Too slow for easy low-cost housing fix

It’s a problem with any bureaucracy, anywhere in the world – and it’s also the reason strong figures in politics prevail – doing the right thing the “right way” takes a lot longer than just getting stuff done when it’s most needed.

The principle of “it’s easier to apologise than it is to get permission” gets things moving but it also leaves the door wide open for knee-jerk, half-baked solutions.

Somewhere in the middle are logical, sensible decisions that can be made quickly and seen through efficiently.

One project that slipped through that net was the plan to turn a former Wesley Mission hostel for the indigent elderly into affordable homes for essential workers.

How that all fell apart, despite a $3m city grant, and why it’s now being sold for commercial development, is our main topic in this week’s podcast.

Meanwhile we leave Poland with fond memories of some fantastic buildings and arrive in Prague disappointed that the only freely accessible paternoster elevator left in the city (the one shown in this video) is out of action for repairs.

And finally, Jimmy has a brilliant plan to solve special levy stress. That’sall in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
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Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Transcript

[Jimmy]

Well, we're not in Poland anymore.

[Sue]

No, but we're not too far away.

[Jimmy]

Not too far away. We got on a train in Wroclaw today.

[Sue]

We've been practicing that.

[Jimmy]

It took us three days to learn how to say it almost correctly. And now we're in Prague in the Czech Republic. We've been looking at some interesting buildings, but we've also been keeping up to date with Australian news, not least the story of a building that was supposed to be turned into low cost or affordable accommodation and is now being put up for sale to greedy developers.

I'm Jimmy Thomson. I write about Strata for anyone who will publish it, and I edit the flatchat.com.au website.

[Sue]

And I'm Sue Williams, and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age, the AFR and Domain.

[Jimmy]

And live from the Czech Republic, this is the Flat Chat Wrap. 

I think we should start with the story in Sydney. Because, I mean, I glanced at the headlines and had a quick read of the story on the Flat Chat website. But tell me, Sue, what's going on? I mean, it sounded like one of these great plans to make available more affordable housing in an area that really needs it. And then it's all gone to pot.

[Sue]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the government is talking, both state and federal governments are talking so much about providing much more housing, especially social and affordable housing. But there seems to be all these opportunities for converting old buildings that they're missing all the time.

You know, they're talking about building them all from scratch or infill development. Whereas there are lots of opportunities to take these old buildings, the ones that are being sold off to developers for high sums to convert them into luxury, you know, three bedroom apartments and stuff. And really work on them and make sure that they would be made available for essential workers or for people who just can't afford regular rent.

And this was an example featured in the Sydney Morning Herald, a building in Glebe. And that was kind of 39 homes. Originally, it was built for American servicemen, but then the Wesley Mission had it and it was used for seniors housing.

And there was an accident there and somebody fell off a balcony and died. So it was closed down. And Wesley Mission put forward a proposal to turn it into low cost affordable housing.

And the city of Sydney agreed to pay them a sum to help refurbish the building as well. But they were turned down by the federal government for funding, which seems quite extraordinary, really, because this could be 39 decent homes for people.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

And for the want of a couple of million dollars, which is kind of nothing, really, when you look at how much it costs to build a new apartment building. Instead, it's going to be sold off to developers for luxury apartments.

[Jimmy]

So they'll turn it into 13 fabulous apartments.

[Sue]

Well, probably far fewer than that. I mean, it's 39 little apartments now.

[Jimmy]

I think so.

[Sue]

Yes. So it would probably only make about eight. Well, probably luxury, fabulous apartments.

And I mean, OK, there is a shortage of three bedroom apartments for wealthy downsizes who want to downsize. But, you know, there's a really crying out need for homes for people who need to live near the city centres and just can't afford it. And there just isn't any options for them.

[Jimmy]

And did the government give a reason? The federal government give a reason for it?

[Sue]

No, they're saying they're going to look into it again after the fuss.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

So maybe they'll change their mind with a bit of luck.

[Jimmy]

Right. So it's not Wesley Mission's fault. It's the federal government.

[Sue]

Yeah, it sounds like it's the federal government.

[Jimmy]

Because Wesley Mission has, you know, provides services to people anyway, and they need funding for this. It doesn't come for free.

[Sue]

No, that's right. I mean, they're sort of saying, well, if we sell it off to developers and we make a profit on it, then we'll put that profit into providing affordable housing, maybe in somewhere like Canberra. And that's OK.

But I think the need is urgent in Sydney. And it will be nice to see this building retained for Sydneysiders, really.

[Jimmy]

We don't need any more luxury apartments, not as much as we need affordable housing for essential workers.

[Sue]

We're seeing so much of this kind of thing, you know, lots of small studio apartment buildings being turned into, you know, nice luxury apartments. And we just need the cheap studio apartments to still be there. We need a real mix of housing in Sydney.

And a friend of mine contacted me about another apartment building in Lewisham. And that's been empty for a long time. It's now been put up for sale.

And that was kind of abandoned when the builders went into liquidation but it's kind of almost finished. But there are some defects there. And you think, again, why couldn't the government get involved and just get the defects rectified and then turn these into affordable housing as well or social housing?

It just seems there are these opportunities, but the government doesn't seem to have a strategy to take advantage of them.

[Jimmy]

And they don't seem to have much imagination either, do they?

[Sue]

No, they don't have the processes and they don't have the...

[Jimmy]

The processes are all they have. You know, you approach government, state government or the federal government with an idea. And if that doesn't fit the templates that they've established of what they want to do or what they think they want to do, what they plan to do and what they've discussed endlessly about what they're going to do.

And then when they finally get into power, suddenly realise they're going to have to do it. But, you know, the world has moved on. Like when you think about all the buildings that in David Chandler's time that were found to be unfit and needed remediation, they must be dotted around all over New South Wales, waiting for somebody to come in and say, we will do a million dollar fix on this, but we're not paying you the full price of the shoddy work that you've done.

[Sue]

That's right. And the buildings, if they're just left empty for a long time, they just start crumbling really. You know, many of them have problems with membranes, so they have problems with water ingress.

And the more water gets in them over the time that they're just left empty, the more expensive they will be to fix up. So we need to jump on these buildings very quickly, really. They just seem to offer a great chance to get low cost housing cheaply and quickly into the market.

[Jimmy]

And make use of buildings that are half built.

[Sue]

Yep.

[Jimmy]

When we come back, we're going to talk about some buildings that were built a long time ago and are still standing, but not in Australia. That's after this. So, Sue, you know, I like a bit of architecture and we've been seeing quite a lot of interesting buildings in this trip through Europe.

And yesterday we went to the Centennial Tower, Centennial Dome.

[Sue]

Centennial Hall.

[Jimmy]

Centennial Hall in Wroclaw. It's spelled W-R-O-C-L-A-W. You want to say Wroclaw, but for a while it was called Breslau.

[Sue]

Because it used to be German before it became a part of Poland. Because Poland, as you know, lots of it was taken off by the Germans. Bits of it were given back.

Over centuries really, you know, because it's right in the middle of Europe, right in the heart between the East and West. It's suffered so much from the change in geography.

[Jimmy]

Part of it was Lithuania and then all the Germans in Lithuania were moved over to the other side of the country. And it's been mucked around a lot. So Wroclaw.

Wroclaw. Wroclaw. That's where we were going.

[Sue]

Yeah, that's in the south of Poland.

[Jimmy]

The Polish language is very tricky.

[Sue]

But what was funny, we were talking to this guy and we were saying, oh God, Polish is so hard. It's so hard to pronounce here. And he said, no, no, no, it's really easy because every single letter is the same in whatever words you say.

And so it's very simple. And we were saying, no, but there's all these C's and Z's and Y's. It's really difficult.

And he was saying, no, the English language is much harder. He said, take the words Pacific Ocean. There's three C's there.

And every C in that phrase has a different sound, which had never occurred to me before. And that's actually quite right, really, I suppose.

[Jimmy]

So even so, I mean, the Polish Scrabble board, the game has 10 Z's and 10 C's and they're only worth one point each.

[Sue]

So yes, so we went to Centennial Hall.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, which was for a while the largest dome in the world. Previously, it had been the Pantheon in Rome and they actually set out to make it wider and just a few centimetres taller. But they did this by using what was then, we're talking the first decade of the 20th century.

So we're talking about 110 years ago, reinforced concrete, which was this new structural thing that had been used in America. They were building skyscrapers there and the Wroclaw city architect wanted to build skyscrapers there, but wasn't allowed to. But what he did, what they did do, they wanted to build this great dome, this great hall to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig.

[Sue]

Yep. Which was when Germans beat Napoleon. So they were very proud of that.

So they wanted to commemorate the hundred years since then, because I think it was, the battle was in 1915?

[Jimmy]

13.

[Sue]

1913.

[Jimmy]

1813.

[Sue]

18, sorry, 1813. So they wanted to build it for nine, to be ready for 1913 for celebrations.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

That the Germans were going to hold.

[Jimmy]

Yeah. So the city architect, well, he was supposed to administer an architectural competition.

[Sue]

They brought in architects from all over the world to talk about how they were going to build this fabulous place.

[Jimmy]

They were asked to submit designs. And while they were doing that, he said, oh, by the way, here's my design.

[Sue]

And he wasn't part of the competition at all.

[Jimmy]

No.

[Sue]

But they liked that best.

[Jimmy]

Well, at first they thought it was a joke because it kind of looks structured, almost like a birthday cake on the outside. And although it is a proper dome inside.

[Sue]

And they thought it would be absolutely impossible to build.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

Because it's got no internal.

[Jimmy]

Structure. No, it's support.

[Sue]

Yeah. Because it's just an empty shell kind of thing.

[Jimmy]

Self-supporting dome. And in fact, when they'd finished building it, well, first of all, they refused to believe that it would work. But then he gave his designs to engineers and they analysed it structurally and said, actually, this would stand up.

And they said, oh, well, great, we'll have it then. But when they built it, when they'd finished building it, the guys who built the scaffolding, because they built the scaffolding and then built the dome on top of the scaffolding. And when the city said to them, OK, you take the scaffolding down now, they said, no, you do it.

[Sue]

We're too scared the whole thing is going to collapse.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, the whole thing is going to fall down. It's ridiculous. It'll never stand up.

So it's been there for 110 or so years and it's magnificent, actually, isn't it?

[Sue]

It really is. And it's kind of the most ambitious building ever built for that time with reinforced concrete. And this architect, Max Borg, who was way ahead of his time really, then wanted to build more fabulous apartment buildings all around Poland with this amazing reinforced concrete.

And he did all these designs and we had a look at his designs and it's incredible. They could be at home in Sydney in the city centre.

[Jimmy]

Absolutely.

[Sue]

A skyscraper. They just look so modern.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

And yet, you know, he designed them over 100 years ago.

[Jimmy]

But it's funny, in the middle of Wroclaw, there's a big, big, big town square. Is it the biggest in Poland?

[Sue]

It certainly was.

[Jimmy]

Yeah.

[Sue]

It used to be the biggest in the world, the biggest market square in the world.

[Jimmy]

Right. So it still is the biggest in Europe.

[Sue]

Yes. And certainly the biggest medieval market square.

[Jimmy]

So in one corner, in a building owned by Santander Bank, the first impressions are there's this hideous, boxy building. And you look at it and you look at all the buildings around it are kind of, as you say, kind of medieval or perhaps baroque.

[Sue]

Baroque or Renaissance. Yeah.

[Jimmy]

With curly bits and and they're a lot taller and narrower and they're painted different colours. And then there's this concrete box in the corner. And you think, wow, that's awful that they allowed them to come and build that, you know, a few years ago.

In fact, it dates back to the 1920s and it's a classic Bauhaus design building. And one of the most interesting things about it for me is that it has a paternoster lift. Now, for anybody who doesn't know what a paternoster lift is, it's it's a lift that takes people between floors and offices, but it doesn't have doors.

It just keeps moving. You just walk onto it and it carries you up and you walk off when you get to the floor that you want. And people had literally fallen out of favour and they wouldn't pass any health and safety tests now.

But this building has one, but we couldn't use it. I've never been on a paternoster lift.

[Sue]

Well, Jimmy, apparently there's a couple in Prague. So hopefully we might be able to get a go on one in Prague.

[Jimmy]

Well, we shall see. We shall insist we'll find this. So it's been an interesting adventure checking out different buildings and the way they're constructed, keeping up to date.

And there hasn't been much of a fallout from the new laws in New South Wales.

[Sue]

New strata laws that have come through.

[Jimmy]

Yeah, new strata laws. Although I have heard of one strata scheme that has decided they're just going to ignore them. We shall see how well they get away with that.

One thing that I just want to float as an idea that just popped up editing the flat chat forum the other day, somebody was saying, why should people who pay their levies on time diligently subsidise people who don't by giving them special deals and not allowing, you know, not charging interest and things like this. And one of the issues is that people are borrowing to the absolute maximum of their savings and their income. And then when something happens in the building that needs a special levy, they're absolutely screwed.

They don't have any leeway. And this is probably one of the most common reasons that people fall behind in the levies. And it occurred to me, why doesn't somebody provide levies insurance?

[Sue]

Sort of like a strata insurance company.

[Jimmy]

Yeah. Or any insurance company, really. But yeah, a strata insurance company would be the obvious people to come in.

And the way to do it, I think, would be to look at people's finance when they're buying the apartment and say, look, you're right on the edge here. But every last cent you've got is going into either the deposit or the mortgage. We'll loan you the money if you take levies insurance.

[Sue]

That could really work. Yeah.

[Jimmy]

So, OK, it's going to cost them a little bit more every month, but at least it means if suddenly there's a genuine special levy is ordered, they're not in panic and they don't get into debt and they don't have to sell their home.

[Sue]

Yeah. And maybe it would spur developers on to build better buildings as well because the insurance companies will be inspecting the buildings before they agreed to offer the insurance.

[Jimmy]

Absolutely. So it would all be about quality. And if you were in a building where the insurers were saying, we're not offering, we're not offering building insurance on construction and we're not offering insurance on levies.

[Sue]

Then you think twice about actually buying in there.

[Jimmy]

And that would force developers to lift the game. It's just a thought.

[Sue]

Yeah, no, it's an interesting one.

[Jimmy]

All right. Thank you for that. Thank you for your support.

So we are, as we said before, we're in Prague now, but the next time we speak, we will be back in Sydney with any luck. So thanks for listening and we'll talk to you again soon.

[Sue]

See you later. Bye.

[Jimmy]

Bye. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You'll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite pod catcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you'll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.