Britain’s Shrinking Houses

Ever since the British parliament passed the Town & Country Planning Act in 1947, housing in that nation has gotten less and less affordable. As a result, the average size of new homes today is only 925 square feet, down 44 percent from the average size in 1920. Meanwhile, the average size of new home in the United States in 2013 was 2,598 square feet, up 56 percent from 1,660 square feet forty years before.

Eric Pickles, Britain’s community secretary, blames the problem on “Labour policy, which decreed that at least 30 homes had to be built on every hectare of land” (about 12 per acre). But we know the problems go back well before the previous government, and the Tories had plenty of chances to reverse the policies in the Town & Country Planning Act.

Although the Daily Mail published this article just a few days ago, it is based on reports from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) that go back to at least 2011. RIBA has started a campaign aimed at having the government set minimum requirements for space and light in new homes.

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However, the Antiplanner can only think that imposing new rules on top of old ones will simply lead to more negative unintended consequences. When New York City set minimum standards for space and light in 1879, the result was the dumbbell tenement, which proved to be pretty horrendous housing for hundreds of thousands of people.

The real solution is to deregulate the nation’s land market. Moreover, we need to learn from Britain’s mistakes. Unfortunately, too many urban planners want to mandate minimum housing densities, the same as Britain has done, which will only lead to a decline in American housing standards.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

7 Responses to Britain’s Shrinking Houses

  1. letsgola says:

    Pre-law tenements were better than dumbbells?

    Minimum requirements for space will obviously drive up prices, and many US cities have minimum size requirements for apartments and houses. (Other policies, like Prop 13, encourage cities to try to force the construction of larger, more expensive houses that will be able to generate enough property tax revenue.) Of course, driving up prices and thereby keeping poor people out isn’t an unwanted side effect, it’s the whole point.

  2. Frank says:

    “When New York City set minimum standards for space and light”

    You mean Manhattan wasn’t built organically under free-market conditions?! /sarc

    Speaking of minimum space requirements, aPodments or micro-apartments or whatever you want to call them are popping up all over Seattle. People hate them. I wouldn’t want to live in 140 square feet. Not in a city. A cabin in the woods? Maybe. Seattle. F no.

    But some do. And that’s fine. Except some who profess to “believe” in density want to use force to keep people from using their private property in ways they don’t like:

    “I believe in urban density but this is too much for our small neighborhood,” said Linda Melvin, who lives across the street from the lot. “I draw the line.” NIMBYism at its finest.

    Well. Linda Melvin, true believer, has drawn the line!

    More recently, Seattle’s sleazy city council politicians, who micro-manage everything from micro-apartments to inspections for ALL rental units in Seattle, are getting involved:

    The Department of Planning and Development delivered a draft set of micro-housing regulations to the City Council in May. After developers and neighborhood advocates balked at the rules, O’Brien [sleazy city council politician] decided to take a crack at some revisions.

    This is how we end up with shit regulations. Planners make regs that NO ONE likes. Sleazy politicians tweak regs, creating a true Frankenstein.

    Get government out of (the size of) our bedrooms!

  3. bennett says:

    “The Antiplanner can only think that imposing new rules on top of old ones will simply lead to more negative unintended consequences.”

    Frank: “Planners make regs that NO ONE likes. Sleazy politicians tweak regs, creating a true Frankenstein.”

    I think this is a legitimate criticism of many land use policies. I would argue against a full deregulation and that many people like many of the regulations. Here in TX, single family suburban subdivisions, usually a hot bed for tea party anti-government politics, tend to (secretively and off the record) love their euclidean zoning which prohibits structures and uses they find undesirable. It also protects the “character” of their neighborhood. Then they form HOAs to further regulate land use and waste money.

    I am in agreement with Mr. O’Toole and Frank on a cursory level however. In many places land use policies try to regulate everything, are too restrictive, onerous and complicated, and result in far too many unintended consequences. Often the process of land development is too vulnerable to the whims of sitting city council members or other regulatory entities. While I don’t favor “deregulation'” I do support reforms in land use policy that result in a significant reduction in regulations.

    I also believe that trying to calculate population density using housing units per mile/acre/whatever instead of persons per mile/acre/whatever is a fatal flaw.

  4. paul says:

    I agree with the Antiplanners conclusion that government mandating a minimum density will reduce housing size and such regulations are not well thought out. However I would note the although the dumbbell tenements were bad for people to live in they were an attempt to provide light and ventilation in every room. The previous tenements were built with three rooms of which only the first one had a window and the other two rooms had no light or ventilation. See: http://ci.columbia.edu/0240s/0243_2/0243_2_s1_text.html (Google search terms “tenements first multiple dwellings”).

    This can be seen in detail with a tour of the tenement museum on Manhattan’s lower east side, see: http://www.tenement.org/ (Google search terms “tenement museum”).

    For a really interesting contract visit the tenement museum then go out to the Levittown museum http://ww3.levittownhistoricalsociety.org/?kwrf=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F (Google search terms “Levittown museum”) and see the contrast and why people living in tenements wanted the single family homes of Levittown so badly.

  5. Ohai says:

    Those dumbell tenement apartments are renting for $4,000 a month today. Personally, I’d take one of those over a house in Levittown.

  6. paul says:

    With what size family and just how do you pay for the $4,000 per month? Houses in Levittown were all walking distance from shops and swimming pools (7 pools in the development) with space for children to play). If you have $4,000 a month to spare and have no children you might want to live the the heavily modernized dumbbell. Even today with $2,000 a month to spare a 4 bedroom 2 batch house with garden in Levittown still looks very good. Certainly building modern dumbbells is not going to be very popular in most cities in the United States.

    Visit the tenement museum then Levittown and one can immediately see why families even today opt for Levittown.

  7. MJ says:

    Ever since the British parliament passed the Town & Country Planning Act in 1947, housing in that nation has gotten less and less affordable. As a result, the average size of new homes today is only 925 square feet, down 44 percent from the average size in 1920.

    Well, it is working as intended.

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