August 4, 2019
Sunday Star-Times
My mother quite likes the idea of going flatting. She heard me on the radio disparaging a hipster flatting outfit being marketed as a 'co-home'.
For $360 a week you get a bed, a wardrobe and a bunch of facilities to share with other people.
I said "tell him he's dreaming." It sounded like a lot of dough for not very much.
Mum wanted me to know about a different co-living idea she likes.
You wouldn't really call an Abbeyfield house a retirement home, you wouldn't really call it a dorm. More like a big house with a bunch of golden years flatmates.
You have your own room and bathroom, your own possessions, and you get two catered meals a day.
It doesn't cost a lot, because it's not-for-profit. There's one live-in staff member. It's supported by volunteers, run by a committee, independent, all pretty admirable really.
Last weekend over coffee she ran through it all again: Abbeyfield is where she wants to live once she's on her own.
Loyal readers may recall I used this column last Christmas to write to my 93-year-old Dad. I'm delighted to report he's still cheerfully with us and still using just a few quiet words to make his point.
After we'd been hearing about Abbeyfield for about ten minutes he said: "well this is all a bit depressing".
Flatting can be a bit depressing. I had two excellent flatmates for the wild years: Nigel, the most loyal friend a person could have; Peter, the most astute judge of human beings I'll ever know.
For most of our first year in the big city Nigel would crack eggs several feet above the pan and as they burst on impact, curse the state of bloody Wellington eggs.
Peter could drive better in reverse than most people do going forward, but it was still a miracle we never crashed.
Just last Sunday we were all together in Wellington for a righteous dinner. There was no spaghetti bolognaise, there was no Lion Brown.
I would share a flat with them again tomorrow. They may well be saying aloud as they read this: "well, you might Dave."
I told Mum that on further thought I see that at her age, unlike in your 20s, you have the very reassuring prospect that if you don't like a flatmate, you can wait for them to die.
She didn't seem to find that as funny as I did. Mum makes friends wherever she goes. I should probably have a little more faith.
I do like the sound of Abbeyfield. And I admire it for removing the profit motive from the equation. It is surely hellbent pursuit of profit that has landed us where we are today.
In the absence of a sane housing market we have people looking for tiny houses, tiny apartments, co-living, anything that might make the impossible possible.
We are now at the point of drastic remedies. Here's mine. I propose the government sets up a 21st century Ministry of Works. No more KiwiBuild contractors, the State does all the building itself.
It would have enough people and capital and buying power to build vast numbers of apartments: not just a few thousand, tens of thousands of them.
Sell them at a truly affordable price, not KiwiBuild prices, and offer helpful finance. Young people are said to be disinclined to buy anything but a suburban home but let's see what they say to a genuinely good deal.
If even this economy of scale isn't enough to deliver affordable buildings because the land costs so much, then wear that cost; the return you're looking for is social, not monetary. Also, build enough and you can stop spending $2 billion a year supporting the private rental market.
And give yourself a pass on red tape. The reason we've ended up with so much is because leaky-home-building developers left councils holding the baby.
They demonstrated they needed to be regulated, but that doesn't mean the government does.
My sole hesitation for this excellent idea is that the obvious name is Think Big.
