the real estate market so people can sell their dwelling and new people affordably buy in. How this would be done remains a vital question. For example, a dwelling for sale few years ago in Australia’s first co-housing community, Cascade Co-housing in the urban foothills of Kunanyi-Mt Wellington, Hobart, was priced the same as more-expensive suburban dwellings.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: Limited due to time to set up and questions around the cost of homes. Has potential over time with a focus on affordable dwellings.
Sharehousing
Tucked away on a tree lined street in suburban Adelaide, Selli Hoo is a long-running, owner-occupied sharehouse with shared kitchen, workshop, food garden and chook run. The sharehouse was started in the 1970s and continues as a model of effective shared living.
Residents have their own room. One room is left for renters such as prospective buy-ins while they see if cooperative living is for them. While a couple of the owner-occupiers are retires, others work.
Especially where the dwelling is co-operatively purchased, sharehousing has potential as affordable housing for singles and couples.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: High
Ecovillages
Ecovillages are cooperative, land sharing communities usually in rural areas. They are an outgrowth of the intentional communities of the 1970s and beyond.
The villages take the form of individual dwellings distributed individually or in hamlets on the land. The ecovillages of more-recent decades have freehold title to the area where the dwelling is located while holding the rest of the land in common. Earlier intentional communities held all land in common, however this interfered with raising home loans and in selling the dwelling.
Sometimes distant from towns where people seek work, those best placed for ecovillage living are people who can work remotely and digitally, retired people, the self-funded and those fortunate enough to have skills in demand in the area.
While ecovillages might offer cheaper access to a home, their location and buy-in cost limits their value in a housing affordability and access crisis.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: Limited, sometimes due to distance from town and livelihood opportunities and the time needed to plan and construct new ecovillages. Has higher potential when housing in the ecovillage comes up for sale.
Aldinga Arts Ecovillage, Aldinga, South Australia— a drivethrough:
Cooperative housing
Cooperative housing takes many forms. Buying and converting an old industrial building as accommodation might not be all that cheap, but in some iterations could offer owner-occupied dwellings like apartments or private rooms with common areas and kitchens.
Given the requirement to raise capital to purchase and retrofit existing buildings, co-operative housing might not have much to offer people seeking housing during the current accommodation crisis. However, the model is suitable as a community land trust.
According to Common Equity, the peak body for cooperative housing in NSW,
“Australia’s housing market no longer meets the needs for so many. People on low incomes, people with good incomes, retirees, older Australians, vulnerable groups, people with a disability or those just wanting to be a part of a stronger community. We need a better way. Housing Co-Operatives are intentional and vibrant communities. Like-minded people actively working together, selecting new members, making local decisions, maintaining properties, learning new skills and contributing to their community. All members actively contribute and benefit through security of tenure, reduced costs, local decision making and control and self-management of their cooperative.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: High if buying-in to an existing housing co-op. Potential as a longer-term solution.
Repurposed containers
Reused shipping containers have potential as affordable homes where the householder owns land.
Advantages of turning containers into homes include:
- a smaller footprint means less energy to operate as a home
- steel construction is strong, durable and lower maintenance than conventional homes
- giving new life to used containers
- cheaper than building a new house
- quicker to build and install on-site than a new home; container homes can be prefabricated, trucked to site and installed
- with other design considerations, may offer greater bushfire proofing than homes made with conventional materials
- the presence of companies specialising in turning containers into homes.
Shipping container homes can be thought of as ‘tiny homes’. Multiple containers can be formed into larger modular homes.
Container homes need to be put somewhere. Land must be bought. This might be a barrier to lower-income people seeking a home.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: High, where there is access to land.
Cooperative apartments
In the 1980s, an organisation bought a three-level, 1960s walk-up apartment block in inner-urban Marrickville in Sydney. One apartment was set aside as common space and office while the other apartments were occupied by the organisations’s members. Think of it as a vertical intentional community.
The model has promise when apartment buildings come on the market. It opens options in how the land the building is situated on could be used, how people buying-in manage the place cooperatively, and how it is retrofitted to make it energy and water efficient.
For people with capital but unable to secure private housing, the model would require their getting together to look for a building.
Potential as a solution to the housing crisis: High where purchase funds are available, properties come onto the market and buyers come together as a cooperative buyers group similar to the way intentional community groups formed to buy rural property in the 1970s.
Political reform
Victoria’s 2021 rental reform allowing tenants to make minor changes to properties, make a vegetable garden and prescribing conditions for eviction is a needed step in the right direction which other states could adopt.
The reform makes rental accommodation more secure and is an appropriate initiative in the current housing crisis.
Eco-collaborative housing
Anitra Nielson, who has lived in cooperative housing, has made an informative study of what she calls eco-collaborative housing. Her book: Small is Necessary — Shared Living on a Shared Planet; 2018, Nelson, Anitra; Pluto Press. Paperback ISBN: 9780745334226. Hardcover ISBN: 9780745334233. eBook.
These are existing models which in some cases could be repurposed to provide housing alternatives at a time when Australia’s housing bubble is making accommodation hard to find and expensive.
What about alternative approaches to do with building homes that are affordable to buy and operate? Are there construction technologies which could reduce purchase and housing costs and provide accommodation more rapidly than existing, conventional construction methods?
New tech
Prefab
Maybe it’s not so new, but prefabrication is worth considering at a time of inflated housing prices.
Building are pre-fabbed in a workshop by making them in parts, trucking them to the construction site and assembling them. Install wiring, plumbing and other fittings and the house is ready. Energy efficient prefab designs already exist.
Manufacturers offer designs sized to meet a family’s needs. Some are modular, you can add rooms or other features which allow the home to be customised.
Printed homes
Additive manufacture — what we usually know as 3D printing — is the most promising new building technology with the potential to reduce housing costs and construction time. Also known as Autonomous Robotic Construction System, Large Scale Additive Manufacturing or Freeform Construction, the technology frees buildings to be designed in unorthodox shapes.
3D printing of buildings biomimics the potter wasp which constructs its nest from mud, layer by layer. According to Wikipedia, the building technique is analogous to the way that native Americans based their pottery-making on the nests.
3D printed buildings are designed on software that controls the printer which extrudes the construction material. Think of it as being like a very big inkjet printer. The builder erects a gantry along which the printing head travels, layering the building material as it goes and leaving openings for windows and doors and channels for wiring. These are installed after the printer finishes its phase of the work. 3D printed buildings are self-supporting and this opens possibilites that are not available with traditional construction methods.
The technology was prototyped only a few years ago. Now, printed homes are on the market.
Concrete is the common printing material. It is versatile and long-lived, however a lot of energy is embodied in its production. Other materials with potential in 3D construction include foams and polymers. Now, scientists have developed a printing technology using soil and other earth-materials from the regolith. According to an article in The Guardian, “the technology is designed to be a sustainable alternative to concrete, which accounts for approximately 7% of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.”
The potential cost-savings of 3D printed construction are hinted at in article on the technology in Wikipedia: “A building can be printed within a week at the rate of 3.5 metres per hour… Potential advantages of these technologies include faster construction, lower labor costs, increased complexity and/or accuracy, greater integration of function, and less waste produced.”
Yanko Designs recently reported on a project in Southern Mexico to build a village of 3D-printed, concrete homes for low-income residents. Billed as the world’s first 3D-printed neighbourhood and located in Tabasco, Southern Mexico, the report says, “Yves Béhar and his studio fuseproject designed the homes by directly collaborating and working with the families they were being built for. ‘As we spoke to the community members, we realized that a single house design doesn’t respond to all needs and expectations,’ said Béhar. ‘This led us to design a system that allows for different programs, climate factors, and growth for families and spaces.’ The community members were included in the selection of the land and throughout the planning process, to ensure their housing requirements were met. The end result will be a lively 3D-printed neighborhood of fifty, 500-square-foot, single-story houses for the poorest communities who are always the last to benefit from innovation and technology.”
With its potential for rapid and cheaper construction, 3D printed homes and other buildings have the potential to disrupt the building industry in the same way that new technologies disrupted the recorded music, media and manufacturing industries.
The history of technological development demonstrates that economic advantage will lie with the first adopters of the technology. How rapidly the technology is adopted will be determined by factors such as:
- the adoption of enabling building regulations by government
- the technology investment costs for builders
- the training of builders in using the tech
- the braking effect of resistance to new ideas by conservative builders and home buyers.
The investment required for equipment makes the technology unsuited to owner-builder. That is likely to be only a limited impediment to its adoption.
Time for change
In a time of a housing costs bubble fed by inflated home purchase costs driven by shortage, continuing mortgage stress and inflated rentals, surely it is time to look beyond traditional building methodology and consider the potential cost and time savings that new technologies like the 3D printing of homes offers.
The challenge lies in using new technology to turn shortage into abundance. Maybe doing that is a way to apply the permaculture design principle of accepting feedback and self-regulation as applied to the current accommodation crisis and to the building industry.
