From Sweden to San Francisco, municipalities, individuals and businesses have come up with some innovative ideas
Lena Sin
Province
1. BOKLOK
2. REINVENTING THE ‘COMPANY TOWN’
3. LAND BANKING
4. COHOUSING
5. CO-OP HOUSING
6. TEACHER NEXT DOOR
1. BOKLOK
Trust Ikea to come up with cheap, good-looking homes.
Pronounced “Boo-Clock,” the concept was born in Sweden in the 1990s as an effort to tackle affordable properties.
Furniture giant Ikea joined forces with Swedish construction firm Skanska to create good-quality flat-pack houses at low prices.
The timber-framed houses and flats have high ceilings, open plans and large windows.
Sweden builds 800 BoKlok homes a year and the concept has been introduced in Finland, Norway and Denmark.
In 2007, the U.K. gave the green light to build 120 BoKlok homes in the community of Gateshead, all priced within reach of households earning between $24,620 and $59,088 per year.
A second BoKlok development in the U.K. has just been announced.
2. REINVENTING THE ‘COMPANY TOWN’
The private sector got into the housing game as far back as the early 20th century, when company towns ruled the new frontier.
Today, some U.S. companies are reinventing that concept.
With companies now situated in urban areas where the geographic relationships are more complex, companies have begun developing employer-assisted housing programs, according to the American Planning Association.
Employers provide workers with a zero-interest forgivable loan to help cover down payments. For each year the employee stays with the company, 20 per cent of the loan is forgiven, wrote Tim Sullivan in a 2004 article for the APA.
One Minnesota-based company, Bremer Financial Corp., has adopted a similar program and made it available to employees at all of the company’s 100 locations in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota.
3. LAND BANKING
Land banking is all about strategy.
The idea is for an organization or jurisdiction to acquire land — even though there’s no immediate plan to build affordable housing on it.
The concept is for a city to be prepared for affordability problems down the road.
Whistler acquired a substantial “land bank” from the provincial government, which gave the resort Crown land for hosting the 2010 Games.
It is being saved for development in the future as demand for affordable housing grows, says Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed.
Land banking is just one of eight affordable housing “tools” recommended by Whistler Coun. Tim Wake, who co-authored a report titled Creating Market and Non-Market Affordable Housing.
– For more information on the report, visit www.smartgrowth.bc.ca and click on “New Affordable Housing Toolkit.”
4. COHOUSING
An idea that originates from Denmark, cohousing made its debut in North America in 1988, according to the Canadian Cohousing Network.
These projects consist of private homes — ranging from just a few to 20 or 30 — that are self-sufficient but also have access to a large common space with a kitchen, dining room and other amenities.
Typically, a group of individuals with a common vision of shared and private space work together to find an affordable property and pool funds to build it.
B.C. has a number of cohousing developments including Cranberry Commons in Burnaby, Pacific Gardens in Nanaimo and Quayside Village in North Vancouver.
– For more information, visit www.cohousing.ca.
5. CO-OP HOUSING
Some still lament the days when Ottawa funded co-op housing.
The basic premise for co-operative housing is that residents purchase shares in the building and participate in managing the affairs of the building.
There is no outside landlord. In a typical Canadian co-op, member’s approve of the co-op’s yearly budget and set monthly fees. Co-ops try to operate as close to cost as possible and members can live there as long as they want.
In Canada, the federal government through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. started to fund co-operative homes in the early 1970s by providing startup funding and loans. Federal funding, however, ceased in the 1990s.
In Finland, co-op membership is the prime form of real estate. Sweden has also widely used co-op housing to tackle affordability.
6. TEACHER NEXT DOOR
The Teacher Next Door Loan Program in San Francisco provides down-payment assistance loans to accredited teachers employed by the San Francisco Unified School District.
The loans are forgivable according to the number of years the teacher remains in the school district.
Coming Thursday: Realtor Bob Rennie has a solution to the housing pinch
© The Vancouver Province 2008
