project, later go on to repeat the process at least once.
Designing-down the threshold How might we lower the economic threshold for selfprovision? That is, how can self-providing become easier, and make fewer demands on time, financial capital, social capital and knowledge capital?
This knowledge offers a crucial insight into the scaleability of the self-provided housing industry. How might the industry be scaled up?
During the last decade, the generally accepted solution to the problem of poor access was more risky lending: mortgages with a loan-to-value rate of 100% or more, which allowed those on lower incomes to borrow more and buy more. That, as we have discovered, was an unsustainable way of going about the problem. But there are other ways. Rather than bring households up to the threshold through attempts at (what is, essentially) financial alchemy, we can actually design-down the threshold to meet ordinary households. The Walter Segal housebuilding method, conceived in the 1960s and 1970s is one historical example of an attempt to do this. It proposed a system of building which:
One approach to scaling would be removing some of the barriers to self-provision in order to liberate more of the demographic who can currently selfprovide to do so. This would include, for example, increasing the number of sites available for selfproviders, and providing more comprehensive and clear support and advice. This aspect of growing the self-provided housing sector is crucially important. But to only do this would do very little to harness the potential of self-provision as an affordability mechanism for those who cannot get onto the housing ladder and an engine for sustainable development. The most challenging, but most crucial aspect of scaling the self-provided housing sector is not just increasing capacity for the current self-providing demographic, but coming up with innovative models which lower the economic threshold for participation – reaching down into the intermediate housing market and transforming it into a masshousebuilding industry. It’s not just a social policy solution (a way for governments to ensure access to affordable housing within the constraints of lean resources), but it is also, put bluntly, a large untapped new portion of the market waiting to be discovered: a colossal business opportunity.
1. Used an affordable, widely available and easy-towork with material: timber. 2. Lowered the skill-threshold for self-builders. With a bit of basic training and common sense, even those who didn’t have mainstream construction skills could put together a Walter Segal house. In fact, as it turned out, one of the most useful characteristics of the Walter Segal method was its ability to accommodate uneven and sloping sites. It has been used by a number of self-builders and self-procurers in recent decades to build on sites which speculative housebuilders found too awkward
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