The concept of desired value as a stimulus for change in social housing in Brazil

Abstract

User satisfaction has been studied extensively in social housing, but this has not had a significant impact on design factors in many cases. In recent years, such studies have included the assessment of values relating to design attributes. This paper presents a discussion on the concept of desired value in social housing, based on results of a study conducted in the region of the city of Campinas, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. End-users of four multi-family social housing projects, based on five storey walk-up apartment blocks were asked to identify aspects of housing design, which are most valued. The research method was based on the concept of stated preferences, where approximately 200 respondents organized a list of design attributes in order of their desired values. The investigation tool was based on the analogy of a deck of cards. Data was statistically analyzed and a general importance index was created for each of the value attributes. Results showed that security was the main preference aspect. Analysis of general results indicates a list of possible improvements to projects with regard to value delivery to end-users at little or no costs. To contribute towards a process of incremental improvements to social housing models in the State of São Paulo, the results of the case study can be applied by agents of the local housing provision system, in conjunction with a conceptual framework of data on housing quality indicators.