Masters of Degrowth: Week 9.2 Section - Seminar on Housing : Let’s Organize Housing for Degrowth!

How can Housing for degrowth be organized? Simple Dwelling, Neighborhods and collective ownership

The following three chapters show three different ways in which we can achieve housing that is cheaper, environmentally friendly and engage us more with our social and natural environment.

Simpler Way housing is an example of how one person can create their own house, according to the local laws, for the price of a low range car. This imply a lot of learning but engaging into multiple tasks that are diverse and enriching, while keeping our fluffy bodies fit. Gaining control of our energy and water management is key not only to reduce consumption, but also to increase its security for service and protection against price shocks.

Neighbourhods integrate the individual, the communal and the institutional in very separated ways but with the goal of reducing the required private space and budget for housing, while making public spaces more dynamic and engaging. In these new communities, public services are guaranteed, as well as strong social participation in the decisions and the provision of basic food and energy supplies.

Last but not least, housing sindicates are a great option to decommoditize housing and share as community the financial risk of such assets. Members of sindicates benefit from both technical and financial support to have access to more affordable than market prices, while being part of a supportive community of tenants.

The three options have successful case studies, not only in Australia, UK and Germany as in the book chapters, but worldwide. The illustrate that is possible, and that there are alternatives NOW to the expensive, inefficient, debt loading housing for growth that we suffer today is most of the cities worldwide.

Chapter 10: The Simpler Way: Housing, living and settlements (Ted Trainer)

Housing is one of the most absurd aspects of consumer-capitalist society, and that perfectly adequate, extremely cheap and, indeed, beautiful dwellings could easily be available to everyone. There are very satisfactory and workable alternatives such as the Simpler Way.

The approximately 50-square-metre, two-bedroom fibro house was completed in 1989 for $8,000. It was built to council standards, meaning expenditure on some unnecessary requirements. It was an enjoyable project, taking  about 6 months, working during spare time using only hand tools. Neither this nor the main house is connected to the urban grid for electricity, water, garbage collection, postal or sewer services. Water is collected from roofs and space heating comes from firewood gathered on leisure rambles. 

The main house – more than 70 years old – has never been connected to the grid and for decades used only kerosene lamps, but now there is a solar photo-voltaic system. Per capita consumption in the main house averages fewer than 10W compared with the national average of around 230W. 

For decades they cooked on a wood stove and heated shower water in a tin ‘chip heater’. Without a fridge, cooling was via a Coolgardie safe (Smith 2005), a hessian-covered evaporating box. For getting a fridge, they purchased botled gas. The house isn’t well insulated but he has cobbled together a very effective firebox from tin, with a brazed copper pipe grid inside taking hot water around the house in winter. In addition, there is a tiny fan drawing hot air from a sleave around the chimney in the athic and pushing it to the cold parts of the house.

Washing is done by a home-made rattle-trap device powered by a 70W car fan motor, which also drives some pumps. Soon, it will be connected to the world’s slowest firewood saw. Collecting and cutting firewood is a valued leisure activity, justifying bushwalks. Ted made a 12V drill, grinder and metal turning lather, but all other tools are hand operated. They grow vegetables. Repairing broken things and sewing up worn out clothes are valued hobbies. All kitchen, animal and garden wastes go to compost heaps or the garbage gas unit. Water is their biggest problem so every drop gets recycled to the garden. 

It is full of problems: animals that get out, gates to fix, pumps that clog, systems that need redesigning, firebreaks to clear. But, mostly, they are good problems providing endless variety and purpose, using many skills and demanding exercise.

Chapter 13: Neighbourhods as the basic module of the global commons by Hans Widmer

Instead of waiting for – or speculating about – a collapse, we need to establish just and enjoyable systems. The best time to try out alternatives is, always, ‘now’.

• The first ‘parachute’ from disaster – or pillar of a degrowth society – relates to focus existing states on public services, increasing transparency and democratic participation
• The second pillar of a degrowth society requires subsistence neighbourhood communities that, most importantly, assume most food production and supply.
• The third pillar is making the creative-cooperative sector flourish, with free associations that, nevertheless, are obliged to respect social and ecological guidelines. 

Transforming neighbourhoods into communities of subsistence, we clearly privilege reproduction over production. Making life possible and enjoyable is the main goal. From a purely ecological point of view, neighbourhoods are an ideal starting point. 

In neighbourhoods the private, semi-public and the public are completely separate spheres. Neighbourhoods must be relatively large, approximately 500 inhabitants or, say, 200 medium-sized flats of some 100 square metres each.

According to Dunbar (1993) people are comfortable communicating informally with up to 150 in a group. Therefore, the ideal neighbourhood size must be larger, to create a systemic pressure for consciously designed formal communication avoiding buddy systems, favouritism or mafia-like forms of dominion. Neighbourhoods are neither clans nor tribes; they are cool social modules of common access with rules and formal institutions.

Rural Areas

Protecting rural areas from grand real estate developments and establishing instead community-supported agriculture can revive countryside and cities together. Consolidating erstwhile suburbanites into newly revived central cities means gaining local agricultural land for the city. Agro-centres revive country villages and secure the exchange between rural and city lifestyles.

New food logistics will be essential to achieve an ecologically sustainable lifestyle. The ‘reinterpretation of the cities from the countryside’ (Shiva 2008) is the basis of all serious proposals for a degrowth society. According to our estimates, a neighbourhood would need around 6 tons of food per week. Land use can be reduced substantially by a mainly vegetarian diet, but even a moderate reduction in animal production (milk, eggs, meat) is compatible with a globally sustainable lifestyle.

Appreciating agriculture as part of the care economy – as care of the soil, plants and animals – requires direct participation. We need to be more familiar with food production and this is feasible within the neighbourhood located close to food production.

The only feasible way of doing agriculture is intensive, mixed-crop, largely organic production unprofitable for the mass market currently.

We will not be able to do without some form of rationing of natural resources. But, for reasons of justice, instead of ‘cap and trade’ we should try to ‘cap and share’. Trying to regulate our use of resources through pricing means the rich in their Porsches will joyously overtake us while we pedal along on our bicycles. We’re not that stupid.

Defending the waning qualities of existing neighbourhoods against real estate developers and short-sighted local authorities is not enough. We must move forward and posit our neighbourhoods as the global modules of a new civilisation, a universal project. Far from being hermetically defined spaces, neighbourhoods are like open crossroads, places to meet, arrive and depart. They need air to breathe, other neighbourhoods and cooperation on the level of boroughs or small towns.

Chapter 20: Collective ownership, the housing question and degrowth by Lina Hurlin

In retrospect, the post-WWII period was the most favourable for German tenants, even if the housing sector was still part of the free market. Then the support programmes ended, the key law was changed and, adopting a neoliberal rationale, municipalities basically sold their social housing assets.

Even though, in an international comparison, tenants in Germany are relatively secure, exceptions are increasingly raised in public protests and scholarly critiques. Apart from the possibility of terminating a contract when rent has not been paid for more than two months, the landlord can claim the flat or house for personal use, which is a legal loophole used to get rid of a tenant and then rent out the dwelling for a higher rent.

Mietshäuser Syndikat is an initiative of people wanting to solve the housing question by removing houses from the market and collectivising them. This means protection from market forces, at least at a small scale.

An important guarantee is that a Mietshäuser Syndikat house will never be thrown back on the real estate market. This hazard of other types of premises is particularly evident when debts need to be written off, the market value of the dwelling rises, or a project’s purpose is lost over time.

 The association of the house’s tenants owns one share (51%) and the Mietshäuser Syndikat GmbH solely owns the other (49%) share. The Mietshäuser Syndikat only has a few voting rights, the most important regarding resale of the house: the organisation will always say ‘No’ to selling the property. Reprivatisation of real estate covered by the syndicate is almost impossible.

 

Alternative models of living together are easier to experiment with if the household decides its structure as a group. For example, many house projects have big common rooms that they all share. This kind of collaboration and coordination is hard to find on the free market and is an illustration of how the model expresses potential for degrowth ideals and aims – enabling community-oriented living and shared spaces.

Every new project has one or two advisers, mostly from other projects. The advisers accompany the group as they become a part of the syndicate and inform new projects or suggest experts who might be able to inform them. Contracts and statutes do not have to be created anew; standard templates exist that can be used or adapted by the projects. Beyond funding legal forms, planning the construction phase, or financial plan, advisors from established projects inform the projects’ social processes.

Hence, the transfer is based on solidarity between younger and older projects, a kind of intergenerational contract. Over the years, larger proportions of rent are paid to the Solidarity Fund, while other liabilities reduce in size. If the rent increases such that rental in the free market becomes cheaper than living in the syndicate house, then the group can apply for a reduction in the level of payment to the fund. The objective is to keep dwelling costs at a low level and make housing possible for people on low incomes.

In fact, around half of Germans live in rental housing but only a fraction lives in collectively owned housing. To have a recognisable influence on the rental market, the syndicate either has to grow immensely – indicating the need for a new structure – or more, similar, syndicates need to be launched.

A strength of the syndicate is its handling of democratic decision-making processes. The quantity of people involved in decisions is impressive, given that discussions are open for all members and the underlying principle of consensus. 

Syndicate houses are owned by the people living in them, who are part of an association that excludes others from the privilege of a dwelling. Moreover, living in syndicate projects still requires paying rent. Even if cheaper than on the free market this does not make it possible to dwell without money at all. While total decommodification of real estate is commonly seen as the final solution, strategies to achieve this, and appropriate compromises, remain hotly debated.

This returns us to the question of scaling up. Can such syndicates provide housing for more than a marginal number of householders who are, consequently, singled out as constituting a subculture? Could the model have a positive impact on housing politics or might it only take over the government’s task of providing decent and affordable housing? Is there a limit to scaling up the model and, if so, what kinds of structural changes are needed to keep the democratic structure of the syndicate? 

Fair housing is only possible when houses are decommodified or at least collectivised (as with the syndicate). So, in a good-life-for-all degrowth utopia, the profitable housing sector must shrink or, better, disappear.

Compatible with degrowth ideals, the Mietshäuser Syndikat eschews profit, which implicitly drives growth, encourages conviviality and the sharing of resources, skills and responsibilities for collectively managed housing.