THE FIVE SIDES TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Recalling elementary geometry, a pentagon is a five-sided object typically linked by similar but distinct straight lines. Pentagons can be equilateral or non-equilateral – having the same length of sides or otherwise. Often times, any five-sided object is mistaken for a pentagon, but a five-sided object with one or more curved lines is not a pentagon. Similarly, a five-sided object with one or more disjointed lines is not a pentagon. A pentagon is made of five ‘similar but distinct’ straight and connected lines – just like an affordable housing system.
Text: Tayo Odunsi
There are five essential participants in delivering affordable housing – the government, the private sector, professionals, the community, and the individual. This “pentagonal” distinction of affordable housing players is essential because each party, like the lines of a pentagon, are distinct yet linked. They have the direct responsibility for affordable housing to be delivered and to be sustainable.
It is intuitive that each role is inter-related. Governments, the private sector, professionals, and the community are all made up of individuals. But at the most basic worldview of a person, he stands alone as an individual, having personal preferences and perspectives that are not necessarily those of his professional, communal or political class. Likewise, professionals and the private sector may be said to be the same. However, a distinction must be made between the members of the built environment professions that have fiduciary responsibility for the emergence of homes and cities, versus the rest of the private sector that are not necessarily inclined
to participate in this way.
The government is a community but the community is not the government. The government is made of elected, appointed, and hired personnel, who take charge of creating and enforcing state policy. A community, on the other hand, is a social unit largely created by co-location, a single but highly important factor that produces shared interests and perspectives.
All five parties at their various ‘offices’ have major roles to play if affordable housing is to be sustainable. Depending on which part of the world you are located in, the government may be an affordable housing initiator, enabler, regulator, or even developer. While it’s held in the public domain that a Jack-of-all-trades is master of none, governments of most developing or underdeveloped countries are, by far, the wealthiest entities in their nations. This means they may have the resources to take on each role in the housing value chain. Either way, governments play a crucial role in housing development, and even more so in ensuring that it is affordable.
“Depending on which part of the world you are located in, the government may be an affordable housing initiator, enabler, regulator or even developer.”
The professionals are the builders, architects, surveyors, and engineers that bring housing and communities into existence. Their expertise and perspectives are required from the starting point to make housing either affordable or not. Irrespective of who conceptualises an affordable housing project, the private sector is required at some stage of the venture to ensure that the project is built and completed. The private sector consists of developers, financiers, investors, and managers of affordable housing developments. They are not necessarily trained professionals in design or construction, but they have the business and social innovativeness to structure and manage a development process in more effective and efficient ways than the public sector.
However, the effectiveness and efficiency of the private sector typically comes at a higher cost and require the watchful eyes of the public to keep prices affordable, with respect not only to the built houses but also the maintenance and management of the development post-construction. This role is best played by the community. It is the community members who pay, so they are the best watches. The community’s power-in-numbers, if focused, can take on governments, developers, and other private sector players much more effectively than any one individual can.
The Individual must choose. The prerogative of affordable housing belongs to each single individual; Is housing a right or a privilege? Can housing be affordable or should it be affluent? Do I act or stay passive? For housing to be affordable, the individual must hold a sustainable view of housing and then act out this paradigm. What each participant needs to do, or needs to view differently, in order for sustainable affordable housing to be achieved, varies quite significantly. Each player may act independently even when some or all of the other essential players are yet to get on board. The magnitude of input also differs across locations and scenarios. Similar but different, direct but linked – like a pentagon – are the five essential participants in delivering sustainable affordable housing.
Tayo Odunsi is a chartered surveyor and real estate economist. He holds a MSc. in real estate finance and investment from the University of Reading and an MBA from the Imperial College London. He is the CEO of Northcourt Real Estate a real estate research, brokerage and management company with offices in Lagos and Abuja.
Contact: [email protected]
Featured in Prestige Magazine Issue 2. Vol.3 2018
