City Futures Blog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia’s leading urban policy research centre.

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Geodesign and the difficulty of working (planning) together

Posted by on February 8th, 2018 · Cities, Data

By Carmela Ticzon, City Futures Research Centre.

Sustainable Urban Development (SUD) recognises that places and spaces are complex and multilayered. Cities are systems composed of interlinking environmental, social, and economic dimensions, and the interdependencies of their subsystems make it impossible to make changes in one without causing flow-on effects on the others.

It makes sense, then, for agencies tasked with delivering urban infrastructure to work together and coordinate their activities—to collaborate. However, in practice collaboration all too often appears elusive, even chimerical. Significant institutional and technical barriers undercut the effectiveness of collaborative efforts:

  • Institutional lock-in – Incompatibility in the way institutions do business may be a significant roadblock to inter-agency collaboration, especially in cases where agencies have had a historic tendency to work in silos. The conventions of how an institution operates, including legislative mandates, formal contracts and procurement processes, organisational culture and protocols develop over time (Foxon 2002). While these conventions are in place to help the institution optimise its own operation, their inertia can hamper an agency’s ability to adapt when collaborative processes call for flexibility and change.
  • Language barrier – Similar to institutional conventions, specialised technical terms and semantics are often employed to help professionals within the same discipline or agency communicate efficiently. But these can hinder effective communication when the experts from different disciplines come together to discuss a common issue.
  • Uncertainty – the flow-on effects of infrastructure interventions to an urban system are impossible to fully predict. Cities continuously evolve in complexity, and so there will always be geographical data and knowledge that are unknown to planners and decision-makers.

In parallel, agencies also operate in incomplete information with regards to the preferences and values of other stakeholders. These uncertainties make collaborative efforts politically uncomfortable, particularly if the outcomes cannot be easily predicted nor guaranteed.

While Geodesign is not a catchall solution to these challenges, undertaking the process can help agencies and stakeholders unpack the complexities of their planning context and map out resolutions. But what is Geodesign and how does it work?

What is Geodesign?

Geodesign is a thought process for strategic planning that is driven by stakeholder interaction. In a Geodesign exercise, participants share their own knowledge of the study area, acknowledge different stakeholder values and interests, and take into account available geo-information to inform their assessment of the study area’s current state and options for future interventions.

Carl Steinitz, who pioneered Geodesign with his colleagues at Harvard Graduate School of Design, uses this diagram in his book A Framework for Geodesign to summarise the reiteration of participants’ thought process through six guiding questions that contextualise the study area.

How does it work?

Geodesign exercises are typically executed through intensive two-day workshops. Participants are driven to negotiate with each other with the instruction to reach a consensus design for the study area by the end of the workshop.

Geographic data and participant knowledge that would contextualise the current state and issues of the study area communicated through simple maps and diagrams. These maps and diagrams serve as a ‘common language’ for the participants to operate in during the exercise. A GIS application is used to capture the maps and diagrams drawn by the participants, and record subsequent versions produced as the workshop progresses.

Participants negotiating designs with mapping tools at first Geodesign Workshop in Sydney organised by CFRC.

So what?

Whether or not participants are successful in reaching a consensus design for the study area’s future, going through the Geodesign process will identify where there is conflict or commonality of interest within the study area. These discussions may serve as a basis for reasoning out the viability of some intervention options over others. By negotiating with each other, each participant will ideally gain deeper insight into the political, social, environmental, financial, and temporal considerations that are tied to proposed intervention projects.

Furthermore, the process can help identify where there are gaps in knowledge about the study area—what geographical data and technologies could be called into service to better inform future planning. And finally, the exercise presents participants with an opportunity to substantiate the need for inter-agency cooperation going forward.

The utility of Geodesign can be seen in the structure it lends to facilitating stakeholder negotiations during strategic planning. However, the value of Geodesign is in its capacity to uncover the specifics behind the barriers to inter-agency collaboration, yield outlines for potential resolutions, and hopefully lay a foundation for effective collaborative planning.

Click here to learn more about the first Geodesign workshop in Sydney and other projects at City Futures Research Centre.

 

What Australia can learn from overseas about the future of rental housing

Posted by on January 24th, 2018 · Demographics, Finance, Government, Housing, Housing conditions, International, Law, Private rental, Tenancy
File 20180121 110100 1w96ivd.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
Image: AAP/David Crosling

By Chris Martin. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

When we talk about rental housing in Australia, we often make comparisons with renting overseas. Faced with insecure tenancies and unaffordable home ownership, we sometimes try to envisage European-style tenancies being imported here.

And, over the past year, there has been a surge of enthusiasm for developing a sector of large-scale institutional landlords, modelled on the UK’s build-to-rent sector or “multi-family” housing in the US.

Our review of the private rental sectors of ten countries in Australasia, Europe and North America identified innovations in rental housing policies and markets Australia might try to emulate – and avoid. International comparisons also give a different perspective on aspects of Australia’s own rental housing institutions that might otherwise be taken for granted.

Not everyone in Europe rents

In nine of the ten countries we reviewed, private rental is the second-largest tenure after owner-occupation. Only in Germany do more households rent privately than own their housing. Most of the European countries we reviewed have higher rates of home ownership than Australia.

In most of the European and North American countries in our study, single people and lower-income households and apartments are heavily represented in the private rental sector. Higher-income households, families with kids, and detached houses are represented much more in owner-occupation. It’s less uneven in Australia: more houses, kids and higher-income households are in private rental.

Two key potential implications follow from this.

First, it suggests a high degree of integration between the Australian private rental and owner-occupier sectors, and that policy settings and market conditions applying to one will be transmitted readily to the other.

So, policies that give preferential treatment to owner-occupied housing will also induce purchase of housing for rental, and rental housing investor activity will directly affect prices and accessibility in the owner-occupied sector.

It also heightens the prospect of investment in both sectors falling simultaneously, with little established institutional capacity for countercyclical investment that makes necessary increases in ongoing supply.

A second implication relates to equality. Australian households of similar composition and similar incomes differ in their housing tenure – and, considering the traditional value placed on owner-occupation, this may not be by choice.

This suggests housing tenure may figure strongly in the subjective experience of inequality. It raises the question of whether housing is a primary driver of inequality, and not the outcome of difference or inequality in other aspects of life.

The rise of large corporate landlords

In almost all of the countries we reviewed, the ownership of private rental housing is dominated by individuals with relatively small holdings. Only in Sweden are housing companies the dominant type of landlord.

However, most countries also have a sector of large corporate landlords. In some countries, these landlords are very large. For example, America’s five largest corporate landlords own about 420,000 properties in total. Germany’s largest landlord, Vonovia, has more than 330,000 properties alone.

These landlords’ origins vary. Germany’s arose from massive sell-offs of municipal housing and industry-related housing in the early 2000s.

In the US, multi-family (apartment) landlords have been around for decades. And in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, they have been joined by a new sector of single-family (detached house) landlords that have rapidly acquired large portfolios from bulk purchases of foreclosed, formerly owner-occupied homes.

In these countries and elsewhere, the rise of largest corporate landlords has been controversial. Germany’s have a poor record of relations with tenants – to the extent of being the subject of popular protests in the 2000s – and their practice of characterising repairs as improvements to justify rent increases.

American housing advocates have voiced concern about “the rise of the corporate landlord” – especially in the single-family sector, where there’s some evidence that they more readily terminate tenancies.

These landlords also don’t build much housing. They are most active in renovating (for higher rents), merging with one another, and – especially in the US – developing innovative financial instruments such as “rental-backed securities”.

“Institutional landlords” are now a standing item on the Australian housing policy agenda. Considering the activities of large corporate landlords internationally, we should get specific about the sort of institutional landlords we really want, how we will get them, and how we will ensure they deliver desired housing outcomes.

Policymakers and housing advocates have, for years, looked to the community housing sector as the prime candidate for this role. They envisage its transformation into an affordable housing industry that works across the sector toward a wide range of policy outcomes in housing supply, affordability, security, social housing renewal and community development.

With interest in the prospect of build-to-rent and multifamily housing rising in the property development and finance sectors, there is a risk that affordable housing policy may be colonised by for-profit interests.

The development of a for-profit large corporate landlord sector may be desirable for greater professionalisation and efficiencies in the management of tenancies and properties. However, this should not come at the expense of a mission-oriented affordable housing industry that makes a distinctive contribution to housing outcomes.

Bringing it home

Looking at the policy settings in the ten countries, we found some surprising results and strange bedfellows.

For example, Germany – which has had a remarkably long period of stable house prices – has negative gearing provisions and tax exemptions for capital gains, much like Australia. But, in Australia, these policies are blamed for driving speculation and booming prices.

And while the UK taxes landlords more heavily than most other countries, it has the fastest-growing private rental sector of the countries we reviewed.

However, these challenging findings should not be taken to diminish the explanatory power or effectiveness of these settings in each country’s housing policy. Rather, they show the necessity of considering taxation and other policy settings in interaction with each other and in wider systemic contexts.

So, for example, Germany’s conservative housing finance practices, and regulation of rents, may mean the speculative potential of negative gearing and tax-free capital gains isn’t activated there.

The ConversationStrategy in Australia for its private rental sector should join consideration of finance, taxation, supply and demand-side subsidies and regulation with the objective of making private rental housing outcomes competitive with other sectors.

Chris Martin, Research Fellow, City Housing, UNSW.

 

‘Affordable Rental Housing Targets’ – How do the Greater Sydney Commission proposals match up to US practices?

Posted by on January 22nd, 2018 · Construction, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, Sydney, urban renewal

By Richard Drdla, Richard Drdla Associates, Toronto, Canada. We asked Richard, an expert on planning for affordable housing in North America, for his views on the Greater Sydney Commission’s recent policy proposals for ‘affordable rental housing targets’ . Richard compares various aspects of the GSC proposals, as set out in its October 2017 ‘Information Note’, with the corresponding ‘inclusionary zoning’ (IZ) practices used in the US.  

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The inclusionary zoning practices typically used in the US and the GSC proposals
share the same overall aim – to harness the land-use planning regulations in a
way that requires the private development industry to include at least some
affordable housing in new residential projects. However, while undoubtedly
influenced by US practices, the GSC proposals set out an approach so different
that they cannot be considered to constitute inclusionary zoning as the term is
understood in the US. Indeed, the GSC’s Information Note rightly avoids making
such a claim.

The IZ programs, while recognizably similar across the US, still vary somewhat,
especially region-by-region. Therefore, the comparison that follows is based on
what are considered to be the “best practices” used there.

Targeted incomes
The GSC policy aspires to provide housing affordable to those on ‘very-low and
low incomes’, which are respectively defined as being for 50-80% of the median
income and below 50%. Although such targets are very difficult to compare across
countries or even jurisdictions, the GSC policy and IZ programs seem to
addressing roughly the equivalent income range.

The income band targeted by the IZ programs, however, does vary somewhat
according to housing costs. Across the middle of the US, the target is generally
50-80% of median income. But in the more expensive areas on the west and east
coasts, the upper threshold is generally higher – up possibly to at least 150%, if
not more. In general, cities have higher upper thresholds than nearby suburban
communities and smaller towns. On the other hand, these programs do not
provide housing for those earning below 50%, and possibly not even for those
below 80% in more expensive areas.

Despite these numerical differences, the fundamental purpose of these programs
remains consistently the same across the US. They are all principally
directed at correcting the increasing failure of the market housing system to deliver
a sufficiently broad range of housing, especially in high-growth areas.
These programs are typically designed solely by municipalities, with the clear
intention to operate independently of upper-tier governments, and to serve housing
needs as they want to define them. As such, the programs rely on land-use
planning regulations (which are under their control), and not upon financial
subsidies (which are beyond their resources or could involve conflict with the state
and/or federal governments over priorities).

As a consequence, these programs aim to generate what is widely and commonly
called “below-market” housing. This is housing essentially for households left out
of the private housing market by the rapidly rising prices over the last 20 or more
years. On the other hand, they do not typically provide social housing, nor housing
for those in greater need like the homeless. These groups are considered beyond
the reach of such programs, and dependent on deep subsidies potentially
available only through upper-tier governments.

What does confuse this clear distinction is the many examples of developments
achieving deeper affordability by using federal/state dollars layered on top of the
reduced price or rent achieved by IZ. But overall these remain the exception
rather than the rule. The vast majority of IZ developments in the US still proceed
under the basic or “default” rules to provide “below-market” housing without any
such subsidies.

Upzoning
The proposed GSC policies will apply only to developments on newly upzoned
sites. In most US programs, by contrast, the affordable housing mandate applies to
all developments seeking approval. That includes, not only sites subject to
rezoning, but also those proceeding under the existing or “as-of-right” zoning. The
only exceptions to this are the dozen or so big city programs, where the mandate
in most (but not all) cases is applied only to rezonings.

As a general rule, the mandate in the US is applied as widely as possible to
maximize affordable housing production. Limiting IZ to rezonings in the big cities,
nevertheless, can be generally justified because nearly all st developments there
need a rezoning. On the other hand, imposing this limitation in communities where
rezoning is less prevalent would have substantially reduced the affordable housing
output.

The US experience, however, clearly shows that even “as-of-right” developments
are able to provide affordable housing without imposing an undue burden on the
private developers. What is important is that the rules and obligations are
reasonable, and that they are fixed ahead of time so the housing market as a
whole has time to adjust to the demands.

Rental housing
The GSC policy is directed at providing exclusively affordable rental housing. In
contrast, IZ programs in the US typically do not specify the tenure of the housing to
be provided. Most US programs simply take a percentage of whatever the
developers have decided to build. This means that the housing predominantly
provided in most markets is affordable ownership because the developers
predominantly are building ownership housing. But it also means that where
market developers are building rental housing (what would be termed in Australia
‘build to rent’), they are expected to provide a percentage as affordable rental, and
then continue to own and operate them at an affordable rent.

Some programs do allow for designated rental operators to purchase some of the
affordable units at the prescribed reduced price. Because most are incapable of
raising the financial resources on their own, they must rely to a large extent on
government funding to do so . In practice, this funding has never been enough to
acquire much more than a small part of the affordable units generated by IZ.

Proffered provision
The GSC policy will require the developers to provide the affordable units at no
cost to qualified rental operators. Under IZ, in contrast, the developers are
required to deliver the units at a reduced price that is typically something like 20-
50% less than their market value. (That figure varies widely according to the
targetted incomes of IZ beneficiaries in each jurisdiction and the market prices of
each project.) The developers recover the remaining value by selling the units at
the prescribed “below-market” price to individual owners or qualified rental
operators, or continue to rent out the units at a comparable “below-market” level.
The gifting of the affordable units will fundamentally affect the financial calculus
behind these provisions. Most notably, it can be expected to lower significantly the
maximum setaside that can be reasonably imposed on the developers (see
below).

Subject areas
The GSC policy will allow for different obligations and rules to be used in different
areas. In the US, the IZ programs typically apply the same obligation and rules
universally across the entire jurisdiction. The main exceptions are the more
demanding requirements used in some cities in areas near new major transit
facilities, and on public lands sold by government for market housing.

Maximum setasides
The GSC policy will limit the affordable housing to a maximum of 5-10% of the
additional floorspace resulting from rezoning in any subject development.

Similar maximum setasides are used across the US, where 20% represents the
common best practice, while most fall between 10% and 25%. This applies to the
total floorspace of the entire development, and not just the additional floorspace
consequent on rezoning.

Nevertheless, there is one relevant distinction between the GSC policy from the
US practices. As noted earlier, the GSC will require that the affordable units be
gifted at no cost, while those in IZ are offered for sale at a substantial writedown or
held by the developers and rented out at below-market rates. This will almost
certainly mean that the 20% setaside used in the US cannot be simply accepted as
possible under the GSC policy.

Viability testing
The application of GSC policy will be subject to viability testing. It is understood
that this will be done area-by-area, not project-by-project, whenever different
affordable housing obligations and income targets are applied. According to the
Information Note, this is considered necessary in order “to ensure that the Target
does not impede the economic viability of the projects delivering the housing.”
Viability tests like this are not used in IZ programs in the US, and there is no
evidence that they are needed. The affordable housing requirements have not
been shown to hinder development. After all, developers can protect themselves
by simply not building when the economics do not suit them. But two authoritative
studies show that developers in municipalities with IZ continue to build at virtually
the same rate as those in nearby municipalities without IZ.

Many of these programs have addressed the issue of viability in a different way –
namely, by offering regulatory concessions (but not financial incentives) to
developers. These concessions are offered on a fixed and standard basis for all IZ
developments across the entire municipality. As such, the concessions are clearly
not intended to ensure the viability of any particular development, nor make the
developers “whole” again.

There probably is a residual cost burden in these programs even after these
concessions have been granted, but the developers are not expected to absorb
this cost. Rather, it is now generally accepted that the developers will “pass it back
to the land” by the paying less for development sites. The market can adjust in this
way, provided the affordable housing obligations are reasonable and set out ahead
of time.

The GSC Information Note acknowledges this potential, when it states the
obligations should be fixed in advance “so that it can be factored into [the]
underlying land prices”. What the note does not do is take this statement to its
logical conclusion – namely, that viability tests are not needed because market
forces on their own will adjust land prices in a way that will sustain the economic
vitality of the development industry.

The only known examples of financial testing at all similar to the GSC approach
are found in the inclusionary practices used in NYC and Vancouver. These
practices remain exceptional, and strictly speaking the latter is really not
inclusionary zoning. Both are exceptional in that they rely on ‘pre-zoning’, in which
all of the key zoning parameters – including, most notably, development density –
are determined and pre-approved ahead of time on an area-by-area basis. These
are fixed in advance after a formal process that includes area-specific planning
and financial studies as well as local public consultations. In contrast, IZ typically
fixes only the key affordable housing requirements in advance, and then uniformly
across the entire jurisdiction, while typically leaving density to be determined siteby-
site at the development approval stage.

There is a fundamental difference here. Pre-zoning attempts to anticipate the
market, and then sets the affordable housing requirements accordingly. IZ
standard practice sets the affordable housing requirements, and then expects that
the market to adjust to these needs.

Fees-in-lieu
The GSC proposal does not fully address the use of fees-in-lieu, but the
information note indicates that this aspect might still be considered.

Fees-in-lieu are widely used in IZ programs. They enable municipalities to deliver
special needs and other housing not directly provided under the IZ programs. They
also provide a way of engaging smaller developments that otherwise might have
difficulty in providing the actual units. The latter is important for maximizing output,
as well as treating all developers more or less equitably.

On the other hand, fees-in-lieu are often not used in the most effective and
appropriate way. The prescribed fees often fall short of reflecting the current value
of the foregone affordable units, and the developers are also often given the right
to choose when they can be used. Under these conditions, the developers will
invariably pay cash rather than produce affordable housing because it is far easier
(and possibly less expensive) to do so.

The best practices generally allow for use of fees-in-lieu, but only where the
municipality has the authority to decide when they can be used, and then only
when they will produce demonstrably greater value than the developer constructed
units.

 

They know where you go: dockless bike sharing looms as the next disruptor – if key concerns are fixed

Posted by on December 7th, 2017 · Bikes, Cities, Data, Transport

By Christopher Pettit, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. The ConversationDr Simone Z. Leao created the Bicycling Dashboard shown in this article.

Beyond the benefits of dockless bike sharing for people’s mobility and health, these services are producing an ever more useful byproduct: journey data. Mapped through global positioning system (GPS) devices on the bikes or via Bluetooth using GPS data from users’ smartphones, the journey data that operators collect could be a powerful tool for city planners and policymakers, possibly even a valuable commodity.

 

Each trip taken on a dockless bike is recorded in a database. At UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, we have been working with Bicycle Network’s Riderlog app data. We have mapped more than 120,000 journeys and are exploring how the data can be both used and protected.

We have been able to create Bicycling Dashboards for all the capital cities of Australia, an example of which is shown below. The dashboard can show riders’ behaviours and movements across each city.

Bicycling Dashboard: visualising cyclists’ behaviour across the city.
Created by Dr Simone Z. Leao, City Futures, UNSW, Author provided

Dockless, the next big disruption?

Dockless sharing schemes use bikes that are self-locking and tracked through GPS. Using a smartphone app, riders can pick up a bike, use it, then essentially leave it at their destination.

In an era of smart cities and ubiquitous computing, dockless bike sharing adds another layer of connection through digital platforms and smartphone apps to navigate and interact with the built environment. Our dependency on these new and useful technologies is driving their disruptive impacts.

Technology-based services are reshaping how city residents and visitors access essential services such as transport and housing. Bower and Christensen first coined the term disruptive technologies in 1995.

The two disruptive technology pinups are Uber and Airbnb. Uber has disrupted the business model of the taxi industry, while Airbnb has disrupted the short-term accommodation market. In the last 10 years both have exploded globally and now hold formidable market shares in more than 100 cities across the world.

The new kid on the block is dockless bikes.

A key advantage in bike sharing

An interesting point of difference to other city disruptors is that there is not one dominant dockless bike market leader. In Australia, over just a few months, we have seen the arrival of at least six operators: Reddy Go, OBike, ofo, mobike, Earth bike and Airbike.

To use the oBike, riders download the app and use it to scan the QR code on the back of the bike.
shahphoto/Shutterstock
Tyrone Siu/Reuters

All dockless bike schemes allow the rider to leave the bike in public spaces close to their destination. This is the key difference from docked bike-sharing systems, which required the rider to pick up and return the bike at dedicated docking stations. Having hired such bikes in Chicago and Glasgow, I can attest to the challenges of finding the elusive docking station and then returning the bike to a station that is not as close as I would like to my destination.

The dockless bike can provide an important link in the “mobility as a service” value chain, whether it’s used for the “last mile” commute or the tourist experience. Either way, having more bikes on our roads must encourage more cycling, which can only be a good thing, right?

 

Smart but revealing

Our work at City Futures makes clear just how much the collected journey data can tell us about the users. Across Australian capital cities, we have mapped more than 120,000 cycle journeys by 7,600 users over three-and-half years.

Through cleaning and visualising this data, we can start to understand at a fine scale where and when people are riding through the city and where they are not, and what age and gender the cyclists are.

As the Bicycling Dashboards show, this is a rich source of information for city planners and policymakers. If linked to other data it could just as easily be a valuable commodity in its own right.

So one might speculate if collecting fine-scale mobility data is part of the dockless bike operators’ business model.

The collection of personal mobility data also raises questions about its security and anonymity. The data visualised in the Bicycling Dashboard has gone through a process of formatting, cleaning, validating and, importantly, anonymisation.

Safeguarding personal data is essential. It should be of paramount concern to dockless bike operators as they collect detailed information about each individual’s movements. Other personal information typically collected includes the cyclist’s phone number and credit card details.

Aggregating this information to understand mobility patterns is valuable for city planners and policymakers. However, the individual traces of a person as they travel the city must be guarded for reasons of privacy and personal security.

Every user of a docked bike leaves digital traces of their journey around the city.
Shahjehan/Shutterstock

 

Guidelines to getting it right

Data collection is but one of the opportunities and challenges facing dockless bike operators. Many also see visual clutter as a key drawback. China has bike graveyards filled with dockless bikes; in Melbourne, dozens of dockless bikes have been dredged from the Yarra River; and in Sydney, six inner-city councils (Inner West, City of Sydney, Randwick, Waverley, Woollahra and Canada Bay) developed bike-sharing provider guidelines, giving operators three months to comply.

The guidelines are sensible and importantly include “data sharing” between bike-sharing operators and councils as one of seven key principles.

However, dockless bikes are still having a marked impact in Sydney. In the recently released draft Future Transport Strategy 2056, TransportNSW identified bike sharing as part of the solution to people’s transport needs.

We can see dockless bikes as the next link in the chain to mobility as a service. I hope the operators can get it right, so more Australians can get on a bike and realise the health benefits of active transport.

 

 

Government guarantee opens investment highway to affordable housing

Posted by on December 5th, 2017 · Finance, Government, Guest appearance, Housing

By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, RMIT University; Hal Pawson, Associate Director – City Futures Research Centre, UNSW, and Vivienne Milligan, Senior Visiting Fellow – City Futures Research Centre, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Australian governments have stepped into the market at critical times since the late 19th century to encourage and channel investment in affordable housing. With rising housing stress in Sydney, Melbourne and other areas, the Australian government has now done just that.

On Friday, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar slipped into the National Housing Conference in Sydney to announce a government guarantee on investment in affordable housing.

The announcement went largely unreported, but it was significant. The guarantee is a crucial piece of the affordable housing policy architecture, complementing the “bond aggregator” (or intermediary) mechanism announced in the budget. Treasurer Scott Morrison and Treasury officials have been working on this intermediary, a National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, over the past 18 months.

These combined measures should create an efficient private investment pathway into social and affordable housing for super funds, insurance companies and other entities hungry for low-risk returns.

The government’s Affordable Housing Working Group outlined this approach, drawing on a number of our reports commissioned through the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). These assembled powerful evidence from a range of countries of the proven record of government-backed financial intermediaries and debt guarantees in affordable housing finance systems.

Judging from responses to the Treasury consultation paper, the guarantee enjoys strong industry and political support.

This development could also catalyse efforts to build a national housing accord backed by industry, civil society and welfare groups to expand affordable housing for the growing number of Australians in need. A campaign in support of this, Everybody’s Home, was foreshadowed at last week’s conference.

New model based on an old principle

A government guarantee to back bonds issued by the new NHFIC marks a welcome return to the Commonwealth’s former role of actively enabling investment in housing for low and moderate-income households. Historically, this involved reshaping circuits of investment to increase supply, improve quality, deliver better-planned suburbs, ensure returning soldiers were housed, broaden access to home ownership and provide security for households not served by a failing market.

The government support for investment will guarantee access to cost-effective private finance for community housing providers. It will be backed by a secure cash flow from rental income supported by Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

Affordable housing includes not only rental housing geared to income but also below-market-rate rental housing and home ownership. This offers a refuge for households unable to afford housing at market rates.

Coupled with dedicated public funding, the guarantee could turn what has been a trickle of short-term and costly bank debt into a hugely increased flow of longer-term and lower-risk investment.

Why invest in social housing?

Our AHURI-funded international research has found that long-term and patient capital makes an ideal partner for affordable rental housing. Instead of capital gains from sales, the steady cash flows from rent revenue offer secure returns. This is what makes it attractive to pension funds.

Combined with public co-investment and not-for-profit management, secure affordable housing outcomes are more assured.

This investment ultimately saves us all money. Too many Australian households are one step from homelessness, which is devastating for any family. The costs of homelessness to the nation are also huge.

But it’s not just a matter of cost. Homelessness is an affront to the Australian values of compassion and a fair go, often underestimated by political leaders.

Lessons from overseas are clear

The government’s re-engagement with efforts to boost affordable rental housing is in tune with moves in other similar countries.

Just last month Canada released its first national housing strategy, highlighting housing as a human right. The aim is to increase the supply of moderate rent and supportive housing by at least 100,000 homes over 11 years. A National Housing Co-investment Fund will provide A$16.5 billion to repair and expand the affordable housing stock.

Also last month, the UK government announced a new round of debt guarantees for “build to rent” development, alongside A$15.7 billion in direct investment and increased borrowing caps for social housing.

It is true the most effective affordable housing policy levers available to governments are land supply and direct public investment. This was the approach taken in early postwar Australia.

But since the 1990s Australian governments have shown no inclination to re-adopt this model. As an alternative, international best practice combines the most cost-effective long-term investment with strategic public investment in well-regulated not-for-profit landlords.

Finland offers an example. In a country one-fifth the size of Australia, 9,000 social housing dwellings are built each year. This is financed by low-cost government-guaranteed loans via a public intermediary, with interest subsidies and conditional grants to not-for-profit providers.

Finland has the lowest rate of homelessness in Europe. Young Finns leave their parental home and become independent earlier than anywhere else in the European Union. It’s a clever housing system, not based on the luck of the market or family fortune.

Now to tackle the public funding gap

Australian governments have long talked the talk of decent homes for all. But they have struggled to align policy on land development, property taxation and social security accordingly. Our political leaders have simply failed to reform our planning and tax systems to favour affordable housing.

The social housing investment guarantee represents an important return by the Commonwealth to leadership in housing policy and investment. It will bring in a large and willing industry super sector, delivering not only returns for policy holders but also real gains for society at large.

However, enabling more cost-effective private finance can narrow but not eliminate the shortfall in funding for social and affordable housing so that the books balance. As the government’s own advisory body made clear, this policy framework can realise its potential only when government commits the funding needed to bridge this gap.

 

Visioning varieties of “mixed tenure” development  

Posted by on December 1st, 2017 · Construction, Housing, Strata, urban renewal

By Ryan van den Nouwelant and Hal Pawson, City Futures Research Centre. Originally published on The Fifth Estate.

Mixed tenure – that is, mixing subsidised housing (social or affordable rental) with market housing – is an increasingly common feature of urban redevelopment. How best to do it, though, depends on what you are trying to achieve. While “mixed tenure” is a common term in planningspeak, our recent review shows there are in fact several distinct manifestations of the concept.

The reasons for mixing tenures that are supported by evidence are often not the histrionic or paternalistic ones around avoiding neighbourhood “blight” that get media coverage and political traction.

First of all, it turns out people in subsidised housing aren’t just waiting for a banker to move next door to provide them a role model in how to pull up their socks. Second of all, it turns out there is little appetite for directed social integration across classes – even among lower-income households – because different cultural preferences and lifestyles keep people apart as much as geography.

As we might expect, however, research shows that lower-income households will benefit from residing in neighbourhoods that are serviced by major infrastructure (whether school, hospital or transport), close to job opportunities and free from historically bad reputations. And these neighbourhoods are often those beyond the means of lower-income households. So there is a strong foundation for planning and development policy that limits the segregation of populations by income at a metropolitan scale.

When designing mixed-tenure projects, realising community satisfaction and cohesion lies in the detailed urban design. We recently analysed the published evidence of mixed-tenure developments, to improve these outcomes in future Australian housing renewal projects. The work was commissioned by Frasers Property Australia, to help guide their, ultimately successful, tender for the Ivanhoe public housing estate redevelopment in Sydney’s northern suburbs.

mixed development Ivanhoe

Spot the difference

All the evidence suggests the most important guiding principle in mixing tenures is “tenure blindness”. That is, it shouldn’t be possible to distinguish one tenure from another simply by physical appearance. However, the focus of this principle is often the built form – making sure the buildings look the same from the street. But there is also a need for comparable upkeep by each occupant and maintenance by each owner to ensure this is retained over time.

One concern identified in historic mixed-tenure schemes has been cost-cutting in the subsidised housing – like providing less off-street parking and private open space. This was not “visible”, so not considered a breach of the tenure blindness principle. However, it was associated with a greater reliance among subsidised housing occupants on public alternatives, such as street parking and public open space. In turn this led to a division in community value placed on those amenities, along with their management and funding.

An urban design feature often advocated in support of the ‘social integration’ ethic of mixed tenure is to scatter dwellings of different tenures among each other, rather than have them clustered together. Called “pepper-potting“, this approach has been applied here in Sydney – for example, in the Bonnyrigg renewal project in Fairfield. However, having subsidised housing distributed like this can make service delivery from government or NGOs less efficient. And less effective social services for in-need households has the potential to increase other problems down the track. Problems that can adversely affect neighbours.

mixed development

Mo density mo problems

Pepper-potting in high-density developments can be more problematic. House-by-house mixing (as at Bonnyrigg) could be seen as translating to building-by-building mixing of apartments. Beyond this, it can be embodied in unit-by-unit mixing within a single structure (as shown in the diagram above). Such an arrangement, however, raises questions of practicality and marketability.

Unit-by-unit mixing in apartment buildings means complicated strata ownership structures. Strata management can strain neighbour relations at the best of times, but here there is also a financial risk to the (typically not-for-profit) provider of subsidised housing. The housing provider often can’t control strata scheme levies, as strata laws limit the power of a single owner. And the provider agitating for changes to building management has in the past meant subsidised housing tenants can suffer the ire of their disgruntled neighbours. Any semblance of tenure blindness is unravelled. Private partners also translate these risks to their bottom line, as such schemes are often seen as having a more limited market.

One solution is to divide a building into different parts, under different management. This approach has been employed in one new building constructed as part of the public housing renewal project at Riverwood North, in south-west Sydney. This overcomes any challenges caused by differing expectations of building amenities and services, and so ongoing costs. But it retains the potential economies of integrated development and design. Even here, though, there are risks if the different parts remain in stratum (floor-by-floor mixing) and so are subsumed under a complex building management committee. And there is reputational risk, with similar arrangements overseas derided by some as introducing a “poor door” and entrenching stigmatisation of subsidised housing.

Another solution to the building management problem is single-owner rental buildings. This not only allows for a more controlled building management, it can provide a channel for subsidised housing providers to cross-subsidise from market rental revenues. This “build-to-rent model” has taken off in the UK, and is starting to get traction here.

Each of these variants has pros and cons, with the most appropriate choice dependant on the development context among other factors. Importantly, finer-grain unit-by-unit mixing often doesn’t contribute to achieving the possible benefits of mixed-tenure, which are a function of co-location more than integration. Tenure-specific buildings still keep subsidised housing occupants close to the same infrastructure and jobs, and growing local community. As such, building-by-building mixing is often a preferable middle ground. It avoids these issues of building management at one end. But it also avoids the geographic demarcation that arises in mere block-by-block mixing across a development.

Buildings do not a community make

Finally, it must be stressed that design decisions are not the only factors shaping the success of a tenure-mixed community. As already mentioned, sustainable regeneration calls for effective ongoing building management, and an enduring commitment of resources to ensure a steady development of community connections. This is true of any new neighbourhood, as social capital will need to be built up from next to nothing. But it is particularly true of mixed neighbourhoods, not only mixed in tenure but age, cultural background or household type. In these neighbourhoods there will be different demands and additional barriers to community cohesion that will require good governance to overcome.

There are other policy implications too. Inclusionary zoning mechanisms may be about to become more commonplace across Sydney. So understanding the neighbourhoods that these mechanisms generate is important. If nothing else, this research suggests that, in medium or higher density settings, policy should favour the inclusion of subsidised housing in separate but integrated buildings, rather than individual apartments scattered throughout the private development.

Ryan van den Nouwelant is senior research officer, City Futures Research Centre at UNSW.

Professor Hal Pawson is associate director, City Futures Research Centre at UNSW.

Vanguarding Newcastle

Posted by on November 23rd, 2017 · Cities, Guest appearance, Public space, urban renewal

 

By Dr Ori Gudes, Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW, Emily Davies O’Sullivan, Willana Urban, Newcastle, and Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler, Computational Design, UNSW.

Earlier this month 50 rising urban planners and leaders from cities across the globe converged in Newcastle, NSW, for Vanguard Australia. Organised by NextCityOrg, this was the first of its annual Vanguard events to be held outside North America. The conference was run in partnership with the NSW State Government and Newcastle City Council.

The overarching aim was to stimulate innovative ideas for Newcastle, to help the city to thrive and compete in the global economy. The selection process for attendees was competitive and there were more than 200 applications in which 50 participants were selected. From our faculty, two participants were selected, Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler from Computational Design and Dr Ori Gudes from City Futures. UNSW Alumni also included Rachel Cogger (former tutor of the BPlan), John O’Callaghan (Tutor of the BPlan and CoDe) and Emily Davies O’Sullivan.

During the conference, participants were introduced to the work done by Revitalising Newcastle  and the University of Newcastle. They also met with business owners and local leaders such as Marcus Westbury, founder of Renew Newcastle, a not-for-profit company that has facilitated more than 70 new creative projects in more than 40 once-empty buildings in the Newcastle CBD. They also met with other Novocastrians who shared their inspirational stories of renewing Newcastle.

The conference culminated with an urban planning challenge. Six planning teams were challenged to plan two iconic sites in Newcastle CBD (the old Post office building and the old train station). The groups comprised of mix of thinkers and planners from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Therefore, three planning teams were working on each site. A panel of judges including the Lord Mayor of Newcastle selected the most innovative plans.

The winner of the Vanguard challenge for 2017 was the group facilitated by John O’Callaghan (JOC Consulting Pty Ltd) Australia and included the following Vanguard members:

  • Rachel Cogger (RPS Group, Australia)
  • Subeh Chowdhury (University of Auckland, New Zealand);
  • Tyler Caine (DCP Architecture PLLC, USA);
  • Tara Mei Smith (Extra Terrestrial Projects, Inc., USA);
  • Jasnam Sidhu (PWC, UK);
  • Lindsey Scannapieco (Scout, USA);
  • Essence Wilson (Communities First, Inc., USA); and
  • Ori Gudes (City Futures, UNSW).

The presentation of the wining project (e.g., the train station challenge) can be found here. The conference was also well reported in the local media.

Perhaps the most significant takeaways from the conference were hearing the stories of the other Vanguards.  Tenacity was a trait widely displayed in their place making, administration and urban planning pursuits. We had Vanguards from New Zealand who have been instrumental in rebuilding not just Christchurch physically but socially and culturally.  We had representatives who challenged us to always think about countering disadvantage when making change in communities.  We had representatives who focused on the possible when everyone else would have deemed a scheme impossible.  It was working, learning and hearing from these amazing individuals that led to a general feeling of striving to do more for our own communities and be the change we want to see in the world.

Another major take-home was witnessing international and interstate perspectives on processes and culture here in Australia, New South Wales and specifically Newcastle. At each of the presentations to the Vanguards, the delegates challenged the perspective which had been long held and well recited. Poignant questions raised by the Vanguards, often met with no tangible answers, will hopefully be the start of wider conversations with the local circles of the presenters.  This outside perspective forced us locals to critically evaluate things such as inclusion, the notion of equitable access and the role Aboriginal Culture plays in modern society and how ongoing urban renewal plays out in relation to retention of Newcastle’s unique character.  All very relevant points for rising leaders and urban planners to consider more thoughtfully.

Did this get you inspired? More information about the next Vanguard conference will be available here.

Facts sink glib housing supply mantra – the focus must be on affordable rental

Posted by on November 21st, 2017 · Affordability, Cities, Finance, Government, Housing, Housing supply, Sydney, urban renewal

By Hal Pawson, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

As everyone supposedly knows, fixing housing unaffordability is simply a matter of boosting housing supply. But wait! With their just-published report on house-building and population growth, ANU academics Ben Phillips and Cukkoo Joseph have blown yet another hole in that sacred claim.

By comparing housing demand and supply at a sub-regional level, their analysis highlights evidence that in many parts of Australia – not least inner Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – house-building has been running well ahead of local household growth for the past few years. Yet these are hardly areas where prices have dived.

In the City of Sydney, for example, overall median apartment prices rose by 52% in the five years to March 2017. On the ANU analysis, this area has recently been oversupplied relative to population. Yet apartment prices here still rose at the same rate as across Greater Sydney, a region with some areas of undersupply.

Politicians’ worn-out excuse

Previous commentaries have highlighted the recently strong positive correlation between rapidly expanding housing supply and property inflation (yes – where rising supply parallels rising prices). But these correctives to the popular wisdom have failed to gain traction.

This is partly because of the continuing seductive appeal of the common sense claim that rising prices reflect gross shortage. So, it’s reasoned, expanding house building will moderate the market.

As my Sydney University colleague Peter Phibbs recently observed, this “supply mantra” works for politicians seeking to connect with voters because “everyone is an economist now and more supply will bring down prices”.

Heaven forbid that anyone might draw attention to the special features of housing as a commodity. As noted by Ben Phillips, these mean such supply “rules” do not apply; at least not in the simple form applicable to bananas.

More importantly, though, governments use their unqualified faith in equitable housing market solutions to get off the hook. It absolves them of the responsibility for playing an active role in managing and shaping these markets to deliver housing that meets everyone’s need for shelter. Instead, they facilitate development for speculation.

Calls for a policy rethink

This critique is not exclusive to academics and affordable housing campaigners. It is increasingly coming from other stakeholders, including in the finance industry.

In a recent report, Industry Super Australia (ISA) lamented the “haphazard approach [to housing policy] … across all levels of Australian government … What was a serious problem a decade ago is becoming a crisis after a further ten years of policy gridlock”.

We recently advocated for a re-established National Housing Supply Council (NHSC). Echoing this, ISA calls for government to set up “a co-ordinating body to identify the extent of regional shortfalls in [affordable] housing”. This would require “reinstatement of a rigorous housing supply forecasting capacity to underpin effective city and municipal level planning”.

As advocated by ISA, the body’s membership and functions would closely mirror those of the NHSC. However, again consistent with our proposals, there would be greater emphasis on the position of renters on low to moderate incomes.

No-one disputes that, with continued population growth nationally and especially in our capital cities, maximising new house-building must be part of the policy mix. But the idea that this can be any kind of silver bullet for unaffordable housing – especially for the lower-income renters who are really doing it tough – is fundamentally flawed. As ISA puts it:

Simply increasing overall housing stock will not ensure that more assisted [affordable] housing becomes available. Instead, increasing the supply of assisted [affordable] housing specifically is required.

What is needed above all is “a comprehensive, long-term commitment to addressing the supply of affordable rentals for low to moderate earners”.

Australia sailed directly away from this essential goal with the Abbott government’s 2014 scrapping of the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

Moves to repair the damage

Recent policy moves in Canberra just may have set a course towards repairing the damage.

Treasurer Scott Morrison has backed a new mechanism to channel low-cost construction finance to community housing providers. The Commonwealth is also starting to pressure the states and territories to develop “credible housing strategies”. This would be in return for ongoing national funding for public housing and homelessness services.

Crucially, such strategies should include state and territory commitments to the robust use of land-use planning systems to hard-wire affordable rental housing supply into the normal private house-building process. This would emulate and build on recent proposals by the Greater Sydney Commission, which the New South Wales government is considering.

The ConversationFor the states and territories, this model could be a major element of “their side of the bargain” in a serious push to secure an enduring affordable housing supply. Only with some form of matching federal “development subsidy”, however, do such strategies stand a chance of making a real difference.

Living rooms for rent by the minute outsource the whole idea of home

Posted by on November 15th, 2017 · Cities, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing conditions, Marginal rental
File 20171110 29345 1coe87t.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
A living room rented by the minute and another room shared for sleeping – the age of the ‘distributed’ home is upon us.

By Christian Tietz, UNSW.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Zifferblatt with double f and double t is a German and Russian word for a watch face. Ziferblat with only one f and one t is a home you can rent by the minute. The missing letters are a clue to what you get – not the whole deal.

In a time when rents and rental insecurity are high and people are sharing rooms with strangers just to have a bed for the night, it is worth looking at this new “home as a service” enterprise. Ziferblat originated in Moscow and spread from there to St Petersburg and other Russian and Eastern locations via Ljubljana to Manchester, Liverpool and London. Around the world, there are currently 14 Ziferblat venues, described as places for cultural and social engagement.

Russia has had a cultural precedent for communal living. After the 1917 revolution, komunalkas emerged to provide collective living arrangements in response to an acute urban housing crisis.

The Ziferblat concept seems a perfect fit for those who share a room at night but don’t have a place to call home during the day. Each venue is open from 10am to midnight and offers a place to relax, read, cook or work – you can even have a nap. It is fully furnished and the website shows your companions performing poetry and playing piano, arty bohemian types – and perhaps as a result unable to pay the high rents in city locations.

At Ziferblat you pay by the minute. That’s right, you have a living room by the minute. The tag line is: “Everything is free except the time you spend here.”

And the minutes are cheap, a few cents only, and like every good deal it’s capped. So once you spent three to four hours, there’s no more to pay for the day.

The top rate is about A$15-20 per day depending on the country. For this, besides the comfortably furnished space, you get free coffee, tea, water, juices, fruit, vegetables, snacks and facilities like a kitchen and bathrooms.

Deconstructing the idea of home

Is this sort of commercial enterprise a further step towards deconstructing our concepts of home and domestic living? After all, a flat can be compared to a car. It sits idle most of the time when we are at work and really is used only at the edges of the day.

Yet we work hard to pay for our home and hope to make up the difference when we sell it. Wouldn’t it be much smarter to outsource the whole idea of the home? To have a home only when you need one and be unencumbered by it when you don’t? Why pay for it when we are not even there most of the time?

This makes even Airbnb seem old school, because with Airbnb I am still paying for my accommodation even if I am out sightseeing.

All that is missing to complete this new decentralised home is a mobile storage service. But all I have to do is send a text message and they pick up (or bring) and store my precious belongings. It’s physical cloud storage for distributed living, modernism 3.0.

This concept opens up a whole new perspective on urban development. Could it be that the current approach to high-density living is missing this new 21st-century trend? Will we be burdened with inappropriate outdated infrastructure that is not used as intended?

What’s more, the new approach will be nearly impossible to control and regulate – unless we accept invasive forensic examination of our private utility bills.

Has urban living changed more than we know?

I estimate, based on advertisements on Australian websites only, that at least 10,000 people are sharing rooms in Sydney. Yet we also have to consider rooms to share in Sydney being offered online in countries like China, India, the Middle East, etc … to new arrivals before they even leave.

A picture starts to emerge of room sharing that may be an underground boom going on right now. Instead of 10,000 people being technically homeless here in Sydney, the number may might well be closer to 50,000 or 100,000. That means a population ranging in size from Strathfield to the combined suburbs of Mosman and North Sydney may be sharing rooms!

Has the horse bolted? Has the game changed so much that is it time to confront these new realities of urban living?

The owner of Ziferblat calls his guests micro-tenants, slicing the pie into ever thinner portions. Ziferblat and other versions of the distributed home might well play a big part in the future of urban city living. We just haven’t realised it yet, because we are too busy and preoccupied with paying off the home we can’t really afford – while our ten roomies in the three-bedroom flat next door have already moved on metaphorically and literally.

The ConversationYou may ask, what about neighbours and a sense of belonging? But isn’t there a virtual reality app for that?

 

 

Federal Government’s affordable housing reforms need a social housing investment plan

Posted by on November 13th, 2017 · Finance, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, Law, Money

By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University. City Futures Research Centre is collaborating with Dr Lawson on the AHURI Inquiry ‘Social Housing as Infrastructure‘.

The Centre for Urban Research in its submission concerning the National Housing and Finance Investment Corporation to the Federal Treasury provides evidence to support an appropriately governed and skilled NHFIC, alongside a complementary but independent capital investment strategy to supply social housing to address growing Australian needs.

The NHFIC is a mechanism to reduce financing costs but will not address the funding gap. However, it can certainly improve the terms and tenor of debt finance for Community Housing Providers, especially when combined with a guarantee and capital investment programs providing targeted and conditional grants for housing supply.

Financial intermediaries such as the NHFIC and the UK’s Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) which it draws on, never operate in a vacuum, they complement rather than steer and ensure outcomes.  Experience shows that the deeper the grants the greater the social outcome. Since major cuts to capital investment grants In England there has been very limited new social housing provided in 2016-2017, declining from 36,700 units in 2010 to less than 1,100 in 2016 (but no officially collected figures any more). Social housing has been largely replaced by affordable housing and sales though right to buy have also vastly outpaced new supply (Williams and Whitehead, 2015).

Of course Australia once had a reasonably large capital investment program for social housing under decades of Commonwealth State Housing Agreements CSHA. These agreements produced 8,000-14,000 units per year between 1951 and 1996 (Troy, 2012). Since the mid-1990s the proceeds from transfer payments have been less easily accounted for. Indeed, performance benchmarks such as affordability were impossible to obtain given both limited resource and booming price rises.

Now we have a draft bill before Parliament on the National Housing and Homeless Agreement known as the Treasury Laws Amendment (NHHA) Bill. This provides a another framework for bi-lateral agreements but no guaranteed national capital investment payment. Rather conditional housing and homeless assistance payments will be tied to targets specified in state housing strategies. However, the Bill does not specify any specific frameworks, standards or targets that would ensure nation-wide and comprehensive housing outcomes.

Important targets could concern the adequate allocation of supply, the capacity of young people to achieve housing independence and reducing levels of homelessness. These are all measurable indicators which can use easily accessible data.

In our RMIT submission we provide several examples of complementary capital investment programs elsewhere which have made progressive inroads to these goals. For example Finland’s ARA Munifin model (Averio, 2015), produces 9,000 units per year (22% of supply) and for many years has the best record in Europe for reducing rates of homelessness (Feantsa, 2016) and along with Denmark and Sweden,  enables young people to leave their parental home before their mid-twenties and achieve housing independence via the social, secure rental or ownership markets.

All the more reason for AHURI associates to step up to the plate with evidence and expertise in needs based modelling and program design to underpin a more comprehensive affordable and social housing investment strategy.

We will be making a presentation on these at a session on Social Housing as Infrastructure to the AHURI National Housing Conference in Sydney later this month.