Social Housing Sector Research Articles

Triple Bottom Line Accounting and Energy-Efficiency Retrofits in the Social-Housing Sector: A Case Study

ABSTRACTThis paper reports the findings of a case study conducted to learn about the information, actors, actions, and processes involved in energy-efficiency investment decisions in the social-housing sector. These decisions draw on environmental, social, and economic factors, which are studied from a “triple bottom line” (TBL) accounting perspective. The quantitative methods we use rely on Levels I, II, and III fair-value measures similar to those used in financial accounting. The qualitative methods rely primarily on interviews conducted and transcribed by the researchers. Our main findings show that a pure financial bottom-line approach would not fully indicate the overall desirability of the type of energy-efficiency investment undertaken in this case. By factoring in other quantitative and qualitative outcomes drawn from the research methods applied, a different conclusion may be reached.Data Availability: Available upon request from the authors.

Entangled Practices: Governance, Sustainable Technologies, and Energy Consumption

In this article we provide a timely account of how sustainable technologies become entangled with cultural practices and thus co-evolve, influencing energy consumption. In doing so, we critique the approach current UK policy takes towards energy renewal and carbon reduction. We investigate the effectiveness of the social housing sector’s efforts to implement environmental policy initiatives that use a technology-driven approach. By looking at how social housing residents consume energy as part of domestic practices, we identify tensions between strategies to influence energy consumption by a housing association, and the ways residents incorporate sustainable technologies into everyday practices. Our findings reveal how sustainable technologies become enrolled in established practices: residents creatively develop novel routine strategies to accommodate new technologies to their daily routines. We contend that policy efforts to engender ‘behaviour change’ through a technology-driven approach have limitations. This approach ignores how practices become entangled, affecting energy consumption.

Low carbon retrofit: attitudes and readiness within the social housing sector

Purpose– The study was designed to assess the attitudes, strategic readiness and drivers and barriers to the adoption of sustainable retrofit within the UK social housing sector.Design/methodology/approach– The study was undertaken using a structured questionnaire that was completed by 130 providers of social housing.Findings– The study showed that social housing providers were aware of the sustainable retrofit agenda, but with varying levels of strategic readiness. Immediate benefits to residents were seen as important drivers, as opposed to more remote issues such as climate change. The emerging nature of the sustainable retrofit market was seen as a major potential risk for residents.Research limitations/implications– The study represents a snap-shot of adoption and effectiveness issues, therefore does not show the trajectory of adoption which should be addressed in a follow-up study.Practical implications– The social housing sector has been viewed as a market maker for the sustainable retrofit market. The study shows the attitudes of the sector to this role.Social implications– The study has implications for the understanding social housing providers’ engagement with the sustainable retrofit market to address fuel poverty and climate change. Social housing's role as market maker has implications for policies such as Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation.Originality/value– The study covers approximately 20 per cent of the social housing stock under management and gives a robust perspective of current views on adoption and effectiveness of retrofit technologies within the social housing sector. This is useful for both other social housing providers and policy makers.

Pauperization and Polarization of French Social Housing

Peuplement du logement social : paupérisation et polarisation Cet article descriptif essaie de formaliser certains mécanismes sous-jacents à l’évolution du peuplement des logements sociaux, pour éclairer le phénomène de paupérisation observé depuis une vingtaine d’années. Il propose aussi un modèle de filtration qui, joint au droit au maintien dans les lieux au même loyer quel que soit le revenu, modifie la paupérisation et explique que l’ancienneté des locataires soit corrélée positivement au revenu en hlm , ce qui s’accompagne d’une polarisation de la population hlm . Il apporte des éléments chiffrés sur la paupérisation à partir des enquêtes Logement de l’Insee et montre que les données sont compatibles avec le modèle proposé. Classification JEL : D1, R2

Common Ground in Australia: An Object Lesson in Evidence Hierarchies and Policy Transfer

Developed in New York City in 1990, the Common Ground model of supportive housing has recently been embraced in Australia as a high-profile solution to chronic homelessness. Combining on-site support services with a congregate housing form accommodating ex-homeless people and low-income adults, Common Ground is presented as an innovative model which permanently ends homelessness, enhances wellbeing, and strengthens communities. This article critically examines the process of transferring the model into Australia's social housing sector, drawing on the perspectives of the high-level stakeholders closely involved. It argues that, despite official commitments to evidence-based policy, the ‘advocacy coalition’ driving this international policy transfer employed a ‘knowledge hierarchy’ wherein professional intuition and personal experience were afforded a higher status than formal evaluative evidence. The article provides an example of the contested nature of what ‘counts as evidence’ in housing and homelessness policy, and considers what role academic research – as well as other knowledge sources – should play in the policy development process.

Adoption of sustainable retrofit in UK social housing

PurposeThe study was designed to assess the knowledge, adoption and perceived effectiveness of sustainable retrofit technologies within the UK social housing sector.Design/methodology/approachThe study was undertaken using a structured questionnaire that was completed by 130 providers of social housing.FindingsThe study showed that social housing providers were evenly split in their reliance on internal or external information for sustainable retrofit knowledge. In terms of adoption identified that this was strongly driven by government‐funded programmes, leading to widespread adoption of low technology solutions. The respondents identified that many leading edge technologies were perceived to be less effective.Research limitations/implicationsThe study represents a snap‐shot of adoption and effectiveness issues, therefore does not show the trajectory of adoption which should be addressed in a follow‐up study.Practical implicationsThe social housing sector has been viewed as a market maker for some of the newer technologies. It indicates that some of the newer technologies, such as heat pumps are viewed as less effective than more established technologies.Social implicationsThe study has implications for the adoption of technology to address fuel poverty and climate change, as well as informing future policy such as Green Deal.Originality/valueThe study includes 130 responses from the social housing stock and gives a perspective of current views on adoption and effectiveness of retrofit technologies within the social housing sector. This is useful for both other social housing providers and policy makers.

How local contexts influence the neighbourhood satisfaction of displaced tenants in the Netherlands and France

A number of studies have examined the effects of social mixing policies on tenants who are forced to relocate to make way for more prosperous residents. They found that forced relocations can have both positive and negative effects on displaced tenants’ neighbourhood satisfaction. The present study looked at a potential explanation for these mixed results, namely differences between social housing contexts. As displaced tenants have low incomes, they are generally restricted to moves within the social rented housing sector. Therefore, the availability and allocation of social housing may strongly influence their opportunities to move to a satisfactory neighbourhood. Previous studies have not been able to distinguish the role of different social housing contexts on displaced tenants’ neighbourhood satisfaction, because they focused either on single cases or on multiple cases in the same relocation context. The present study has filled this gap by conducting 109 qualitative interviews with displaced tenants in both the Netherlands – where the social housing context imposes relatively few constraints on tenants – and France, where tenants face many constraints. It was found that, contrary to expectations, constraints did not always lead to tenants being less satisfied with their new neighbourhood, but did reduce their opportunities to move within or outside the neighbourhood.

Meeting the Decent Homes Standard: London Housing Associations’ Asset Management Strategies

The English government’s 10-year flagship Decent Homes programme ended in 2010. The purpose of this article is to examine the asset management strategies that a sample of London housing associations took to meet the Decent Homes Standard. Drawing on the concept of institutional logics, the article outlines the social housing sector’s conflicting regulatory context, whereby organisations were statutorily obliged to improve housing standards, without being able to raise rents as a way to fund improvements. Depending on whether the housing association adopts a market-orientated or traditional, task-orientated approach to asset management, the associations sampled have either disposed of non-decent stock to generate cash flows or else retained the stock, undertaking minimal repairs to meet the government’s target deadline. The article concludes that not only has this national performance target triggered different organisational responses, it has also led to longer-term unintended consequences for existing and future tenants.

Shifting back-changing organisational strategies in Dutch social housing

Since the financial liberalisation from the government in the late 1980s and the 1990s, Dutch housing associations have been very dynamic, embracing both commercial and social activities, becoming increasingly reliant and dependent on market circumstances and undergoing a large number of mergers. In recent years, the Dutch social housing sector has been under increased pressure due to the global financial crisis, increased levels of taxation and the national implementation of EU regulations on ‘Services of General Economic Interest’. It seems likely that factors like these have had an effect on the organisational strategies adopted by housing associations, but the nature and magnitude of these effects are not well known. This paper explores these effects through a survey among Dutch housing associations. The results of the survey were analysed using a social-commercial dimension and a ‘prospector’ – ‘defender’ dimension. Our analysis reveals that housing associations are focusing more on traditional social housing tasks and ‘defending’ strategies, implying some reversal of the developments that had occurred in recent decades.

The South African Social Housing Sector: A Critical Comparative Analysis

Tenure status is one of the core elements in the poverty cycle and insecurity of tenure exacerbates poverty. Policy-makers and the legislature should respond to this component of the poverty cycle through the introduction of secure housing options in order to ensure that all individuals can actively participate in society and live autonomous, dignified lives. In a number of jurisdictions, including Germany, the United States and England, legislatures have responded to the plight of the poor during emergency housing (and economic) conditions by introducing social housing sectors as part of the landlord-tenant framework. Key components of social housing is that it is a statutory mechanism that introduces affordable, secure housing options for the poor, which is provided by independent, private institutions and requires continuous state administration since the whole sector is state-driven. The South African social housing sector, which forms part of the landlord-tenant framework, is founded in the Social Housing Act. The operation and aims of the Act (and the current social housing sector, in general) requires critical analyses from a comparative law perspective. Innovative social housing options in the landlord-tenant framework are essential in contributing to the improvement of secure tenure rights for poor households and consequential eradication of poverty. Nevertheless, a paradigm shift regarding the contemporary use of rental housing to provide substantive tenure rights for poor tenants on private property is necessary at both public and private levels in order to, not only engage with this form of housing, but also identify plausible situations where it can be imposed.

Choisir les locataires du parc social ? Une approche ethnographique de la gestion des HLM

This article examines the methods used by low-rent housing agents when sorting out applications. Despite the impressive battery of legal rules and regulations governing their activity, HLM officials can exercise significant discretionary powers when deciding who qualifies as future tenant. In particular, we study the procedures of qualification and categorization according to which they make their choice, which, if it becomes general practice, can result in the exclusion of certain groups from the social housing sector. The study shows how processes of systematic discrimination are built up both within the agencies and in the relations they establish with their surroundings.

Housing for all ages: why and how social landlords should build bridges between different generations

PurposeThis paper's aim is to illustrate the importance of multigenerational activities within the social housing sector, and provide some examples of best practice.Design/methodology/approachFrom the perspective of a social landlord (Peaks & Plains Housing Trust) the paper explains the importance of intergenerational practice and the role that social landlords can play in helping to build bridges between, and within, communities.FindingsThe paper discusses some specific activities, including street soccer, a youth forum and a winter warmer event, that have engaged young people and multiple generations and provides some feedback to these.Originality/valueThe paper gives some examples for best practice that can be used by other housing providers and community activists.

Public housing, commodification, and rights to the city: The US and England compared

In the past decade, England has not experienced the radical neglect and demolition of public housing that We Call These Projects Home describes happening in the United States. The English social housing sector has declined in size, primarily by sales to sitting tenants, but it remains a significant part of the housing system. Nonetheless, in London, we find that the progressive commodification of housing has contributed to the dispersion and suburbanisation of the urban poor over the 2000s, as the city as a whole prospered. As well as some demolition of inner-city housing estates, the increasing use of subsidised private renting has played a central role in this. We argue that in England, the boundary and relationship between state and market is an essential foundation to an analysis of ‘rights to the city’. This is because it both determines the actual proportion of housing allocated by market pricing (as opposed to rights or needs) and the spheres of decision where market logic (rather than claims to rights) prevails. Current changes to Housing Benefit exemplify the effects of privatisation on the socio-spatial organisation of the city.

The privatization of council housing: Stock transfer and the struggle for accountable housing

A central element in the privatization of council housing has been the development of stock transfer policy. A variety of perspectives on this process have been explored including the impact on accountability relations; however, the tenants’ experience is almost completely absent from this literature. The paper develops a case study that draws on the experience of the tenants involved in a stock transfer. In the process stock transfers, and related accountability relations, are shown to be contested with tenant-led campaigns challenging this neoliberal inspired policy. The case study illustrates the power and financial resource asymmetries in transfer campaigns with a range of anti-democratic tactics employed by those pursuing the transfer. On the basis of a critique of neoliberalism, the stock transfer process is seen as an attack on the previous democratic control of council housing, which is replaced with ‘governance by experts and elites’ and private sector inspired corporate governance forms of accountability. Thus the paper seeks to answer two questions; how democratic is the transfer process and what are the long-term implications for democratic accountability in the social housing sector.

Social Housing in the European Union

The following article summarizes the findings of the report «2012 Housing Europe Review» (Pittini and Laino, 2011), published by the European Social Housing Observatory – the research department of the international not for profit organisation CECODHAS Housing Europe. This Review focuses on social housing in the European Union and aims at providing a clearer picture of the way social housing systems are structured across the EU, while identifying the main recent developments in the sector. In this article we attempt a brief analysis of the social housing sector from different perspectives: the diversity of definitions at the national level and common characteristics across Europe, the size of the sector, which kind of actors are involved in social housing provision, who can benefit from a social dwelling in the different national contexts, how the sector is financed and what are the most significant trends and challenges.

Energy policy ambitions and allocation over investment types

Since a few years there is an intensified debate in the Dutch social housing sector about measures to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and individual dwellings. It is generally acknowledged that it is cost-efficient to combine physical measures to improve the energy performance of dwellings with maintenance or improvement activities. Most of these activities take place during void repairs, planned preventive maintenance and renovations. Each can be regarded as an investment opportunity. The allocation of energy improvements between these investment types influences the energy performance of a housing stock in the long term. The central question of this paper is to assess to which extent the energy performance of the Dutch housing stock improves combining these investment types.

The impact of housing environment attributes on children's academic performance at school: an empirical study of Hong Kong

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the influence of physical housing environments on the learning potential of children. The authors argue for housing design which is attentive to the need for open but personal space with “sufficient physical partitions”.Design/methodology/approachThe research draws on an empirical study of students in two randomly selected Hong Kong secondary schools. The approach includes the use of multiple regression analysis to test the correlation between academic performance and a set of environmental attributes.FindingsHousing design, aspect and size of housing are significant. Academic performance is not dependent on tenure type and this is partly related to mixed tenure, close proximity of differing socio‐economic neighborhoods and the sharing of social capital to provide equal opportunity. However, densely developed high housing is not desirable for children's academic development.Research limitations/implicationsThe location of Hong Kong provides a very specific combination of small land mass, a history of high rise living and a social housing sector and the need to optimize physical space for social ends. Home ownership does not play a role of a stabilizer for children, as observed in other places.Practical implicationsThis paper prompts a reassessment, by housing providers and commissioners, of the link between housing types and long term educational opportunities and the need to devise appropriate partnerships to ensure that housing adds to academic performance rather than undermine it.Social implicationsThe study of the effects of high rise high density housing on children's learning is underdeveloped and should be reassessed in markets, such as that in the UK, where use of the private rented sector is increasingly used to house families who may in the past have been housed directly by the State.Originality/valueThis research attempts to apply quantitative techniques to provide evidence to policy makers that can be replicated in other housing contexts.

Barriers to retrofit of domestic housing stock with low and zero carbon dioxide technologies

This paper explores a range of barriers to the implementation of retrofit programmes to domestic properties, through reporting on the process of delivering a social housing retrofit project by a registered social landlord (RSL) in Sunderland, in the North East of England. The paper first describes the policy context for RSLs in terms of the housing condition requirements and targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions set by national government, and the subsequent shift by RSLs to retrofitting their properties to higher energy performance standards. During the project, a number of barriers were identified by the project team (which includes the authors), relating to decision-making processes, communication between partners, procurement and supply chains training and internal expertise, energy consumption monitoring and the type of low and zero carbon dioxide technologies to install. The article explores these, both as experienced and reported by the RSL, and identified by the wider project team, and considers what lessons could be learned regarding delivery of similar projects in the social housing sector.

Board member development in the public, voluntary and social housing sectors

PurposeGiven a number of recent and ongoing changes to the role and responsibilities of executive and non‐executive board members of UK social housing organisations, the paper aims to offer a literature review which explores the development provision for board members within such organisations. The paper's key question is: “How are executive and non‐executive board members being prepared for these changes?”Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was undertaken, based on the main business and management databases. This was followed by a thematic analysis to uncover what we know about executive and non‐executive board member training and development within the public and voluntary sectors, in particular within UK social housing organisations.FindingsDespite the increasingly important role of boards in the not‐for‐profit sector, only a limited number of publications focusing on human resource development (HRD) issues were found. The literature did provide some insight into the HRD experiences of executive and non‐executive board members. The majority of papers centred on leadership and governance matters, mainly board effectiveness, performance and “board capital”, rather than human capital. In so far as board member development is discussed, it is mainly in relation to their recruitment to the board and the sort of skills required, with little attention given to matters such as succession planning and member development.Research limitations/implicationsGiven the limited extent of research to date into executive and non‐executive board development in social housing organisations, it follows that there is limited knowledge of what is – or is not – happening in practice. This highlights the need for more empirical research, on the basis of which it should be possible to offer suggestions for changes to/improvements in board member development activities.Originality/valueThe paper reviews the current state of knowledge relating to executive and non‐executive board member development in not‐for‐profit and social housing organisations.

The PFI Sustainability Evaluation Tool: A Methodology for Evaluating of Sustainability within PFI Housing Projects

In the UK there is a need to provide more housing in order to meet increased demand. The problem is particularly acute in the social housing sector. There is also a drive to reduce CO2 emissions from housing, whilst addressing issues of social sustainability. Accordingly governments have sought to combine the goals of sustainable development with housing policy in order to provide not just more housing, but more sustainable housing. In a time of public sector expenditure restraint the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has been used as a means to procure social housing using private money, however sustainability within PFI housing projects has received little attention. This paper introduces a methodology for evaluating sustainability within PFI bids. Developed and tested during the procurement stage of a large PFI housing project in the North East of England, results suggest that the introduction of clear, transparent and robust evaluation criteria can enhance sustainability.