Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con

HANDBOOK 2 SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION
Integrating affordable housing and sustainable housing: bridging
two merit goods in Australia
Associate Professor George Zillante – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia
(georg.zillante@unisa.edu.au)
Dr Stephen Pullen – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia
(stephen.pullen@unisa.edu.au)
Dr Lou Wilson – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia (lou.wilson@unisa.edu.au)
Dr Kathryn Davidson – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia
(kathryn.davidson@unisa.edu.au)
Dr Nicholas Chileshe – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia
(nicholas.chileshe@unisa.edu.au)
Dr Jian Zuo – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia (jian.zuo@unisa.edu.au)
Michael Arman – School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia
(michael.arman@unisa.edu.au)
Abstract
Interest among planning and policy makers in environmentally
sustainable housing has risen in recent years as a response to the
global goal of attaining sustainable development. In Australia, there
has long been concern that the market might under-provide
affordable housing and, more recently, concerns have been raised
over the capacity of the market to provide sustainable housing.
Governments in Australia have intervened through subsidies, tax
incentives and more direct forms of support for the provision of
affordable and sustainable housing. Providing environmentally
sustainable housing is thus perceived to be a “merit good” in
Australia. That is, a good that has social merit but one that is
underprovided by markets. Contemporary housing policy debate in
Australia has emphasised the need to respond to a growing housing
affordability challenge. Affordable housing might also be seen to be
a merit good in Australia. Nevertheless there has been a reluctance
to consider housing sustainability in the same context as housing
affordability.
This chapter addresses the debate over affordable and sustainable
housing in Australia by drawing on learnings from the Ecocents
Living research project to suggest a conceptual basis to understand
the issues at hand. Ecocents Living is a project that seeks to
integrate the concepts of affordable and sustainable housing into a
model to guide industrial implementation of sustainable and
affordable housing. It is argued that the concepts of sustainable
housing and affordable housing have synergies that warrant
consideration and the further development of an embryonic model for
integrating sustainable and affordable housing is offered in this
chapter.
Keywords: sustainable housing, affordable housing, Australia
Introduction
Housing affordability is a relatively recent policy concern for Australia. Since the Second World War,
Australians have enjoyed high rates of home ownership and relatively low housing costs, facilitated
by cheap and plentiful land for urban development (Beer et al. 2007).
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