The Guardian 1st November 2012
Jamestown, capital of the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena. Photograph: Derry Brabbs/Alamy
“Amazing”, “wonderful”, “wow”, “great result”, “incredible”. It’s hard to imagine any housing job attracting such superlatives, but that’s how my normally sober friends from the now defunct Audit Commission reacted to my new posting as housing executive for the south Atlantic island of St. Helena. And apart from astronaut or rock star, I can’t imagine any job deserving it.
Mind you, not all comments were so effusive: “sounds really interesting if that’s what you want” was typical of well-meaning friends who don’t share my enthusiasm for housing and travel. Others enjoyed the irony of me having turned down a housing policy manager post in London because I didn’t want to commute, only to end up in one of the remotest places on the planet - five days by boat from Cape Town or three days from Ascension Island, if you can get there.
Discovered by the Portuguese and settled by the East India Company and freed slaves, St. Helena is a volcanic island with a population of 4,255 and located more than 1,200 miles (1,931km) from south west coast of Africa. The island’s economy has been on a downward trajectory since the growth of air travel. The loss of trade has been matched only by the exodus of young people seeking work and a living wage.
This is now set to change: a huge airport investment, a five-star hotel and the unique attractions of the island look set to reverse the trend. St. Helena is a microcosm of Costa Rica, with its 400 native species, incredible geography and with its capital city’s high street made up of listed Georgian buildings. It’s being shortlisted for world heritage status - just so long as there are homes for the hundreds of people who will now be attracted to stay and return to the island. This is where I come in.
As housing executive I have responsibility for improving the existing housing stock, developing new homes and even new communities. The most exciting part of the job is that there is a blank sheet of paper when it comes to housing legislation and housing management. St. Helena has had very little of either.
This is not, thank goodness, about imposing UK practices on the island. It’s pretty clear to everyone that the UK model has failed: we’ve failed to develop the number of homes we need, the planning system continues to move at the pace of a supertanker and localism places even more weight in favour of the haves over the have nots. The result is that house prices are way beyond the means of all but a few first-time buyers, homelessness is rising fast and the housing benefit bill is going through the roof.
There really could be an alternative. It’s all about land use since that affects land prices and, in turn, housing costs. Shielding housing prices from the ravages of inflation is the way to make housing affordable for local people in perpetuity.
At the same time, international investment and luxury homes are essential for future development. We have an opportunity to get the right balance between social rents, incomes and the benefits system.
Unfortunately the UK agenda appears to be to force up social rents so high that nobody earning a half decent income will want to rent, to privatise the housing associations now that they are earning huge surpluses and to continue to reduce benefits to such a level that anyone who can’t get a job feels the pain. What I’d also rather avoid are the convoluted and costly financial models being developed to make a broken system work.
St. Helena is a special case, with the challenges of climate, terrain, supplies and local people naturally wary of an unknown face. Then there is the unique natural environment, with 400 indigenous species including the wirebird and the world’s oldest known living creature, Jonathan the giant tortoise.
No wonder Charles Darwin liked it so much. The volcano last erupted several million years ago, which may or may not be a good thing. I am hoping that neither it nor the local people will have cause to erupt at my arrival.
Andy Crowe is housing executive for the government of St. Helena. You can follow Andy’s progress on his South Atlantic blog.
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