IMPROVING THE STANDARD OF SOCIAL HOUSING IN AUSTRALIA USING PASSIVHAUS – AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW AND LOCAL ADAPTATION

IMPROVING THE STANDARD OF SOCIAL HOUSING IN AUSTRALIA USING PASSIVHAUS – AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW AND LOCAL ADAPTATION

Authors:

Clare Parry

Organisation of Presenter:

Fantech

Abstract:

Social housing exists to help those in need. People in social housing typically experience issues with health and economic stability and leverage. Despite best intentions, social housing is plagued by poor or misdirected investment, and has the potential to entrench disadvantage. This commonly means that housing is lowest cost, with long-term impacts both direct and indirect, including:

• high maintenance cost;

• low property market value, including residual value;

• high running costs;

• poor indoor environment quality;

• long-term health, economic and socio-economic impacts on occupants;

• reduced leverage for tenants to leave the social housing system; and

• increased strain on the public health sector, due to potentially avoidable or worsened conditions including respiratory and integumentary conditions.

Many medium- to large-scale social housing projects throughout Europe and the UK have been delivered using the Passivhaus standard. These projects have been shown to be possible at anywhere from standard cost to 10%, although the long-term and wide reaching societal and public infrastructure benefits are immense.

This paper will examine the benefits seen using this approach for the public housing sector in the international context, and detail a project that will emulate this approach for the Australian market using prefabrication for rapid and efficient supply.