Peter Vanden Abeele is a city architect with an urban challenge.
“In large creative cities, the rental market is the dominant market”
Peter Vanden Abeele is city architect in Ghent. In his city, he has the complicated task of improving the affordability and quality of housing, in a climate where houses have become an investment product. “Ghent recognizes living as a basic right, so if you build houses that are not lived in, that is very problematic.”
What task awaited you in Ghent when you started?
“Ghent, like many other Western European cities, has been a city of growth since the turn of the century. That has to do with urban renewal programs, designed to make Ghent attractive, whether for living, working, studying or recreation. In this growing city I had a double task: on the one hand to find space to keep on building and on the other to keep space free, because we need space for the future and environmental measures. But also space to keep breathing.”
What is the balance between social housing and private ownership in Ghent?
“In the Flemish housing market, on average, six percent is social housing, while eighty percent is ownership, with the remaining fourteen percent being the private rental market. In Ghent this is fundamentally different because fifty percent are tenants or owners. On the rental market, half of the homes are not in good condition, so there is a huge renovation task and half of the tenants have affordability problems. Either because they spend more than the healthy ratio of one-third of family income on housing, or because they depend on one income or social benefits. So affordability and quality are a problem. The additional housing doesn’t solve the problem either, because we’re still building for the classic nuclear family while half of the city’s residents are single. So the housing market is not yet adapted to social demographics.”
Do you try to influence this process?
“Yes, although that is of course quite relative. A city architect gives advice on concrete construction projects and on vision creation processes. In existing projects we try to encourage people to think about a diverse range of housing. Affordability is a problem here, because the land is sold at a certain land value which has a development model behind it. In the case of vision creation, or policy preparation, you can work on affordability.”
Is it the role of local government to be involved in housing affordability?
“The answer to that is a bit double. Social housing policy is determined on the semi-national Flemish scale. Research shows that we should actually have at least 20 percent social housing in Ghent. Unfortunately, Flanders does not want to implement a fundamental social housing policy. That makes it difficult to do anything as a local government, except create better conditions in the rental market and seek partnerships with the market. And we can set conditions when making land available, for example that affordable housing is built. We don’t have a big land position, but in that regard we do what we can.”
What is currently the biggest challenge in urban development worldwide?
“For all Western cities, affordability of rental housing is a big problem. You have to solve that in cooperation with the private rental market. Where we as Ghent play a pioneering role, is that we act as a rental intermediary. In the small market of private rental, where the housing is poor and
exorbitant prices are charged, we offer property owners to rent their premises to us. We relieve them of the burden, by finding tenants who will pay a regulated rent. That means less income, but also fewer worries. Because we also take care of maintenance.”
How do we ensure that urban areas have space that is fair and affordable, but also makes economic sense?
“You are now seeing an overspeculation of land value. We need to try to make it clear to landowners that their land is not worth gold and that they should not overestimate it. We can negotiate by making it a requirement to build affordable housing. In this way you keep the development potential financially low and thus the land value does not rise. We are also looking into levying urban development fees. So the more you develop the more you have to contribute to the social impacts that result from your development.
A disadvantageous consequence of this rising land value is that building no longer becomes a residential product but an investment product. You can see this happening in London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where apartments simply remain empty because they are only for resale. Ghent recognizes living as a basic right, so if you build homes that are not lived in, that is very problematic. Fortunately, cities are now experimenting with imposing a living obligation on your property. Partly in this way, the market for expensive housing will soon become saturated and developers will start building for other budgets as well.”
Rebel has been working in urban development for decades, what do you think Rebel can add to that urban environment in your experience?
“In Flanders, Rebel is pioneering with new policy and business models for activating the affordable rental market. There is also an opportunity if they can make it clear to a wider audience that the rental market can also be a quality alternative. Everyone in Belgium wants to buy a house, from the historical legacy in which the government wanted a house for everyone. Therefore, the highest attainable is still ownership, while it is not in reach for many people. So maybe we should get rid of that notion. An intermediate solution is, for example, the cooperative model, in which an association is the owner and as a resident you’re a stakeholder. We have done it with shared cars so why not at the scale of housing? In large creative cities like New York and Shanghai, the rental market is the dominant market.”
Lessons from Peter Vanden Abeele:
- We need space to build, but also to breathe
- The housing market should adapt to changing social demographics
- Houses are for living in, not for speculating with
- Renting is an excellent alternative to buying
