We need more houses, but at what cost?
How do we escape the housing crisis?
We need to massively expand the housing stock. And how do we do that at scale?
High rise apartments.
High rise apartments have to be part of the solution. A big part of the solution.
But there's a problem here. What we're stuck with is a trade off between quantity and quality.
With detached housing, if the builder takes a few shortcuts, it can be a hassle, but it's generally not a major drama.
But when it comes to high rise a couple of dodgy building decisions can create massive dramas.
A couple of weeks ago, The SMH reported that “four blocks of 900 new apartments in Macquarie Park are at risk of collapsing due to “serious damage” to the concrete in its basement”, according to the NSW building authority.
“The agency reported “serious damage and spalling of the concrete slab at the joint locations in basements and the ground floor”.
“This is a defect in a building product or building element that causes or is likely to cause the basement slab to fail, namely, to fracture and collapse, leading to the destruction of the building or any part, or the threat of collapse of the building or any part”, Matt Press, the acting assistant building commissioner, wrote in his published orders.
Pulling down a 200-unit apartment block is a bit more than a weekends work. It's a story.
And the danger is that its something that's going to become a common story. Last week, the AFR reported that regulators are concerned that they've got a crisis on their hands:
The failure of state and territory governments to better regulate apartment development more than five years after a major report laid out necessary reforms means up to half of all new units built could have “serious” defects, construction lawyer Bronwyn Weir says.
Apart from NSW, where new legislation gave Building Commissioner David Chandler powers to halt completion of substandard projects, states and territories had done little to implement recommendations of the 2018 Building Confidence report she co-authored, Ms Weir said.
“On current estimates, 50 per cent of what will be built will have serious defects,” Ms Weir told The Australian Financial Review.
… Part of the hurdle to reform is cost. Reforms to build better-quality apartments that will be more sustainable to operate in the longer term will add more costs upfront, adding to those that have already soared in recent years.
“It’s going to cost more but we’re not going to end up with buildings with defects that saddle owners for decades with cost and stress,” Ms Weir said.
Yeah no kidding! Building an apartment tower that doesn't fall down is more expensive than one that does!
But hey, some luxuries in life are just worth having.
But for me it's just another reason why the housing shortage is going to be with us for decades to come.
We just can't build ourselves out of this one.
JG.