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| The Prince of Wales speaking at Buckingham Palace late last year |
As heir to the throne for over sixty years, Prince Charles has
sought to be more than a “presence” as suggested by President Richard Nixon in
1970.
The result is that he as used his position and influence to
speak out on issues that are important to him, and has made interventions into
public matters like housing and sustainability.
Yesterday was no different as the Prince of Wales made an
impassioned call for more homes to be built in London to help solve the city’s
housing crisis. His remarks were made in a speech made upon the release of Housing London: A Mid-Rise Solution, a
publication furnished by the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community.
The Prince warned that rocketing house prices and rents
threatened to drive a generation of young people away of the United Kingdom’s
capital city at the same time that it has other attributes going for it, such
as employment opportunities not found elsewhere. Recently-released official
figures showed that the average price for a house in London is £458,000, an
increase of 13% in just one year, making it virtually impossible for a young
individual to make a substantial down payment (or deposit) on a home in the
hope of making affordable mortgage payments over their lifetime.
On the rental front, the story is not much better. Many of
the new rental units that are being built are found in high-rise towers which
only the wealthiest individuals can obtain, and much of them are used for
investment and not living purposes by foreign nationals. This means that some
homes and apartments are unoccupied for long periods of time, whilst the
housing market continues a relentless upward trend as people with means continue
to buy.
All of this makes for an unsustainable situation in which
most young people are priced out the market, and the ones that can get in often
have to spend a majority of their income on rent, leaving few resources to do
other activities.
Prince Charles and his foundation have suggested that the
developers should not just build more affordable housing, but that they also ought
to move away from building high-rises to building “mid-rises” – buildings about
six to eight stories tall and in the character of Georgian manor blocks of the
18th and 19th centuries.
The report also calls for developments
to be of a mixed variety – with private, shared, and public housing built in
the same place and around cultural institutions and squares to achieve greater
cohesion and a sense of community and belonging amongst the inhabitants. Such
communities should also be “walkable” and have public transportation available
to achieve what the Prince of Wales has called the “built environment.”
Inevitably, there will be some republicans who will
criticize the Prince for wading into political issue about which he knows
nothing.
However, as with the case of his mother making remarks about
the plight of the poor, Charles was simply stating the obvious with regard to
the need for affordable housing in London. One cannot read a newspaper in the
UK without some mention of the housing shortage, which is indeed a crisis as
London and the rest of country continue to grow. The problem is exasperated by
wealthy individuals – many of them foreigners – who buy property as investment
vehicles, which sends home prices up even further and deprives Londoners of
critical housing.
The city cannot become the exclusive playground and stopover
point for the wealthiest individuals in the world. As the capital of the United
Kingdom, it ought to be a place where people from throughout the country can
live, regardless of their resources – financial or otherwise.
Prince Charles’s ideas for attempting to rectify this
problem are helpful, in my opinion. They make a case for building more housing
on a more human scale with the aim of bringing people and communities together.
This chimes in with the views of many Londoners who like the new tall towers,
but would not want to live in them.
And with all of the glass towers being
thrown up across London, having new buildings in more traditional architectural
styles would inject some flavor into the city bringing back some of the scenery
for which it has been known. Indeed, the report calls for “more London” in
terms of style.
If these ideas can provide the impetus for public action to
achieve affordable and sustainable housing, as well as creating vital
communities, then the Prince’s intervention will be a good thing. If anything,
it is the fact that he is divorced from the day to day governance of the
country – and therefore above the political fray – that gives him the
credibility to speak out on such issues, since he is not serving “special
interests” or partisan political constituencies. It is better that he use his
position to highlight issues and provide solutions on which government can – if
it wishes – act.
One
thing for sure, as heir to the throne, he has not been a mere “presence.”
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