Lessons From Self-Organized Housing Communities

The term “commons”, originally used to describe natural resources, has expanded to include both natural and human-created resources.  Following James Quilligan’s work, a commons can be described as the inherited or created resources that we organize, use and steward throughout our lifetime and pass on to future generations (see Global Commons Trust, http://globalcommonstrust.org/?page_id=11 ).

Housing is not simply a commodity to be produced in the marketplace.  Fundamentally, housing is a basic human need.  In this regard, it is no different from the basic human need for water, air or food necessary for human survival.  Although this characteristic places housing well within the understanding of a commons, as a society, we tend to limit our view of housing to that of a private good. 

While it is true that an individual housing unit does possess characteristics of a private good in the conventional economic sense that it is both “excludable” (i.e., an individual household is given exclusive use of a housing unit) and “rival” (i.e., one household's occupancy takes the housing unit out of the pool of available housing), the housing stock as a whole may actually possess characteristics of a commons.  For instance, social scientists often argue that society benefits from having affordable housing and stronger social systems.  In other words, people find value in the knowledge that their fellow citizens are adequately housed.  This added value is not created by the market or by government, but is collectively created by people in the community. 

Self-organized housing communities such as housing co-operatives, intentional communities, co-housing and eco-villages, also exhibit some characteristics of a commons.  Comments from residents suggest they are drawn to a vision of housing that extends beyond the narrow definition of housing as a commodity – they are seeking community and a sense of belonging.  “The relationships are what make it all work and all worthwhile”[1].  “Living alone, or in a contemporary nuclear family, people have lots of privacy, but often not as much community life as they want or need.”[2]  “We’re longing for a way of life that’s warmer, kinder, more wholesome, more affordable, more co-operative, and more connected”.[3]  

People who chose these options are clearly looking for something more than just a roof over their heads - they are yearning to be in relationship with each other.  Relationships are a key feature of a commons.  In the commons literature, relationships are often described as the process of "commoning” (i.e., the social process of people coming together to make decisions about how the common resources are produced and managed).

Another characteristic of these communities is that they involve residents in the production process, whether it is simply at the design stage or it extends beyond that all the way through the construction process itself.  Involving users in the production of their own resources, a process James Quilligan describes as co-production, is a characteristic of a commons.  Residents are also involved in managing their housing communities, whether through strata councils, homeowners’ associations, informal residents’ committees or other similar institutions.  This, too, is a key feature of a commons, a process Quilligan refers to as co-governance.

While none of these housing communities would likely claim they have created a housing commons, it is striking to notice how many characteristics of a commons they do embody.  These models should provide plenty of food for thought when thinking about how we can collectively create a housing commons. 

  

---

[1] Durrett, C. (2009)  The Senior Cohousing Handbook.  Gabriola Island, BC:  New Society Publishers.

[2] McCamant K. & Durrett, C.  (1988).  Cohousing:  A Contemporary Approach To Housing Ourselves.  Berkeley, California:  Habitat Press/Ten Speed Press.

[3] Christian D.L. (2003)  Creating a Life Together:  Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities.  Gabriola Island, BC:  New Society Publishers.

The Tragedy of Market-Oriented Societies

In our market-oriented societies, housing is viewed mainly as a commodity supplied and allocated by the market with occasional government intervention to assist low-income families and individuals.  But housing is not simply a commodity.  It is a complex good that, above all, is a fundamental human need.  Beyond that, housing is also viewed as an investment good, offering an income stream to the owner, protection against rising house prices and the potential of capital gain and associated income tax benefits.  As an investment, housing also attracts a special kind of investor - the speculator.  This multi-faceted nature of housing complicates the allocation of housing and impacts its affordability. 

There are three main alternatives for providing housing in our market-oriented society:  by the private sector through the market, by the public sector through direct or indirect government intervention and by civil society through self-organized initiatives.  By far, the majority of housing is provided through the market. 

With our newly-awakened awareness of the inequalities in our societies and the lack of access to affordable housing, we are hearing growing calls for government to “do something”, to intervene to ensure families and individuals all have access to adequate, affordable housing.  But, how realistic is it to expect governments can, in fact, “do anything” to address this growing problem in these times of economic and financial crisis when they clearly were unable, or unwilling, to do something to guarantee the right to housing before the 2008 economic crisis?  We are looking in the wrong direction if we expect government or the market to get us out of the very situation they are responsible for creating in the first place.  We need to turn our gaze, instead, to the commons.

Almost everyone associates the commons with Garrett Hardin’s 1968 essay on “The Tragedy of the Commons” – the hypothetical story Hardin told about an open pasture and how, if herders were left to their own devices, they would put more and more cattle out on the pasture until it was inevitably overgrazed and destroyed.  His solution to this perceived problem was to privatize the land or place it under the control of the state.  Fortunately, thanks to the groundbreaking work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom , more and more people are learning about the tragedy of Hardin’s mistake.  As Ostrom points out, Hardin was not describing a commons, he was describing an unorganized, open-access regime with no rules, norms or practices regarding access or use.  Ostrom has clearly demonstrated that, under certain conditions, groups of stakeholders can and do self-organize to protect, preserve and manage their commons.  Unfortunately, however, Hardin’s prescription to privatize the commons or place it under state control is still the dominant thinking and we are only gradually awakening to the powerful capacities of civil society to self-organize to manage our commons. 

That's not to say there won't be a role for government and the market in a commons-oriented society - indeed there will be, but it will be a negotiated role that empowers civil society through our rightful access to our natural and human-created commons.

Creating "truly affordable housing"

It is a global tragedy that all people do not have access to adequate, affordable shelter.  The United Nations estimates over 100 million people worldwide are homeless and at least another 1.1 billion are inadequately housed.  These numbers are alarming in themselves, but they are especially alarming in light of the long history of international declarations aimed at ensuring universal access to adequate, affordable housing - a right that governments have been unable to guarantee or protect.  In developing nations, perhaps an argument can be made that there is not enough wealth to ensure everyone is adequately housed, although that is questionable, but, in developed nations, there is no shortage of national wealth. 

Affordable housing (and all housing needs to be affordable housing) is a planetary birthright.  And yet, in our modern, market-oriented societies, housing is viewed as a commodity.  This view is in stark contrast to the fundamental human experience of housing as a basic need and a foundation of community and sense of belonging. 

Everyone needs affordable housing in order to survive.  In fact, I want to go even further than that and point out that future generations need us to create truly affordable housing so they will be able to survive.  What do I mean by “truly affordable housing”?  I mean housing that is both financially affordable for individual households and socially/environmentally affordable for society in general. 

Housing is financially affordable if it costs no more than a certain percentage of monthly household income (typically 30 – 35 per cent, although these numbers vary depending on the context).  Housing is socially/environmentally affordable if it is consistent with the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable (i.e., it “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”).  Truly affordable housing does not impose a financial, social or environmental cost on future generations that would limit their ability to meet their needs. 

How are we doing so far?

Getting to the root of inequality

The Occupy Movement has raised our collective awareness of the inequality in our modern societies.  The rallying cries of “we are the 99 per cent” originating in Zuccotti Park in New York City and spreading quickly around the world, focussed our attention on the widening gap between the very rich and the rest of society in many nations of the developed world.  By itself, the unequal distribution of wealth, income and opportunity in rich nations is not a new phenomenon, but the Occupy Movement removed our blinders, rubbed our noses in it and forced us to question why we tolerate such inequities.  Why does the top one per cent of the population hold more wealth than millions of working people in developed nations like the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada?  Why do the rich keep getting richer?  Why is it common-place for the wealthy to live in large mansions guarded by security fences while middle class families work two or three jobs just to make their mortgage payments on a small house in the suburbs and, if they lose their jobs, they could face foreclosure proceedings and lose their homes altogether?  Why has it become common-place for homeless men, women and children to huddle under bridges or in stairwells because they have nowhere to call home? 

These issues are not new.  Anti-poverty groups, housing advocacy groups, local politicians, community organizers, churches and many, many others have been pointing out these social justice issues for decades.  On a case-by-case basis, much progress has been made in building shelters and increasing the supply of affordable housing through inclusionary housing policies or, in some cases, direct government intervention.  Many individuals and families have benefitted from these efforts but still it seems there is very little appetite or capacity to create a systemic response at a societal level to remove the root causes of inequality – the reliance upon the market to respond to a basic human need such as housing. 

What is needed is a new organizing framework for society - a framework that recognizes affordable housing is not a commodity or a public utility but is, in fact, a community legacy that must be preserved and protected for current and future generations.  Such an approach would re-frame affordable housing as a commons and would empower local citizens to govern their housing commons through community housing trusts.