Research Themes

This project will provide essential research to underpin policy enabling Australia to provide high performance urban housing within current and future economic and environmental limits.

Research Questions

The Lifetime Affordable Housing research project will address the following 4 research questions, designed to direct research in key themes, as described:

1. What are the through-life costs and benefits of predominant housing forms in Australia's major cities?
2. What are the real through-life costs and benefits of utilising urban brownfield and greyfield sites to supply more affordable housing around employment centres to enhance locational efficiency?
3. How do the costs and benefits identified in 1 and 2 impact on housing affordability over the short and long terms?
4. How can the perceived trade-off between affordability and housing performance be overcome by market and regulatory mechanisms including: (a) financial incentives and disincentives (private/public) to encourage environmental performance in housing: (b) regulatory and planning reform, including policies to encourage denser residential redevelopment on existing brownfield and grey field urban sites: and (c) refining affordability policy mechanisms to ensure long-term as well as short term positive outcomes?

Work programme and key themes for investigation

Theme 1: Housing life cycle costs and benefits

(January 2008-January 2010)

Existing studies indicate that, although methods exist, life cycle costing of environmental performance is in its infancy. Existing approaches will be synthesised and case-studies of standard Class 1 and 2 house designs will be developed for use in the study. For each design concept, three scenarios will be developed; baseline (5-star to current building codes); enhanced (7-star to enhanced performance parameters) and world class (approximately 9 star, approaching carbon neutral). LCA and costs data will be applied to each scenario to calculate capital, payback and lifetime costs of each, with emphasis on three key parameters; $, kgGHG and litres of water used. Thus, addressing Research Question 1 will involve synthesising existing methods and developing additional assessment methods, which will include the widest possible range of building specification variables.

Theme 2: Locational efficiency costs and benefits

(January 2008-January 2011)

Research conducted under this theme will seek to quantify the economic and environmental benefits of increased provision of affordable housing on sites within urban areas, rather than on greenfield sites at the urban periphery. Current data on brownfield and greyfield land availability will be supplemented with new research identifying appropriate locations for affordable housing based on demand factors such as land prices, sustainable travel options and the location of employment. The costs of interventions required in order to release land within the case study locations will be assessed against the economic, social and environmental benefits identified.

Theme 3: Affordability implications

(January 2009-January 2011)

In addressing Research Question 3, the assessments from Themes 2 and 3 will be integrated and directions for fiscal and policy approaches developed. The analysis will identify, categorise and quantify the main financial and time costs that impact on the household over the short, medium and long term for the key case study scenarios. As such analysis will focus on the internal costs and benefits and those externalities that affect households, rather than the broader community. Relevant data will also be collected from ABS, industry and government sources and tested against the specialist knowledge of the Partner Organisations.

Theme 4: Policy and transition mechanisms

(July 2009 – January 2011)

In the light of the integrated analyses presented in answer to the first three research questions, we will explore how particular policy instruments can be utilised to minimise the long term net cost to households and the broader community of housing developments. For each particular development scenario, derived from the case studies, the analysis will identify the cost consequences for households over the long term, the real (as opposed to perceived) trade-offs between environmentally performing housing and cost to the household, and the government policy interventions that would be required to enable households to minimise their long term housing costs.

Theme 5: Literature review and Dissemination

(Throughout project)

Dissemination will be a continuous process. A communication plan will be developed in conjunction with the LAH Project Advisory Committee, while will contain the following elements:

• A dissemination program and information campaign will be developed to foster participation at the level of individual households, neighbourhoods and organisations;
• Workshops will be targeted at external groups such as planners and policy makers;
• An academic publication programme will be undertaken.