Affordable Mosaic Housing Cebs v1

Affordable Mosaic Housing:
Re-thinking low–cost housing
Affordable Mosaic Housing: Re-thinking

10/12/2009 1
low–cost housing
Abstract
The very term "Low Cost Housing" The Affordable Mosaic Housing model
assumes that the challenge is to find of cluster houses and clustered
innovative ways to neighbourhoods aims to produce
reduce the cost of building houses better a better social by introducing a
and in doing so, making it greater mix of housing types on each
affordable to every family to own, street and each neighbbourhood.
regardless of their income level. .
In this paper, we approach the subject
from a social perspective, in particular
the problem is seen through a social
standpoint. From this point of
view, it becomes obvious that place
ment and concentrating families
of the poor - financially and socially
stressed - in one location, does not
make sense. The higher the
concentration of people in these low
cost housing areas, the more
unmanageable the social problems
become.

10/12/2009 2
Low Cost Housing in
Malaysia
In Malaysia the provision of Low cost
houses is shared between the public
and private sector.
In the 80’s the public sector housing is
undertaken by Government agencies
like the State Economic Development
Corporations.
The private sector undertook the
construction of Low cost houses
through a rule that required housing
developers to have 30% of what they
build to be Low cost houses.
In the 80’s and 90’s (until 1998 at
least), the private sector outperformed
the public sector.

10/12/2009 3
Unit Price Location Income House
(land Group type
cost)
The Low cost houses built by the
RM 25,000 Cities and RM1,200 to High rise
private sector were for sale to the
big towns RM1,500 Flats
lower income group. The idea was to
democratise home ownership. The RM 35,000 Big towns RM1,000 to 5 storey
price was initially set at RM25,000. and suburbs RM1,350 Flats
This amount has been increased
RM 30,000 Small towns RM850 to Terrace and
through the years.
RM1,200 cluster
Yet, there are clearly problems in the houses
delivery of Low cost houses in the new
millennium . RM 42,000 Rural areas RM750 to Terrace and
RM1,000 cluster
houses
Low cost Ceiling Prices 1998 Revision, from

Mohd Razali Agus, “Perumahan Awam di
Malaysia”, 2001

10/12/2009 4
Problems for Developers
Subsidized Low Cost house
Low cost houses are subject to a
ceiling price much lower than their
construction cost.
Developers pay for this shortfall by
putting higher prices on the other
houses that they sell claims that
private developers are unable to cope
with rising construction costs. The
price of low-cost houses is still capped
at a maximum of RM42,000 per unit,
which means developers end up
subsidising costs of between
RM18,000 and RM28,000 per unit.
You would expect demand for these
low cost houses to be high. Yet, there
are many completed Low cost houses
which have yet to find buyers. http://www.thenutgraph.com/no-place-like-home Ng Boon Hooi,
“No place like home”, 8th September, 2008. retrieved 18th
October, 2008

10/12/2009 5
2004 2005
Overhang in the supply of
Value RM1.82 billion RM2.65 billion
low cost houses
No of units 15558 19577
“Overhang” refers to completed
properties issued with Certificate of 2-3 storey 5074
Fitness for Occupation and unsold for terraced houses
more than nine months.
There has been a persistent overhang
Condominiums 4474
in the supply of low cost houses since
at least the 1997 recession. and apartments
Developers lose money on Low cost
housing even when they are fully sold. Single storey 3142
When they can’t be sold, the effect on terraced Houses
the developers cash flow and bottom
line can be catastrophic. Flats 1728
Low cost Flats 1800
Low cost houses 1126
The Sun “Hung up on residential property”, 28-Apr-2006, citing The Property

Market Status Report recently released by the National Property Information
Centre (Napic) of the Valuation & Property Services Department.

10/12/2009 6
Problem for Buyers Low
resale value
Buyers of Low cost houses have also
suffered. Especially many of hose that
have encountered financial hardships
and have had their mortgages
foreclosed.
A cursory study of Auction Notices
over the past year has revealed that
the Reserve Prices of low-cost flats in
locations like Bukit Sentosa, Bukit
Beruntung in the north of Kuala
Lumpur is around RM9,000, a small
fraction of the original selling price;
perhaps even lower than the cost of This reserve price of RM9000 is not exceptionally low.
demolishing it! There are 11 other apartments similarly priced
To many unfortunate people, their Low (Source: NST UbuyUsell, Tuesday, Aug 22 2006)
cost houses are not appreciating
assets that can help lift them out of
poverty. In fact the low cost houses
have become financial burdens.

10/12/2009 7
Problems for House
Buyers
The burden of a dysfunctional Low It is easier to raise the money to
cost housing policy is not only on subsidize 3 units of low cost houses
developers and unfortunate buyers. (say RM 25,000 per unit) from ten
The general house buying public is also units of RM250,000 superlink houses
affected. than from ten units of terrace houses
The responsibility of providing Low priced at RM150,000.
cost houses by private developers is Looked at this way, the 30% low cost
often described as the developer requirement is a regressive tax.
carrying out his social responsibility. The net effect is that, with the 30%
But it is a mistake to say that requirement in place, developers are
developers subsidize low cost houses discouraged from delivering housing in
out of his profit. Actually low cost the price categories just above that of
houses are cross-subsidized by taxing the low cost houses.
other types of houses.
A significant segment of the
Where the requirement is that 30% of population is thus deprived of homes
houses have to be low cost, developers that they can afford.
find it easier to cross-subsidize by
building higher cost units.

10/12/2009 8
Low Cost Low Medium
Medium Cost
Cost
State governments have recognized Johor
this problem. One response has been
to designate a range of lower cost Price Range RM25000 RM60000 RM80000
housing. For instance Johor and to
Selangor have modified requirements RM42000
for low-medium and medium cost
houses . Percentage 20% 10% 10%
The distorting effect on the supply of of Total no
housing priced just higher than the
regulated types still remains.
of houses
Selangor
Price Range RM35000 RM65000 RM80000
to to to
RM42000 RM72000 RM90000
Percentage 20% 10% 10%
of Total no
of houses

10/12/2009 9
Creating Value
This paper looks at the problems of
Low-Cost Housing from a town-
planning perspective and proposes
how we can improve the design of the
layout of new housing.
The Low cost housing policy we are
concerned with here is not primarily
about providing shelter to the poor. It
is about home ownership for them.
Our starting point to finding the
solution is to recognize that Low cost
houses must represent good value.
Ask any Valuation expert in what are
the three most important factors that
determine value, and the answer will
be:
“Location, location, location”
A study based on a Low Cost, Low
Medium Cost and Medium Cost
project in Kajang provides a good
illustration In what is meant by
“location”.

10/12/2009 10
Taman Sutera
It is common practice to build low cost,
low medium and medium cost units in
separate blocks. In this project, my
firm tried to convince the client and
the local authorities to allow the three
categories to be mixed in any one
block, with higher priced units on the
lower floors and lower priced units on
the higher floors.
What we achieved was low-medium
cost units mixed with medium cost
units in the same 5 storey block.
The low cost units had to be on its
own; no units were allowed on the the
ground floor and the flats were 6
storeys high.

10/12/2009 11
Block Ground First Second Third Fourth
A RM 77922.14 RM 80046.25 RM 77564.00 RM 69225.00 RM 64697.50
B RM 72307.50 RM 77221.25 RM 75834.75 RM 71040.00 RM 61852.00
C RM 75412.31 RM 78372.50 RM 76051.88 RM 70876.63 RM 61501.25
D RM 74167.50 RM 78933.75 RM 78138.75 RM 70417.63 RM 64134.24
E RM 74876.25 RM 78505.00 RM 76747.50 RM 68820.00 RM 62642.5
Average RM 74,937.14 RM78,615.75 RM 76,867.38 RM 70,075.85 RM 62,965.50

10/12/2009 12
FLOOR AVERAGE NO OF DAYS IT TOOK
TO SELL OFF UNITS
The units were generally launched for Category Low Cost Low Medium /
sale block by block. The developers
Medium Cost
would take bookings from the
prospective purchasers who were Price RM42000 RM60000 to
required to come back within a fixed
RM80000
period to sign the SPA and make the
first 10% payment. For this research, Built up area 650sf 771 – 850sf
the date of the signing of the SPA was
taken as the date of sale. Ground Floor 36 non
The data was sorted out by block and First Floor
by floor. For every floor of each block, 57 130
the average day it took to sell each Second Floor
unit was calculated.
117 198
It can be easily seen that the higher Third Floor 167 261
priced low medium and medium cost
units sold much faster than the low Fourth Floor 190 702
cost houses.
Fifth Floor non 1251*
* At the date of the report, the flats on the top floor
were still empty, so the count was still climbing

10/12/2009 13
The importance of the
social environment factor
Physically , there was not much Surely the low cost units would sell like
difference between the low cost, low hot cakes, or at least faster than the
medium and medium cost houses. more expensive units!
The finishes werre the same. The low But this was not so.
cost house has separate wc and There may have been other factors at
shower, whilst the other units have work, but this study clearly illustrates
two bathrooms. All the house-types the importance of the social
used louvre windows. The low cost environment.
unit was just 24% smaller than the
We can surmise that the people here
biggest medium cost unit. Yet the low
don’t seem to mind living in mixed-
cost houses were half the price of the
income communities but definitely
biggest unit.
dislike living in a low-income
The site for the low cost flats was just community.
next to the low medium /medium cost
This is not surprising. Low cost housing
flats. There was no difference in the
has acquired a stigma. “Low cost
density (in terms of units per acre)
housing for low class people” .
between the two. Not much difference
in the specifications of the external
areas either.

10/12/2009 14
Location, location,
location
We believe that there are at least
three aspects to location.
The first obvious aspect is that of
geographical location. A house close to
the city centre is sure to be more
valuable than one very far away. But
reality is more complicated than that.
The second aspect is the physical
quality of the environment around the
house. A house in a quiet leafy cul-
de-sac will more valued than one on
an untidy, noisy street.
The third aspect is the social quality of
the environment. This would include
the sense of belonging that residents
feel to their neighbourhood
community.
As the Taman Sutera study reveals, the
importance of the social aspect should
not be underestimated.

10/12/2009 15
Cluster Layout
In the paper, Tessellation Planning and
Honeycomb Housing, 2005, we
introduced the idea of cluster houses
clustered around courtyards in a cul-
de-sac arrangement. Since then we
have developed a rectilinear version of
the hexagonal form of Honeycomb
housing, which we believe to be
suitable for the more affordable end
of the market.

10/12/2009 16
Courtyard Neighbourhood
The Mosaic layout is created by
arranging courtyards, such that each
building would face at least two
courtyards. The buildings are then sub-
divided into 2, 3 or 4, to create
duplexes, triplexes or quadruplexes,
or even into 8 townhouse units.

10/12/2009 17
The basis of the subdivided buildings
and land area allows for the creation
of smaller built-up units, thus making
the houses more affordable. But the
essence of this method of organisation
is that more units are created without
compromising the quality of the
external environment.

10/12/2009 18
Community Friendly
Compared to the terrace house layout,
the Mosaic layout is more community-
friendly with houses clustered around
small parks, like friends sitting around
a table where residents can recognise
the small number of neighbours and
thus, better able to deal with ‘stranger
danger’. Safer streets are created by
minimising cross-junctions and traffic
speed is reduced by the unique road
patterns. The pattern also creates
child-friendly pocket parks, suitable for
pre-school children’s outdoor play and
communal activities with many ‘eyes
on the street’.

10/12/2009 19
Environment friendly
The Mosaic layout promotes
environmental-friendly spaces to plant
giant shady trees increasing efforts to
cool outdoor temperature whilst still
friendly towards insects, birds and
small animals, not just on flat land, but
also suited to undulating land. In this
way, it also saves development cost by
achieving better land-use efficiency
with fewer roads thereby reducing
infrastructure cost.

10/12/2009 20
Efficient use of land
In terms of land-use efficiency, the
mosaic layout compares well against
the typical terrace house layout. The
density is only marginally lower whilst
the average size of units is larger by a
quarter. This achieved by the large
reduction in area required for road
reserves.
TERRACE MOSAIC
ROAD 46.6% 34.5%
SALEABLE LAND 43.2% 55.2%
GREEN AREA 10.3% 10.3%
NO OF UNITS/ACRE 15.9 UNITS 15.5 UNITS
AVERAGE SIZE OF 1180SF 1553SF 24%
LOTS LARGER

10/12/2009 21
Rethinking Housing Layout
Design
Malaysian town planning practice
owes much to the town planning ideas
of the early 20th century. The control
of density and land-use through
zoning, the hierarchy of roads,
neighbourhood units, and the
importance of green open space and
communal facilities are ideas strongly
entrenched among both the private
and government sector planners and
can be seen in local planning
guidelines.
In developing the Mosaic concept into
a complete neighbourhood layout, we
questioned two ideas deeply
entrenched in town planninq.
The first is to rethink the idea of
“neighbourhood”. The second is about
“zoning”.

10/12/2009 22
Neighbourhood and
community
Both the words ‘neighbourhood’ and Clarence Perry’s “Neighbourhood Unit”
‘community’ have become debased by – Population of about 3000 to 10000, being the size that would have
confusion between a social and its own elementary (primary) school of about 1000-1600 children.
physical meaning. Developers – The school, along with other communal facilities like hall, library
routinely use the word community to and church would be centrally located.
mean housing estate. Clarence Perry – The neighbourhood would be ringed by arterial roads; the arterial
introduced the concept of road was to discourage through traffic into the residential
neighbourhood unit in the 1920’s in neighbourhood, but also to give a distinct boundary to the
neighbourhood.
New York with a list of physical
– The shopping area would be at the periphery of the
planning characteristics that could
neighbourhood, along the arterial road.
encourage city folk to develop a
– There should be a system of small parks and recreation areas to
common sense of belonging. serve the children and youth. He suggested 10% of the total area to
Does it really work? be a reasonably good provision.
– The roads within the neighbourhood would be the small local roads
in front of the houses and collector roads that joined the local
roads to the arterial roads, the

10/12/2009 23
Neighbourhood - social
rather than physical
We argue that a neighbourhood shoud Our work with Mosaic housing is
not be understood in terms of a list of premised on the hypothesis that
ingredients in a recipe, but rather in residents who live in small
the whether residents actually feel the neighbourhoods are more likely to
sense belonging to a neighbourhood recognize, get to know, interact and
and act according to that perception. form social groups than those who live
To try to measure it, we would look at in bigger neighbourhoods.
the:
• quantity of social interaction
• quality of social interaction
• mutual cooperation
• positive feelings towards
neighbours (without necessarily
having social contact)
• influence
• sense of belonging and
membership
• sense of place

10/12/2009 24
Alternative Concept of
Neighbourhood
Mosaic housing adopts a hierarchical
concept of neighborhood. A family
may belong simultaneously to a
‘courtyard neighborhood’ (of say, 16
houses), a ‘cul-de-sac neighborhood’
(of say, 42 homes), a ‘block
neighborhood’ (250 houses, say), and
a ‘town community’ of around 1500
houses. The latter is what corresponds
most closely to Perry’s neighborhood
unit.
However, we argue that it is at the

level of the ‘courtyard neighborhood’
that the sense of neighborhood would
be strongest: a cluster of 16 houses
with a population of only 80 is a
setting where residents can easily
relate to each other.

10/12/2009 25
Defensible Space
The concept of “Defensible Space”
was first introduced by architect Oscar
newmn in the 1970’s. he proposed
housing layouts producesa hierarchy of
private space, semi-private space and
public space, where residents are able
to exercise influence over the
environment just outside their homes:
visitors know when they are entering a
semi-private domain.
The Mosaic design assists in providing
natural surveillance of the external
spaces; every house lies in a cul-de-
sac, which naturally produces
defensible spaces.

10/12/2009 26
Zoning
Ebenezer Howard’s vision of Garden
Cities had industrial, commercial and
residential uses neatly segregated
from each other.
The Garden City consists for different
zones, street types and green.
The core in the centre contains a
central park, surrounded by a
commercial, cultural and
administrative zone.
Six boulevards connect the centre with
the circumference, which are then
overlayed by ring roads around the
centre, forming the residential
neighbourhoods or wards
The outer ring is supposed for small
scale industries and manufactories to
keep the inhabitants away from
emission and a green belt and a circle
railway mark the border to the
countryside.

10/12/2009 27
Functional zoning to
residential zoning by
density and house type
The sorting out of the city into Planners seem oblivious to fact that
separate functions - industrial, this was in practice segregating society
commercial and residential was a by wealth. After apportioning the land
natural reaction to the squalor of for the upper and middle classes, the
Victorian cities. The concept of zoning worst bit of land left over would be
is entrenched in Malaysia’s laws on given over to low-cost housing. Low
land and planning. cost housing has acquired a stigma in
However, town planning practice has urban areas - low cost houses for low
gone on to segregate high density class people.
housing from medium density from
low density housing. This logic has
taken on a life of its own – there is
something that compels 22'X 70'
double storey terrace houses to be
separated from 20'X 65' terrace
houses.
Functional zoning has evolved into
zoning by house types.

10/12/2009 28
Left over space for low
cost housing
Low cost housing not only lose money,
they also depress the value of
properties adjacent to them, so
developers chose the worst portion of
their land for them - bits of land that
might need more piles and more
expensive infrastructure, or low lying
land right next to the oxidation pond
that need extensive earthworks. These
extra costs become a burden on the
budget for the construction of the
actual homes.
The low cost areas are also often
isolated from other types of housing.
So they generally end up being a
distance from social amenities -
schools, nursey, kindergarten and
shops. Isolated, the low cost housing
area offers few employment
opportunities.Placed in a far corner of
a housing project, they also lack access
to cheap transportation. And transport
can eat up a substantial part of the
poor man's income
.10/12/2009 Affordable Mosaic Housing:

29
However, the worst aspect of low-cost In the Mosaic Housing model there is
housing projects is the very idea of low an attempt to avoid segregation by
cost housing areas: that poor people income categories. There is a
are concentration in one location. combination of house types that
Healthy communities comprise a mix allows a semi-detached house to be
of the rich, the poor and the in- built next to the equivalent of a
between. Indeed traditional terrace house, which would also be
communities like kampungs are not walking distance away from a
made up exclusively of rich or poor townhouse or a flat. In this model, a
people. small percentage of low-income
households would be integrated into a
healthy mixed-income community.
In this way it is possible to avoid
having low-cost houses concentrated
in an isolated, unattractive section of a
housing development.

10/12/2009 30
The Mosaic Layout
A rectilinear cluster layout
Small and Big Courtyards
Apartment Square Square
Metres Feet
3 Bedroom Unit at 65.10 700.7

Typical Floor
Ground Floor
Ground Floor

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Affordable Mosaic Housing:

Re-thinking low–cost housing

Affordable Mosaic Housing: Re-thinking