A different perspective on housing

Food for thought: what if we don’t all need to own the space we call home?

SOCIETY views housing as a critical requirement for all people.

When most of us lived in the kampung, it was never an issue, of course. Some young people would live in their parents’ house or in the community long houses.

The Malay traditional house could also be disassembled into seve­ral sections that could “grow” itself into a new house, whether within the same kampung compound or shipped on a sampan downriver or upriver depending on which way the new couple wanted to go.

Nowadays, housing takes a huge chunk of a young person’s income.

Rent or loan instalment payments is the modern trap that few can avoid, much less overcome.

After going through the housing issue myself, when my child­ren were born, I told myself that I would try to earn enough to provide at least one car and one house to each of the five of them so that they would never fall into the house loan trap.

I am still trying.

But looking at housing diffe­rently can prompt alternative solutions. At the moment, we are stuck with the definition and policy of “housing” as a legal and political identity. Doing away with this trap of requirements and guidelines is the beginning of addressing this issue.

Basically, a new couple needs privacy, so they move out of their parents’ space. But let’s look at the parents’ space: They would have either a single-storey or double- storey terraced house; some, of course, have bigger spaces, but I’m looking at the average.

For a single-storey terraced house, one can build a whole new floor with structural technology that allows lightweight alumi­nium columns and beams.

There is no need for a new foundation if the load from the new floor is distributed along aluminium struts or studs placed a metre on the centre, sitting over a reinforced concrete-grade beam built in the walls of the existing house.

The load will be distributed by the many studs over the reinfor­ced concrete beam, which then spreads the load over the isolated and strip-footing of the old house.

The new floor slab can be a sandwich between a timber deck and metal floor joist framing to lighten the load, rather than a heavy reinforced concrete cons­truction. The local authorities should allow the loading requirements of the new floor.

For double-storey houses, an extra metal staircase can be designed in the porch area to allow separate access to the couple’s living space upstairs.

Many young people do not like living with parents as they feel that it cramps their style, but with a mere RM30,000, they can stay in a nice house while saving towards other opportunities like retirement, holidays, and also education.

This way, the older generation can still have their children with them to care for them when the time arises. Similarly, a young couple with new children can rely on instant care available if babysitting emergencies arise.

We need to look at housing as not just roofs and finance but also as the social engineering of families and communities.

Secondly, young people seeking to build a new home should consider my four-in-one design.

Four young couples can pool RM150,000 each to purchase an 18m by 30m bungalow lot to build four double-storey units.

For RM600,000, a contractor can build four modest three- or four-bedroom houses in a cluster.

Instead of coughing up RM600,000 each to build a bungalow, the couples need only a quarter of that amount to have a nice four-bedroom cottage with a small yard.

Of course, since the lot will have four different names as owners, selling the property would be out of the question.

But the houses can be rented out if a couple wants to go solo on another house build or purchase.

Thirdly, I think we should look at the concept of “van-lifers” as seen on YouTube.

These are people who live in their vehicles to have privacy while saving tons of money on house rent or loan repayments.

In Malaysia, the challenge for these nomads would be the heat.

One idea is to allow these nomads to park overnight in existing office or commercial garages for a small fee, say RM5, with access to toilet facilities.

Architects may need to design buildings in the future to accommodate this anticipated life change and have some aspects of shared toilet and bathing facilities or restricted access facilities.

Muni­cipalities could earn money by charging reasonable amounts for overnight parking for van- and car-lifers.

Fourthly, here’s something radical for young people.

Consider how little time someone just starting out spends in a home space – work, food and entertainment are all outside, so they basically just need a place to sleep. And that can be arranged in Internet cafes, co-working spaces or capsule hotels that have shower and toilet facilities.

Such spaces can be built almost anywhere and everywhere, and can be a new income source.

Also, in more and more cities, airports and other travel terminals, “cubes” are beginning to appear, allowing access through cards or a code sent over a phone.

For longer stretches away from work, like a weekend or holiday, they can stay at holiday and short rental homes (I’d recommend those in rural areas so you’re in relaxing surroundings with plenty of fruit trees around).

With the money saved, the loan trap will become less powerful as eventually buying a home would be easier. City and town authorities and young people must look at housing differently. Not all of those starting out need the houses, condos and apartments that take up so much energy and mate­rial to build, and so much of our hard-earned money to pay for until we end up living a life of financial imprisonment.

Prof Dr Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi is Professor of Architecture at the Tan Sri Omar Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies at UCSI University. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.