Index
About Lifetime Affordable Housing
Integrating environmental performance and affordability
Lifetime Affordable Housing will provide essential research to underpin policy enabling Australia to provide high performance urban housing within current and future economic and environmental limits.
Funding has been provided by the Australian Research Council (ARC) to carry out this work under the Linkage Projects Scheme for a period of three years.
The linkage projects scheme supports collaborative research and development projects between higher education organisations and other organisations, including within industry, to enable the application of advanced knowledge to problems. Collaborating partners on Lifetime affordable Housing include the third level institutions RMIT and UniSA, and the Partner Organisations (PO’s) of VicUrban, Building Commission (Victoria) and the Land Management Corporation (SA).
Background
We can no longer afford to delay major efforts to improve the energy and water performance of housing, while also providing quality, affordable housing for Australian families and individuals. Climate change is the major environmental driver. In addition, there is broad agreement that housing affordability it is a growing issue. Given these current trends, a range of research and policy challenges arise:
- systematic, transparent methods and studies of integrated lifetime environmental and cost assessment of housing options in Australia are needed
- energy and water savings options require specific study in the Australian context
- relationships between housing environmental performance and socio-economic factors require clear resolution to avoid adverse impacts
- land supply and efficiency of location factors in housing affordability are growing problems. The potential use of urban brownfield and greyfield sites requires systematic evaluation
- current policies and fiscal measures tend to target initial costs of housing which can have unintended effects, while long term policy perspectives are required to ensure long term housing affordability (incorporating investment and paybacks, split incentives, future housing needs, and climate change adaptation)
The project will follow a specific and focused research approach in addressing key aspects of these challenges. As a result, for the first time policy makers will be able to draw on systematic research which quantifies and analyses the costs and environmental savings for different stages and types of housing provision throughout the housing life cycle.
Significance and Innovation
There is a perceived trade-off between residential building (environmental) performance and cost although this has not been investigated to date with sufficient rigor. There are also perceived trade-offs in locational efficiency through the supply of lower cost land (and therefore housing) on the outer periphery, remote from key employment centres, which then requires more private transport, more use of fuel and more greenhouse gas emissions. There are also wider social and economic costs of both trade-offs, particularly for lower income, vulnerable households and individuals. In order for future planning and policy mechanisms to deliver optimal environmental performance and affordability, there is a need to use inquiry into these three themes to inform development of potential market and regulatory mechanisms.
The innovative contribution of the project resides, firstly, in its construction of an analytical framework for reconciling housing affordability and improved environmental performance of housing within a metropolitan context. Second, the analysis will provide baseline data over a longer period than normally. Both the analytical tools and data generated will assist policy makers frame, develop, implement and evaluated sensible sustainability policy. The project will focus on 4 case studies employing interviews with key stakeholders and empirical measurement of performance and costs, combining the case study approach with design, costing and life cycle assessment approaches to develop a longitudinal analysis which is innovative in its approach to resolving the provision of Lifetime Affordable Housing, fit to meet current and future social, economic and environmental needs.