Home Truths

When the Creative Directors of VITAL invited me to present at a Regional Architecture Association event in December 2024, I hadn't reflected much on the difference between the regional and urban projects our production teams follow, but it turns out that it's about a 70/30 split in favour of the regions. That's really interesting, because we only follow projects with some kind of innovation embedded in them. So, if I follow that logic: where are people innovating in architecture? Where are they doing things differently? Where are things being explored or prototyped? From my perspective, it's happening regionally. 

In the current filming period with ABC shows, I've done over 110 meet-and-greets – initial conversations with homeowners about the aspirations for their home. Not necessarily their dream home, but their next house. Of course, this is a self-selecting group, because you only go on the show if you have some kind of story to tell, something innovative to share. So while we’re not looking at the middle of the bell curve of Australians, if you like, we are having these conversations with non-experts – ordinary people – who are really going for it in terms of design. 

And that's very telling, because for us in architecture, we need to tune in to that more than we do at the moment. Our focus tends to be up the chain – policy, finance, regulations, those areas. It's difficult for us to look down the chain, at feedback from the homeowners themselves, but I think that conversation is vital. 

Housing is a big topic right now, but what kind of housing crisis are we in? I don't think this is as straightforward as the media would have you believe; I think it’s much more culturally existential. And I also think our perspective in Australia is quite narrow when it comes to architecture and design. For context, one of the things I find remarkable, is that the residential land component of our wealth as a country is equivalent to 74 per cent of our GDP – that’s  bigger than anything else we do. Bigger than mining, bigger than bonds or any other asset class. That says a lot about how we think of our residential homes as assets.

Depending on who you talk to, the housing crisis is an issue of demographics, or it’s costs, or it’s supply and demand, or it’s land availability near jobs. Or it's a generational divide that's happened as the boomers hold on to their property, while ‘generation rent’ can’t even get into the housing market. The big fear about this wealth divide is that it’s fracturing our egalitarian idea of Australia, of what a home is and who is allowed to have one, based on generational wealth transfer. 

On average, the research is telling us that we have a shortfall of about 433,000 properties for social or affordable housing, and the other side of that, for context about cost, is the rental price increases that we're seeing year on year, as much as 8.5 per cent in 2023. That affects one-third of all Australians, because we are now effectively thirds: one-third homeowners, one-third mortgage holders and one-third renters. 

The media and politicians would have us believe that supply and demand is the biggest issue. But I don’t think that’s true – and here’s why. We've got about 11 million homes in Australia. There are a million – 10 per cent more or less – vacant at any moment in time. There are 13 million spare bedrooms around the country on any given evening. And there are, by contrast, 122,000 people who are homeless in Australia on any evening. So if you just do the maths, we could open up one per cent of the existing housing stock and we would solve the housing crisis – if our idea of solving the housing crisis was just to put a roof over everyone's head and let them feel safe and secure. So the question remains, as an affluent nation, how do we choose to tackle the housing issue, when housing is at the core of our personal and national wealth?

We've got about 11 million homes in Australia. There are a million – or 10 per cent more  or less – vacant at any moment in time.

Those who talk about demographics and supply and demand are really talking about the link between homeowners and construction, which is where the government is pumping all the money right now: into a pipeline of delivery. And that’s great, but I would argue that it’s actually our idea of home that is broken, and the building as usual (BAU) way we build them. I use the phrase “BAU is broken” – which I like in this context because BAU is also the German word for building, or, home.

Sustainability wise, we are killing the planet one house at a time, with something like 30–35 per cent of the materials that go into a building site ending up in a skip, so we're not doing ourselves any favours in how we're building. And then there’s the question of size. 

We currently have, on average, the second biggest new house size in the world, at 236 square metres – about a metre behind the Americans, last time I looked. That’s around three times the average house in Portugal, seven times larger than an average Hong Kong house, twice as big as Italy and the rest of Europe. So, if people in the rest of the world can live happy, productive lives without giant houses, why can’t we? 

Demographically, Australia has changed enormously from when ‘The Great Australian Dream’ of home ownership for all took root in the postwar boom. The traditional definition of a nuclear family is today in the minority – accounting for 44 per cent of Australians today and falling, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) family projections for 2046. So 56 per cent of Australians exist in some other version of family. That's interesting because the way we keep designing houses is based on a nuclear family from the 1950s. 

The type of family increasing the fastest between now and 2046 will be single (male) parent families of two kids – projected to increase 40–70 per cent. Let’s put that family in a home anywhere in Australia. What kind of home jumps into your mind? I bet it's a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, carport, driveway, small backyard, a bit of a front yard, single-storey, brick house. And for me, that's the problem. Why hasn’t the idea of what a home in Australia looks like changed in 70 years? 

This is what we should all be thinking and talking about. Because if we just keep building more of the old idea of what a home is, even though it no longer reflects our society, then we’re actually just building more of the problem, not a solution – throwing good money after bad. And that’s what is happening.

At this point, I want to introduce some wildcards into the conversation. Nicole Gurran, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Design at the University of Sydney, recently told me that in her mind, it's not a question of supply and demand. The crisis is a question of access. And how do we find the mechanisms to release excess housing holdings back to the people who need it most, where they need it the most? That’s a big problem because there’s no mechanism for effectively talking about that. 

David Kelly, a cultural geographer at RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research, said we solved the homeless crisis during Covid because all the rules changed overnight. In that moment, suddenly, people weren't on the street anymore, they were in shelters or used hotels. They had a roof over their head, and it was one that was enduring for more than one night at a time. Yes, it’s an extreme example, but it makes you think that if we have the tools at our disposal to make changes when we have to, what exactly is holding us back?