HOW TO BUILD QUALITY AFFORDABLE HOMES AT SCALE—LESSONS FROM SWEDEN

The ambitious goal and the societal dynamics that coalesced to enable its realisation is nicely described in a research paper titled “The Million Homes Programme: a review of the great Swedish planning project’ by researchers Thomas Hall and Sonja Vidén (2005) where they discuss the housing and political settings that ultimately manifested in the the Miljonprogrammet, the challenges involved, how it was achieved, and how history has viewed it. Sweden was fortunate to avoid involvement in World War 2 and the contingent widespread damage to housing stock and the Miljonprogrammet was conceived to address other issues associated with rapid urbanisation including housing shortages, decade-long waiting lists to obtain a state rent-regulated home and comparatively low housing standards. In the early 1960s these factors, combined with rising prosperity and increasing demand for better quality homes, had already kick-started a surge in building and in 1965 the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament) leveraged this momentum with an ambitious goal to build 100,000 homes every year over the next 10 years to resolve the issues. The period 1961-1975 later became known as the ‘the record years’.

Preconditions for achieving the goal included low cost state loans, industrial-scale construction systems and provision of land by municipalities. The goal was reached before the end of 1974. During ‘the record years’ ~40,000 apartment blocks containing ~920,000 apartments (66%) and ~480,000 single-family houses (34%) were built. Standardised design, scale and prefabrication (exterior and internal components) were prioritised by the state for financial and other support and regarded as necessary to produce affordable housing of an appropriate standard. As such projects comprising 1,000+ apartments that could be replicated were offered preferential loan terms. Of the apartment housing, ~50% was built by municipal housing entities, ~30% by tenant-owned cooperative building societies and ~20% housing by private rental housing corporations. The early ‘Modern Movement’ influenced the architectural style of concrete tower blocks typically site-cast (only ~15%-20% pre-cast) of which ~50% were three-storey slab blocks, ~20% lower slab blocks and row houses and others between six and eight storeys high. The majority of the single-family homes were built by private developers in identical groups, often ‘catalogue’ designs, using prefabricated components with timber being the most common material for both framing and exterior cladding.

Thomas Hall and Sonja Vidén note that during ‘the record years’ housing standards were vastly improved with household overcrowding (affecting ~34% of households in 1960) and lack of ablution facilities (affecting ~45%) reduced to ~5% of housing stock by 1975. The homogeneity of design has attracted criticism and also accolades but what cannot be faulted is the realisation of an ambitious building goal and access for a very large cohort of households to something that was previously unattainable — affordable and good quality housing. Thomas Hall and Sonja Vidén speculate that in comparison to rented apartment estates in “Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Riga, Budapest, Bratislava and the UK” built during the 1960s and 1970s “the technical quality of construction is higher, the flats are better planned and equipped, greater interest is devoted to the external environment and public and private services are better developed”.

Leading up to (and following) the Miljonprogrammet state intervention in the housing market was not a new phenomena for Sweden and this is succinctly recorded in the Terner Centre report ‘Housing in Sweden: An Overview’ (2017). The Swedish Riksdag approved state support for housing construction in 1917 in response to poor housing conditions and a lack of building activity but this was curtailed in 1922 and deferred to the market. It wasn’t long before the Riksdag felt the need to intervene again during a farming downturn and unemployment crisis in the early 1930s where it introduced loans and subsidies aimed at improving rural housing conditions. By the end of World War 2 a stalled housing construction sector had resulted in the overcrowding and poor quality of housing that pressured the Riksdag to intervene again — introducing low cost state loans to boost construction and rent controls to protect existing occupiers. State loans of up to 100% of initial outlays ushered in the establishment of Municipal Housing Corporations (MHCs). Sweden’s Social Democrats who held office from 1932 to 1976 promoted “universal” housing as a “non-subservient” priority and did not differentiate based on socio-economic classification. State support was implemented via municipalities and enabled through both funding and fiscal measures. What followed was another housing sector hiatus which presaged the Miljonprogrammet.