Social Housing Programs Research Articles

Questões de localização e conectividade na avaliação de qualidade urbana em empreendimentos de habitação de interesse social em Indaiatuba

O processo de urbanização brasileiro foi historicamente marcado pela desigualdade socioespacial, perceptível na implantação de empreendimentos habitacionais de interesse social (EHIS) em zonas desprovidas de infraestrutura e serviços urbanos. Com o intuito de analisar como a problemática da segregação socioespacial, definidas por fatores locacionais e de acesso aos equipamentos e infraestruturas urbanas, afetam a qualidade urbana e a percepção do lugar por parte do usuário, este artigo apresenta um estudo realizado em três empreendimentos habitacionais de interesse social (EHIS) no município de Indaiatuba (SP), implantados sob diferentes políticas de desenvolvimento urbano. Com o objetivo de contextualizar os estudos de caso, foi realizada uma análise dos planos diretores de Indaiatuba sob a ótica do zoneamento e produção habitacional de interesse social. Na realização desta pesquisa foram utilizadas técnicas de avaliação pós-ocupação (APO), com a aplicação de questionários estruturados no formato de entrevistas presenciais, assim como, registros em campo por meio de levantamentos fotográficos, visando aferir o nível de satisfação dos moradores em relação aos aspectos de localização e conectividade. Verificou-se que o desenvolvimento de atividades sociais urbanas e os espaços públicos disponíveis para essas práticas influenciam a visão que os moradores têm de seu bairro, portanto questões relativas à conectividade assumem um papel fundamental na construção dessa imagem. A contribuição deste trabalho está na correlação entre as características avaliadas na APO e as diretrizes apresentadas nos planos diretores, de modo que a APO possa ser um balizador para correção e direcionamento das proposições dos próximos instrumentos de desenvolvimento urbano.

“Building hope: from a shack to 3E house”—Innovative housing approach in the provision of affordable housing for Roma in Slovakia

The post-1989 objectives of the Slovak housing policy have resulted in the large-scale privatisation of state rental flats and the reduction in new rental housing. State-subsidised social rental housing programmes have been unable to meet the social demand for affordable rental dwellings. Socially marginalised groups, in particular Roma people, have been hit the most by the post-1989 changes and the lack of official social housing construction. Project Building Hope is an alternative integrated housing approach, offering Roma people better life conditions by integrating housing issues with other policies related to social empowerment. In order to implement the innovative project, a broad coalition between public and private sector actors is established, which is able to change the perception of Roma in the community and influence local policy-making processes.

Profiling Space Heating Behavior in Chilean Social Housing: Towards Personalization of Energy Efficiency Measures

Global increases in the demand for energy are imposing strong pressures over the environment while compromising the capacity of emerging economies to achieve sustainable development. In this context, implementation of effective strategies to reduce consumption in residential buildings has become a priority concern for policy makers as minor changes at the household scale can result in major energy savings. This study aims to contribute to ongoing research on energy consumer profiling by exploring the forecasting capabilities of discrete socio-economic factors that are accessible through social housing allocation systems. Accordingly, survey data gathered by the Chilean Ministry of Social Development was used identify key characteristics that may predict firewood usage for space heating purposes among potential beneficiaries of the Chilean social housing program. The analyzed data evidences strong correlations between general household characteristics and space heating behavior in certain climatic zones, suggesting that personalized delivery of energy efficiency measures can potentially increase the effectiveness of initiatives aimed towards the reduction of current patterns of consumption.

A Comparative Study of the Brazilian Energy Labelling System and the Passivhaus Standard for Housing

The ever-increasing energy demand of the residential sector has required the adoption of tighter energy standards, aiming for high energy efficiency in dwellings. In Brazil, 24 million new residential buildings are planned to be delivered by 2022 through social housing programs, which could greatly impact on the country’s energy consumption. In an attempt to minimize this impact, the Brazilian Labelling Scheme for Residential Buildings (RTQ-R label) was launched in 2010 as a voluntary standard for the evaluation of housing energy efficiency. The RTQ-R label focuses on building fabric and hot water systems performances, and generates a score based on the building’s energy efficiency levels. The Passivhaus standard, developed in Germany, is one of the most stringent standards and is also the fastest growing energy performance standard in the world with more than 30,000 buildings certified to date. It also focuses on building fabric but establishes a maximum energy consumption target. In this work, the authors developed a comparative review of the RTQ-R label and the Passivhaus standard as means to inform a broader debate about building codes in the context of the current calls by governments for increased energy efficiency. The findings highlighted the different nature of the standards’ requirements and targets adopted, and the benefits and constraints of both.

The Mexican Experience in the Social Housing Sector and Programs for Green Housing

The interest in social housing in this millennium Mexico faces challenges of climate change with government and international programs to sustainable housing. Programs like Green Mortgage managed to massively reduce the energy consumption in housing on a national scale and were recognized as examples of good practice internationally. Since the beginning of the process of urbanization, social housing in Mexico and Latin America policies and passing through different models. The model house isolated that was built in the last decades, replicated thousands of times on the outskirts of the Mexican metropolis, defragment not only the cities but also life for Mexican families and impact negatively on their built and natural environment [1]. Social housing, after being a successful model for the lower and middle classes in Mexico, suffered a gradual decline to become an object of speculation for the housing market? (What is the scope of the new programs for housing and more sustainable cities? Luke responsibilities and tasks can take funding and international cooperation institutions? (What responsibilities are for Mexican municipalities and its population?

Politically Sustainable Probabilistic Minority Targeting

We show that a transfer targeting a minority of the population is sustained by majority voting, however small the minority targeted, when the probability to receive the transfer is decreasing and concave in income. We apply our framework to the French social housing program and obtain that empirically observed departures from these assumptions are small enough that a majority of French voters should support a positive size of this program. We also provide a sufficient condition on this probability function under which more targeting results in a lower equilibrium size of the transfer system.

From the Late 19th Century House Question to Social Housing Programs in the 30s: the Nationalist Regulation of the Picturesque in Portugal

In the early 20th century in Portugal, a new architecture was produced as the offspring of different references, conforming to a process of “Portugueseness” based on the picturesque. From the beginning of the dictatorship in 1926, the State took advantage of that phenomenon to sublimate nationalist values. Through the first programs of mass housing construction, the single-family house became an object of consumption and a cornerstone of national identity. The search for identity brings together different architectures across the century featuring a renewed Portuguese sentiment infused with different perspectives on the “homeland”, its history and its culture.

Working with "Problem Populations": Participatory Interventions for the Roma in Hungary

Community-based participatory research is promoted as the best way to make sustainable health improvements and is therefore the focus of many NGOs. However, Hungarian NGOs that have attempted to use community-based methods with Roma communities have come across specific challenges that have led some interventionists to claim that it is not possible for the Roma to work by democratic measures. Using a social housing program as a case study, this paper examines attempts by Hungarian NGOs to meet the needs of the Roma minority through community based interventions and explores why most organizations have experienced limited success. Interventions, even those that attempt to be collaborative and use participatory methodologies, tend to be hierarchical in nature and strengthen, rather than break down, societal divides.

Social Housing and Redevelopment of Building Complexes on Brownfield Sites: The Financial Sustainability of Residential Projects for Vulnerable Social Groups

The global economic crisis has caused a sharp contraction in many Italian productive sectors, with the construction industry experiencing a decline of about 22% over the last few years (2009-2013). In the residential property market, sale prices for houses have fallen by 40% and rental prices by 30% [. Despite a greater supply of housing at lower prices, there remains a significant demand for low-cost housing from lower-middle-income families, young couples, single-parent families and from non-resident and foreign university students. This is also due to the lack of public resources to create substantial policies to support social housing construction. Social Housing (SH) programmes, with joint financial support from public and private stakeholders, are aimed at responding to the demand for accommodation for rent at social rates, for sale at concessionary prices and/or for rent (with or without redemption) at controlled rates. At the same time, especially in large cities, there is a continuing need to initiate processes for the redevelopment of numerous public and private residential building complexes in brownfield sites that have become functionally obsolete and dilapidated. The implementation of urban and building redevelopment programmes in this situation requires the definition of management models and methods for assessing the financial sustainability of such programmes. This article, based on a contextual analysis of these market segments, outlines a methodological approach, tested on a restructuring proposal for the Corviale (Rome) building-city housing development, to assess the financial sustainability of redevelopment projects on brownfield sites, providing a new range of functions that include housing, student residences and services.

A life cycle energy analysis of social housing in Brazil: Case study for the program “MY HOUSE MY LIFE”

The Brazilian government has started up a large social housing program for low-income families. Considering the large investment for this program, it is important to analyse the environmental impact to create a base for further improvement assessment. The goal of this paper is to visualise the energy use (embodied and operational) during the life cycle of case study for a house in the social housing program. The case study showed that the embodied energy (EE) is 7.2GJ/m2 or 30% of the total energy from the life cycle, the operational energy is 17.5GJ/m2. Half of the Embodied Energy is due to material use for maintenance and around 57% of the embodied energy is used in the wall construction. Compared to other international studies (5.8GJ/m2 per 50 years), the embodied energy is relative high (7.2GJ/m2 per 50 years) whereas the operational energy is only the half (17.5 compared to 36GJ/m2 per 50 year). The study indicates that the largest improvement potential for reducing the embodied energy is connected to the walls trough choosing materials and systems with less Embodied Energy and higher durability to decrease the need for maintenance and substitution of materials.

Decentralisation, Power and Networked Governance Practices in Metro Manila

The institutionalisation of decentralisation among urban local governments in the Philippines since the 1990s has been highly documented. While most of the studies have hailed its progressive development, a few have argued that decentralisation has also led to the further entrenchment of traditional élites and their allied power structures in local governance. This paper argues that, while decentralisation has allowed some local governments to initiate effective, efficient and accountable structures, thus becoming more responsive to the needs of their constituents, it has also led to the strengthening of traditional élites/political families and allied power structures as well as the creation of new ones. In short, decentralisation has ‘selectively’ democratised as well as reinforced existing power structures through the entrenchment of élite political families in urban governance and development. Utilising the concept of networked governance practices, this paper examines how local chief executives and allied officials have transformed local power structures through the mobilisation of decentralisation and democratisation discourses/strategies within and across the government bureaucracies, civil society organisations (non-government organisations, people's organisations and private-sector or business groups). Their mobilisation of such strategies is part of the overall governance framework of local government units to become locally/globally competitive amidst a weak metropolitan governance system in Metro Manila. The study describes how decentralisation compels local governments and their officials to deal strategically with the competing demands of economic growth and social and environmental governance, by reconfiguring or recasting existing power structures/practices through democratisation strategies/discourses, to respond to the needs of their constituencies, especially marginalised sectors like the urban poor. The paper concludes that the concept of networked governance practices allows us a broader understanding of how decentralisation promotes democratisation while strengthening ‘selectively’ traditional political élites and allied power bases in civil society and the business sector. These arguments are illustrated by examining the implementation of two local government environmental and social housing programmes—the Pasig Green City Programme and the Land and Housing Programme in Las Piñas City in Metro Manila.

Minimum housing spaces, flexibility and sustainability: a reflection on the basis of ergonomics intervention

This article discusses the quality of internal life space in apartments of residential buildings in the northeast region of Brazil, especially the possibility to adapt environments with small areas (according to local building codes) to the needs of different arrangements of families (considering 4 members per family). The research had a gradual approach and used multimethod strategy: (a) studying the universe of residential buildings whose apartment's inner area is between 50 and 60 m2 and were constructed in Natal-RN between 1998 and 2008, as well as not linked to social housing programs and occupied for more than one year; (b) selecting a building to do a Post Occupation Evaluation (POE), using walkthrough, technical observation and questionnaires; (c) choosing of two housing units to do an ergonomic intervention (based in interviews and detailed measurements). The results show the technical possibility to modify the units, but these modifications have a high (social, economic and environmental) price, because in general the space of units projected is not flexible. So, the paper concludes that this type of enterprise needs to be rethought, since part of them is (social and ecologically) unsustainable.

Gentrification and Toronto’s Changing Household Characteristics and Income Distribution

This study compares the changes in the household characteristics and income distributions of men and women in the Toronto census tracts that gentrified in the 1970s with the changes taking place across the metropolitan area. Higher-income women were gentrifiers from the beginning and lower-income men were more likely to be displaced. The factors driving gentrification are also transforming the rest of the metropolitan area, making the continuation of gentrification appear inevitable unless aggressive social housing programs are implemented to secure tenure for lower-income households and help mitigate the loss of lower priced housing in the inner city.

Making Public Transport and Housing Match: Accomplishments and Failures of Curitba’s BRT

The success of the world-renowned bus rapid transit (BRT) in Curitiba, Brazil, is based on the interdependence of public transport, road system hierarchy, and land use regulation. Notwithstanding the consolidation of this triple approach, the transport system is overcrowded, and in 2009, the city made a bid for a technical analysis of the economic feasibility and the determination of environmental effects of a subway infrastructure to be implemented along one of its mass transport corridors, the north-south one. However, a recent survey indicates that most of people using BRT do not actually live along these corridors, but primarily in the densely occupied peripheral districts of the city and the immediate neighboring areas of a much more populated metropolitan region. This paper searches to confirm a contraction between real urban performance and an ideal city proposed by its somewhat innovative and now 45-year-old plan that was elaborated according to, among other paradigms, high-density linear occupation to make public transport at the same time cheap and attractive for dwellers. This paper also intends to provoke a discussion on the paradoxical municipal managerial decision of, at the same time, enforcing a master plan establishing priorities in terms of public transport and not being able to combine the offer of its main structures for mass public transportation and the public implementation of low-income housing programs along them. Data used to explore these discussions are basically that referring to the use of this modal in the city of Curitiba and the location of municipal social housing programs between 1980 and 2010.

Do Participatory Governance Institutions Matter?: Municipal Councils and Social Housing Programs in Brazil

Scholars often recommend the implementation of participatory governance institutions to promote pro-poor policy outcomes. Incorporating civil society organizations into decision making should lead to increasing government responsiveness and accountability in addressing key social problems. Few scholars, however, have systematically tested this proposition across contexts. An assessment of the impact of municipal housing councils on the adoption of social housing programs in Brazil indicates that housing councils are associated with an increase in social housing program adoption across municipalities, regardless of whether a strong civil society is in place. This suggests that the act of incorporation into decision making is more important than the strength of civil society for producing pro-poor policy outcomes.

The Potential Use of Cellular Phone Technology in Maintaining an Up-To-Date Register of Land Transactions for the Urban Poor

This article investigates the concept of using cell-phone technology for obtaining informationabout unofficial (off-register) transfers in land as are commonly undertaken by the urban poor inSouth Africa. Since the introduction of social housing programmes in South Africa after the democratic elections in 1994, mass land distribution and housing projects have been undertaken. Formal transfer of these properties has been discouraged by policy (such as a moratorium on transfers for a period of years), and the inaccessibility of land professionals and formal processes to the poor. From the disuse of formal transfer mechanisms one can conclude that these fail, at least in part, to meet the needs of this segment of society. Cell- (mobile) phone technology penetrates urban poverty more than other interactive technologies such as the internet, largely due to the lack of access to computers and the 'digital divide'. The aim of this article is exploratory. It investigates the potential use of cell-phone technology as a means to inform authorities that a transfer of property has taken place informally or semi-formally. Such information could pave the way for a process of formal registration and hence aid the upkeep of the deeds registration system. Research into the potential use of the cell-phone as an information and communication technology (ICT) tool of land administration, particularly in the developing world, is undertaken. It is envisaged that a more detailed investigation will follow, which will include an analysis of organisational and legislative capacity. Further study in which the use of cell-phone technology in land administration is tested, taking into consideration structural/organisational factors as well as socio-economic and cultural factors and motivating factors for use, may be required.KEYWORDS: Land registration, land tenure, cadastral systems, e-registration, m-registration, e-governance.

Domaine de la Terre in Villefontaine (Isère, Francia): balance of an exemplary experiencie

El articulo presenta el resultado de una operacion de construccion con tierra realizada en los anos ochenta del siglo XX pasado, que aun conserva un caracter ejemplar por no haber sido repetida a una escala similar en los paises europeos desde hace cerca de treinta anos. Se trata de un programa de vivienda social desarrollado despues del dificil periodo de las crisis de la energia de finales de los setenta, que inicio investigaciones y experimentaciones para encontrar soluciones alternativas en el consumo energetico. El proyecto, llamado le Domaine de la terre, fue tambien realizado en el contexto de la presentacion de una exposicion en el Centro Georges Pompidou de Paris, Arquitectura de tierra o el porvenir de una tradicion milenaria. El debate internacional alrededor de esta muestra invitaba a dar pruebas de la factibilidad de un rebrote concreto de la arquitectura de tierra, en condiciones reales. Para esta epoca el reto fue considerable porque no habia empresas con el saber hacer suficiente. Fue necesario capacitar a los obreros para construir en tapia, en bloques de tierra estabilizada y en terre-paille, en el lugar. Fue necesario, en condiciones de ausencia de normas, crear las condiciones para una experimentacion piloto con el soporte del Plan de Construccion y Habitat, un programa de promocion de proyectos piloto del gobierno frances. El programa, aunque dificil de realizar, fue un exito, y constituyo una demostracion tanto tecnica como constructiva, arquitectonica y economica.

Incapacity to pay or moral hazard? Public mortgage delinquency rates in Chile

High delinquency rate of publicly provided mortgages in social housing programmes are often interpreted to be due to moral hazard. In this article we show that the typically used parametric approaches give misleading results because of overlooked confounding and selection biases. We show that using the more appropriate impact or treatment nonparametric approach the problem of high delinquency rate in publicly provided mortgages is due to the incapacity to pay and not due to moral hazard. The results caution against public policies to encourage private mortgage providers to move down market, and suggest eliminating mortgages and correspondingly increasing the grant component of the programmes.

Social housing programme of Selangor Zakat Board of Malaysia and housing satisfaction

Social housing in Malaysia is provided through the public and private sectors. Recently, the Selangor Zakat Board (SZB) has started to provide social housing in the state of Selangor, Malaysia. Up to 2007, a total of 906 units have been delivered under its different programmes. This paper evaluates these programmes by adopting the housing satisfaction model which is currently used as a customer satisfaction tool for public/private housing in many local governments in the UK and USA. The main purpose of this paper is to identify the types of housing programmes adopted by SZB and examine beneficiaries’ housing satisfaction in each programme on a comparative plane. In order to examine housing satisfaction, five objective components of satisfaction—housing unit features, housing unit support services, the social environment, public facilities and neighbourhood facilities—were analysed through beneficiaries’ levels of satisfaction which were measured by applying a Likert scale. The findings of the paper indicate that SZB has been successful in providing a moderate level of satisfaction with the housing unit. However, the existence of variable levels of satisfaction with other components implies that there is still scope to enhance residents’ satisfaction with those components.

Urban Land Use and the Entrepreneurial State: A case study of Pudahuel, Santiago Chile during the Military Regime (1973-1989)

Durante el régimen de Pinochet, tanto la ciudad de Santiago como otros lugares de Chile, fueron centros de ejecución de políticas específicas de desarrollo residencial y urbano que complementaron los objetivos económicos conservadores de la dictadura militar. Este artículo presenta como caso de estudio a Pudahuel; un municipio en el oeste de Santiago de Chile, en el cual se ejemplifica la articulación de las decisiones gerenciales del régimen empresarial del estado y el uso del suelo. El articulo también introduce el término "dividendo de lealtad" como un modo de explicar el motivo de la ganancia empresarial durante el régimen de Pinochet. Programas de vivienda social, erradicación de campamentos, así como renovación in situ, densificación poblacional, reorganización municipal y la formación de sociedades público-privadas, configuran un conjunto de acciones promovidas por el estado empresarial que fueron catalizadores significativos en los cambios del paisaje de Pudahuel.