Welcome to Hotel California: ASI's proposals for more microflats

Those lovely consequentialist neoliberals over at the Adam Smith Institute have come up with their latest wheeze to solve London's houisng problems - really tiny flats:

Living in micro-homes could "expand choice" for young professionals and help tackle London's housing crisis, a report has suggested.

A neoliberal think tank is calling for the Greater London Authority (GLA) to scrap its rules on minimum floor space.

The Adam Smith Institute said homes in the capital with less than 37 sq m of floor space could be an "affordable opportunity" for young people.

Now I appreciate (and the ASI make this point in their report) that our neoliberal friends also want a "profound reform of housing regulation" but the problem with the microflats idea is that it gives another excuse for housing's key problem (lack of land supply) to be ducked by authorities. It's also likely that, despite the ASI saying Londoners were "comfortable with living in smaller apartments", this covers over another problem with housing supply - even if we build good numbers of new homes, if they're flats we're not meeting the need for family housing.

A decade ago my colleague Huw Jones (former strategic housing guru for Leeds City Council among other achievements) talked about the idea of shared living as a stepping stone from being a student (where micro-flats with shared facilities are the norm) to regular housing. Huw would point out that shared living allows for that social environment that young people living alone desire (without the 'on top of eachother' problems with flat sharing). So the ASI's idea isn't without its merits.

The problem is the transition - moving on from renting a small apartment into family housing - is increasingly difficult for many young people earning good money in big cities like London (and increasingly Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham). Unless there is this transition the effect of increasing the supply of rented flats (whether micro- or not) is to create Hotel California - "you can check out any time you want but can't ever leave".

The winners under such as situation are not the young people paying big rents for a well-proportioned cupboard with a window but the businesses renting these micro-flats out. Not only do microflats increase the rental yield but, by providing "communal amenities such as games rooms and open living spaces", a further yield generator is provided - the service charge (justified because someone has to clean the shared space, look after any equipment and manage programmed maintainence).

Microflats can be added to a series of other wheezes - densifying suburbs, taller towers, more council housing, subsidised mortgages, rent controls - that give excuses to the wealthy folk living in London's green belt. Excuses that allow MPs to say stuff like this piece of spectacular NIMBYism from Crispin Blunt:

The proposed Redhill Aerodrome development is not an isolated issue. Under the current planning system, local authorities such as Reigate and Banstead and Tandridge, situated in the Green Belt, are being put under unreasonable pressure to build unrealistic numbers of new homes by the Planning Inspectorate. Leaders of all 11 Surrey borough and district councils agree that most of Surrey is heavily constrained by the Green Belt and other important designations, imposing severe limitations on their ability to meet local housing targets.

This (not allowing the owners of previously developed land like aerodromes to realise value and develop much needed housing) is the problem and building microflats in Battersea or Camden will only give the Crispin Blunts of this world another excuse to pretend that housing need for London can be met without thousands of new family homes in Surrey (or Kent or Berkshire or Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire).

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