Housing & Retrofits in Europe: Alternative Financing Arrangements
At a recent conference in Toronto, May 2023, where I presented on the relationships of transit infrastructure, affordable housing and adapting existing social housing to manage human health through extreme weather events to equity-building, a senior economist asked me about how certain of the projects in Europe I addressed were financed, and what Canada might learn from that. The short of it was that alternative financing arrangements were needed in the Canadian context. Seeing as my research was funded with public money to a large extent, I felt obliged to share rough notes with public servants.
This informal micro report addresses examples and information from case study research on retrofitting legacy towers from the 1960s to achieve significant reductions in operational carbon emissions, while preserving social housing tenancy in the French and Swiss contexts. The studies cover examples from Bordeaux and Mulhouse, France, and Vernier, Switzerland, a suburb of Geneva. It concludes with lessons learned that might be applicable in the context of Toronto and other Canadian cities. The research was prepared as part of the requirements for the degree of Master in Environmental Studies under the auspices of York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change in the summer of 2023. The following is excerpted from the Major Research Paper, submitted there and approved. These excerpts have been edited for contextual clarity.
Projects and their ownership / financing
Bordeaux - la Cité du Grand Parc
La Cité du Grand Parc, Bordeaux from the south (Source : Author, May 2, 2023)
Ownership : Aquitanis O.P.H (Office publique de l’habitat). Aquitanis is owned by Bordeaux Métropole and is the agency responsible for public housing.
Costs: €35 million for renovation of existing housing units: Aquitanis provided 77.9 % of the budget (€27.65 million); Bordeaux Métropole 17.7% (€6.2 million); the Nouvelle Aquitaine Region 2.3 % (€795,000); the European Regional Development Fund 2.1 % (€737,000).
€1.6 million for new housing units: Aquitanis provided 94.5 % of the budget (€1.525 million; Bordeaux Métropole 4.8% (€76,800); ActionLogement, (a finance company with a public policy mandate, with a credit rating tied to that of the French state, formed by the French government with social partner organisations (private sector and unions) to support access to housing) 0.7 % (€12,000) (European Commission).
Bordeaux - Darwin Eco-système, Rive Gauche
Darwin Eco-système, Rive Gauche, Bordeaux. (Source : Author, May 3, 2023)
Ownership: While this project is not housing directly, and private tenure, Darwin is linked to a major redevelopment of a post-industrial and railway lands, part of the ‘Zone d’amagément concertée’ (ZAC) Bastide-Niel. The ZAC Bastide-Niel is a major urban regeneration project lead by the Bordeaux Métropole Amanégement (BMA) (51 percent), Aquitanis (24.5 percent), and Domofrance, (24.5 percent), affiliated with ActionLogement, a finance company with a public policy mandate, with a credit rating tied to that of the French state. It is supported through financing in part underwritten by the Bordeaux Métropole, and informal (rental) occupation.
Mulhouse – La Cité Manifeste
Ownership: the Social Enterprise SOMCO, 2023. La Société mulhousienne des cités ouvrières (SOMCO) was founded 170 years ago, SOMCO now manages upwards of 5000 rental units across 45 communities in Alsace, France.
La Cité Manifeste Mulhouse, France. (Source: Author, May 17, 2023)
Mulhouse – 38 Rue Anna-Schoen
Ownership: Private (syndicate) ownership with retrofitting work carried out by Copropriété Provence, a syndicate of rental property co-ownership active for 28 years, based in Saint-Chamond, France, with the support of the French Republic and a local governmental agency called Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération. A third central government formation involved is the Agence national d’habitat.
Vernier – Le Lignon
Vernier – Le Lignon. Switzerland. (Source: Author, May 17, 2023)
Ownership: Public Housing under ownership of the Commune de Vernier with retrofitting financed in part by the institutional investor, Anlagestiftung Pensimo or, Pensimo Investment Foundation, Bellerive Immobilien AG and further foundations under the Pensimo Group include Immobilien Anlagestiftung Turidomus, Imoka Immobilien Anlagestiftung, with La Fondation HBM Camille Martin. While public/private partnership might describe these dynamics, another way of understanding this is that social housing is delivered in a combination of direct public money and the mobilization of foundation and institutional investment with state guaranteed market-based investment, institutionally guaranteed long term asset management directed in part at the public good. Indeed, many of the organizations listed above have histories of more than a century.
The Cases
Bordeaux - la Cité du Grand Parc
The Quartier du Grand Parc in which La Cité du Grand Parc makes up only a few of the many towers there, is located to the northwest of central Bordeaux. It is a 15 to 20 minute tram or bus (the C tram or 15 bus) ride from the institutional and financial core of the city. There are many high-rises in the area there.
The three towers of La Cité du Grand Parc, G, H and I, are award winning retrofit intervention of Lacaton &Vassal Architects, with Frédéric Druot Architecture and Christophe Hutin Architecture (Lacaton & Vassal, 2017; Ravenscroft, 2021) at La Cité du Grand Park, 10 to 15 storeys containing 530 units of the 4000 odd units of La Cité all together.
These towers are distinct from the neighbours in their gleaming glass and whitewashed concrete, cast concrete triangles and ground level holding up steel frames upon which external enclosable terraces or balconies have been erected. Exterior insulation was added to the sides of the building and thermal treatment of the roofs was carried through. External elevators replaced those internal to the building to create additional space for some of the units (Lacaton & Vassal, 2017). These balconies, Lacaton & Vassal use “winter gardens” for these flexible spaces, are on average 3.8 m deep on the south façades of two of the buildings and on two façades of building G. They make up additional 23 500 m² to the 44 210 m² pre-existing total of the three buildings; thus, each unit gained more or less one-third larger private usable space. Eight new units were created in the transformation. This external skeleton features sliding glass doors and sun screening curtains, built to add indoor/ outdoor flexible space to each unit, to add insulation in winter and sun blocks in summer while allowing for ventilation. Project cost is reported by Lacaton & Vassal (2017) at EUR 27,2 million net (transformation), EUR 1,2 Million net (new dwellings), estimated to be less than half of what a tear down and replacement might cost, with energy efficiency gains reported the architects of more than 60 percent (Lacaton & Vassal, 2021). The total figure “$29,945,344” is reported in Architecture (2019) in US dollars.
The ownership of the social housing buildings is held in public hands under the auspices of the Aquitanis O.P.H. de la communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux (CUB), renamed Bordeaux Métropole in 2016 and is the agency responsible for public housing.
Bordeaux - Darwin Eco-système, Rive Gauche
The Darwin Eco-système in Bordeaux is not housing but is a significant site of social infrastructure that supports the massive redevelopment with major market and social housing of an area on the right bank of Bordeaux called the Bastide-Niel. Ownership of the Darwin combines private tenure, supported through financing in part underwritten by the Cummunauté urbaine de Bordeaux (CUB) (now Bordeaux Métropole), and informal occupation on a project by project basis. Bordeaux based global communication agency Inoxia founder Philippe Barre is behind the Darwin initiative. The CUB acquired 34 hectares of the right bank in 2007, including, 9.4 hectares of the barracks. With that purchase, the ‘Zone d’amagément concertée’ project, la ZAC Bastide-Niel, began.
The groupe Évolution in negotiation with the CUB, 2009, purchased the core 1 hectare of the central hall of the Darwin site at a price of EUR 1,2 million and were able to raise 13 million in publicly guaranteed private financing (Mallet et Mège, 2022 ; PUCA 2021).
Ownership of the Darwin Eco-système combines private tenure, supported through financing in part underwritten by the Bordeaux Métropole, and informal (rental) occupation on a project by project basis. It is part of the ‘Zone d’amagément concertée’ (ZAC) Bastide-Niel. The ZAC Bastide-Niel is a major urban regeneration project lead by the Bordeaux Métropole Amanégement (BMA) (51 percent), Aquitanis (24.5 percent), the public agency who owns and manages La Cité du Grand Park, and Domofrance, (24.5 percent), affiliated with ActionLogement, a finance company with a public policy mandate to finance and promote affordable housing in France, overseen by a board of directors made up representatives of Employers’ and Employees’ unions and the French State. Domofrance is legally a SA de ESH, or Sociétés Anonymes Enterprise Social d'Habitations (à Loyer Modéré), a company in the business of the development of social housing in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.
Mulhouse - La Cité Manifeste.
Le Cité Manifest Pierre Zemp (as it was renamed in 2022) or just Cité Manifest, Mulhouse, France, is a series of low rises, 60 units in total, of social housing in a project led by Jean Nouvel (Arquitectura Viva, 2023; AJN, n.d.), built between 2001 and 2005. Pierre Zemp is honoured for his passion for social housing and this project (Fuchs, 2022) is under the auspices of the Social Enterprise SOMCO, Mulhouse, an organization for building workers’ housing established in the same quarter in 1853. SOMCO calls the Muller Quarter the first workers housing estate of France, “la première cité ouvrière de France en 1853 - la cité jardin « Muller » à Mulhouse” (SOMCO, 2023). La Société mulhousienne des cités ouvrières (SOMCO) was founded 170 years ago as a philanthropic enterprise by industrialist, Jean Dollfus, of the Dollfus-Mieg et Compagnie, to house the workforce of that and other local major factories, SOMCO now manages upwards of 5000 rental units across 45 communities in Alsace, France. It is also affiliated with an organization of social housing providers called Le Comité Ouvrier du Logement (COL), Société Coopérative d’Intérêt Collectif Hlm (SCIC Hlm) founded in the 1950s, as one of the organization that make up Habitat Réunis, an association of similar organizations brought together formally in 2011.
La Cité Manifeste Mulhouse, France. (Source: Author, May 17, 2023)
Mulhouse caught the attention of Toronto planner Hans Blumenfeld, University of Toronto Professor and author, at one point, Deputy Director of the Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board who prepared Metro's 1959 Official Plan. An essay about Mulhouse working class housing appears in his The Modern Metropolis (Blumenfeld, 1968). Mulhouse has a history of intense industrial activity with a central place in the automotive and locomotive development of France. It is also famous for textiles, comparable to Manchester, UK, with a large factory area including the Dreyfus-Lantz textile mill located between the town centre and the Gare du Nord (Mulhouse Maps, 1911, 1934) run by Alfred Dreyfus’ older brother Mathieu at one point. The eastern edge of the Cité Manifeste runs along the rue Lavoisier, which traversed this factory area and was built on land that, in the 1934 map is labelled La Contonière.
Mulhouse – Rue Anna Schoen
A significant tower block renovation, with a focus on energy consumption reduction for the building, is underway (at the time of writing) in Mulhouse north of the low-rise quarter, at 36 to 38 Rue Anna Schoen, a 12-story tower plus ground floor. Rents of EUR 12 per m2 are at the low end of the spectrum in Mulhouse according to the rental agency Meilleurs Agents.This project which involves both mechanical systems upgrading and building envelope improvement is being undertaken under the ownership of the 1994 established Copropriété Provence, a syndicate of rental property co-ownership active for 28 years, based in Saint-Chamond, France, with the support of the French Republic and a local governmental agency called Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération. This political formation represents 39 municipalities in the region with capacity to address housing and energy, employment, environmental services transportation as well as recreational facilities as a governmental entity of the department of Haut-Rhin and the region of the Grand Est. A third central government formation involved is the Agence national d’habitat, a public entity founded in 1971, whose mission has been to improve the existing private housing stock with financial aid for work under conditions to owner occupiers, landlords and condominiums in difficulty. While actual financials for this project are not freely available, the public/private cooperation and intergovernmental partnership on this project point to a high level of governmental capacity for addressing and promoting climate change mitigation in private sector owned tower blocks as well as energy efficiency promotion for existing French housing stock. The rue Anna Schoen tower stands in an area of the city with a number of other towers in various states of maintenance and renovation.
Vernier, Le Lignon
The largest social housing blocks in Switzerland are undergoing retrofit, a complex of buildings at the northern end of the Line 7 municipal bus line in Geneva-Vernier, Le Lignon. It is 17 and 18 stops to the north west of the city core: stop Vernier Lignon-Cité and stop Vernier Lignon-Tours. Its not the end of the world up there (that is the other end of the Line 7: Genève Bout-Du-Monde). From central Geneva, the ride begins to climb up the passed a number of clean and spare apartment buildings, until one reaches the end and is in a large campus at the top of the hill.
Geneva based architectural firm Jaccaud Associés has achieved great progress in the retrofitting of two of the multi-building campus. Le Lignon was originally designed by architects Georges Addor, Dominique Julliard, Louis Payot, and Jacques Bolliger, built between 1963 and 1971, with 2,780 individual dwellings alongside a school, shopping arcade, a series of medical services offices, two churches, a performance hall, outdoor art works, recreational space, and an urban farm with allotment gardens. 7,000 residents reside there across both social and private tenure. The complex takes the form of two tower blocks of 26 and 30 storeys, and a 12-18 storey linear ‘bar’ building more than a kilometre long (Icon, 2021). Jaccaud Associés addressed the smaller tower and more than half of the long bar at a cost of SFR 90,124,000. The time horizon of the project is interesting as the call for proposals was issued already in 2002, with work being carried out from 2017-2021 (Jaccaud Associés, 2023).
The complex is a mix of private and socially owned with the lead client for the renovation being the institutional investor, Anlagestiftung Pensimo or, Pensimo Investment Foundation, founded in 1942 which consists of several Swiss pension funds with similar interests with a geographical focus in major Swiss cities. Further pension funds include BVK, one of the biggest in Switizerland (Horsfall, 2022). Bellerive Immobilien AG is listed as well and is a publicly traded real estate investment company and connected to the Pensimo Group of businesses. Further foundations under the Pensimo Group include Immobilien Anlagestiftung Turidomus, Imoka Immobilien Anlagestiftung, and a state supported organization for the provision of below market rents La Fondation HBM Camille Martin (Habitation Bon Marché) which is one of many of such real estate foundations under public right (les Fondations Immobilières de Droit Public (FIDP) which has an oversight committee made of industry professionals and public servants. This one has a portfolio of some 1,745 of the 8000 units of socially subsidized housing organized under these HBH foundations across the Canton of Geneva. Government is also directly involved in the Comité Central du Lignon under the auspices of the Commune of Vernier. These dynamics suggest a close-knit grouping of private and institutional investors, working with real estate and government supported foundations and local government that are integrated to make such levels of investment function and be able to leverage the scale of funds required. While public/private partnership might describe these dynamics, another way of understanding this is that social housing is delivered in a combination of direct public money and the mobilization of foundation and institutional investment with state guaranteed market-based investment. This is not real estate speculation but institutionally guaranteed long term asset management directed in part at the public good. Indeed, many of the organizations listed above have histories of more than a century.
Vernier – Le Lignon. Switzerland. (Source: Author, May 17, 2023)
The complex is residential modernism in its nearly ideal form, with separations between vehicular and pedestrian traffic, active use of public spaces—kids playing football, walkers walking on paths leading to woods and the river side of the Rhône. The long bar of a building is breathtakingly large, but subdivided into a series of numbered porticos (the numbers in Helvetica, of course) of fine wood and glass doors that see through and go through to the woodland behind them to include the natural surroundings in the user experience of entry. The scale of the building becomes humanized through these individually numbered blocks.
The Centre Commercial du Lignon is the name of the low-rise mall with both outdoor and indoor access on a low raised platform between the long bar building and the churches and cultural centre. It is accessible to a moderate two-level parking lot but, also, thoroughly suited for pedestrian access from the bus stop or the residential towers to avoid the cars. Signage for civil society organizations and municipal assistance programs (www.vernier.ch ; https://conseildeshabitants.ch/vernier ) offered in person or online are as integral to the dynamics of the complex as a whole as are the grocery, a busy barber shop cum social hub, post office and the sort of medical and dental services required for the population available within. Around the mall are restaurants with patios as well as walkways to the churches and the Municipally owned Salle du Lignon on the Place de Lignon —a 500 person capacity modernist hall, which among classical and jazz performances, as well as theatre and dance held there is one of the venues used by the Ballet Junior de Genève of the Ecole de dance de Genève (https://edgeneve.ch/), supported in part by the République et du Canton de Genève. A beach and evening musical programming are being set up by a local community group for the summer of 2023, Lignon Beach, with kids’ activities and shade umbrellas, food and drink available, all supported by the Vernier municipality. A high level of municipal public investment is supporting a high degree of community group activity and community animation.
The experience of spending time there is one of both familiarity (from a Toronto perspective) and utopian wonder. At one of the patio tables where this researcher sought refreshment, a father next table over tells his little son in Arabic to watch out where he kicks the soccer ball as it nearly hits others. The kid runs up and says sorry in French and promises. We were all multi-lingual and part of multi-generational immigrant families from very different places all being among modernist tower block high-rises. The brasserie (bar-restaurant) on one side of the commercial centre, and the local Churrasqueria (Portuguese Chicken restaurant) were both well attended on a May holiday afternoon, with a crowd in both that experiences the normalization of diversity in ethnicities living together. The investment into refurbishing and retrofitting the tower blocks is matched by investment and community support for local cultural projects and social services within a walkable campus, with good access to transit connections to neighbouring districts.
Conclusions and Lessons from Europe
One
The first category of lessons about the recognition of existing buildings as valuable housing and valuable architectural objects is crucial for Toronto. It might be well to recognize at last, the historical and aesthetic importance certain legacy towers that have distinct qualities and style, although here like in Europe, it is the concrete facts of their high levels of valuable well built concrete housing function that is crucial. An historical listing leading to building preservation would require means and methods of restoration, whereas what is perhaps more important is to preserve the affordability of the housing.
1.1 Support the development of a business environment for the development industry where demolition and building waste disposal are factored into costs analysis. This has strong potentiality to support the building and development industry’s turn towards retrofitting and refurbishment as a first option.
1.2 Couple regulation with amendments to the taxation regime to promote refurbishment as an approach, as the AJ RetroFirst campaign calls for, is a strategy that can work and has in the UK.
1.3 Amend government policy at all levels around taxation, tax incentives, and around environmental regulations at Federal and Provincial levels to promote refurbishment and retrofitting of legacy towers including even condominium corporations faced with financial capacity concerns to refurbish building envelope and mechanical systems. New builds will face these issues as a crisis sooner than was likely planned and can be covered with their existing reserve accounts.
1.4 Encourage REITs and other large asset holding corporations in the development industry to develop foundation arms through taxation incentives to allow for them to play active roles in the retrofitting of their towers as a not-for-profit activity.
1.5 Bolster government “crown” corporations in Canada that already exist at a number of levels, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Toronto Community Housing, as well as the even younger Create TO.
1.6 Strengthen partnerships between government, banking, not-for-profit housing entities and large asset holding corporations to focus on this dual crisis of affordability and the climate emergency as it were a national crisis as it is an international one. The Tower Renewal Partnership is a great example of what might be possible if sufficient support could be put in place.
1.7 Address housing, energy poverty and building energy retrofits simultaneously.
1.8 Finally and ultimately important is to support community initiatives for alternative ownership models in Canada to de-commodify rental housing through actions such as government guarantees of loans and support for management capacity building. Collective ownership models of co-operatives and Community Land Trusts and Housing Associations can be effective alternatives when they reach a certain scale, have sufficient management capacity, and strong financial partners in financial organizations such as credit unions whose mandates blend social and environmental goals into the business model.
Two
The second group of lessons was what I am calling environmental services.
2.1 Retrofit and reconnect parkland access where possible as so many legacy towers in Toronto sit above ravine systems with good air flows that might assist apartment units for passive ventilation, while reconnecting residents better to these parklands would allow them to find cool in the parks.
2.2 Encourage the employment of blinds and shutters and other forms of summer sunshade which can be opened up in cooler seasons. This is a call to both architects and building managers to make blinds accessible and fashionable because they are extremely useful when properly designed and employed.
Three
The third groups of lessons are the centrality of what I have been calling the social infrastructure and cultural engagement. The first call is to increase government support for the social agencies that ease the burden of life for so many vulnerable people across the city, such as the United Way Greater Toronto, food banks, employment support, youth at risk agencies, early childhood and family support agencies and the many others who work so hard. Beyond that, the following recommendations are all important aspects of refurbishing and retrofitting the legacy towers and Tower Neighbourhoods.
3.1 Continue to strengthen the planning through community consultation infrastructure embodied in the Jane Finch Initiative there and for other areas of the region.
3.2 Mandate the Zoning By-Law Amendment process to negotiate significant carbon reduction efforts and the refurbishment to existing buildings, as tower in the park site plans are remodeled when density increases fit into the planning carried out through community consultation processes. Success with such refurbishments of older towers while infill is planned is being achieved in Toronto as discussed above.
3.3 Finish building out public transit. Clearly, in Toronto, transit is socially and politically acute site of conflict; yet, it is obvious that physical and social mobility are better tied together where trams and dedicated bus lanes are included in neighbourhood development. Carry costs of transit across institutional forms and government agencies and understand it also as a health and safety concern, the time taken away for commuting is time lost for community and family.
3.4 Support cultural programming and interventions with more money from all agencies and levels of government. As stated above, the success record of European public agency efforts aimed at social cohesion—especially in the face of structural inequalities that are also racialized—is poor in comparison to what has been achieved imperfectly in Toronto at not nearly the spending. Culture is nothing if not the cornerstone of what is community-building and place making and without music and arts support, strong communities cannot be built.
