Socio-Technical Dimensions for a Sustainable Housing Transition
6.11 Ethical Aspects
undertaking sustainability consultations, providing free advice to mem- bers, organizing and hosting webinars and events (including a Speed Date a Sustainability Expert and annual Sustainable House Day event), and publishing two quarterly sustainability magazines: Renew—technol- ogy for a sustainable future (with over 160 issues) and Sanctuary—Modern green homes (with over 60 issues). The organization and publications engage with more than 250,000 people each year and have an active membership of 11,000 people (2020–21). Renew has played a key advo- cacy role in driving recent regulatory changes in Australia through dis- seminating research and continued supporting dialogue with key stakeholders (including households). Beyond just a focus on the physical home or technologies, Renew is increasingly evolving to include spaces around houses and communities (such as gardening and urban greening), new considerations of housing such as the role of electric vehicles, and addressing future climatic and resiliency challenges as a community. For example, issue 60 of Sanctuary magazine was a flood resilience special.
Through these various activities, Renew has helped reconceptualize hous- ing and sustainable housing for Australian households through a largely bottom-up community approach and, in the process, has managed to help establish new customs, values, and norms.
The housing sector is largely driven by guiding principles and business practices that prioritize maximizing financial profit over quality, perfor- mance, and occupant outcomes. However, this financial lens on housing has meant dwellings are too often distilled into financial outcomes, rather than considering the wider social, environmental, and through-life ben- efits of improved quality and performance. As we explored in the earlier chapters of this book, this framing around the capitalization of housing has impacted wider social outcomes including poverty, justice, and inclu- sivity [81, 84, 105–107].
This financial framing, along with consistent push back against increas- ing regulations or compliance requirements, has led to a housing industry that does not prioritize ethical considerations or consider the wider cli- mate emergency context. While individual stakeholders are not likely set- ting out to be unethical, the industry’s engrained practices and the short cuts or lack of checks and balances can add up to negative outcomes. This is evident in the rise of minor and major building defects in new dwell- ings, and the significant challenges that housing consumers face trying to get these issues addressed. Notable examples include the use of asbestos, leaky homes, and the flammable cladding crisis [3]. The shift of the con- struction industry from being a more local industry to one that is part of the globalized network is another example of unethical practices. As sup- ply chains have become more globalized, there has been limited oversight which has led to major environmental impacts from some materials and technologies, and has supported modern slavery practices.
Sustainable housing attempts to address a number of these ethical issues that have emerged through the current housing regime. This includes addressing things like the ethical considerations in supply chains and modern slavery (e.g., doing checks on where materials come from and how they are manufactured and ensuring everyone is paid a fair wage) [108, 109]. It is not just about ensuring ethical practices at the global level, but also shifting back towards using local material and labour where possible to help local economies. There is also an increasing focus of sustainable housing stakeholders on how quality housing can be pro- vided not just for those who have wealth and resources, but also for vul- nerable and marginalized households who are often left behind in the
move towards a more sustainable future. This includes being able to pro- vide such housing for low income households, renters, the unhoused, and so on. This is partially in recognition that the benefits of sustainable housing are likely to have even greater benefits for health, well-being, finance, and social outcomes for these vulnerable housing cohorts. In this regard, sustainable housing has been discussed as being able to help wider ethical and justice considerations such as addressing the increasing rates of fuel poverty around the world.
It will not be possible to knock down and rebuild all existing housing to a higher quality and performance level, so the attention in recent years has shifted to the necessary role of deep retrofits on existing housing.
There are ethical considerations wrapped up within this focus, with the idea that we leave as many raw resources “in the ground” as we can for future generations. This symbolizes a growing movement within sustain- able housing consumers that housing must be seen as long-life infrastruc- ture. It is no longer just about the first or current user, but about what happens across the life of the dwelling. Increasingly, this is being consid- ered within the context of a changing climate, and responding to the climate emergency requires us to consider ethical aspects of how we will scale up sustainable housing.
Ethical aspects of transitions within the housing domain have not received much attention, but there are opportunities for sustainable housing research to incorporate good governance practices and consider- ations of poverty, justice, and inclusivity. This includes exploring the ongoing question within transitions research around ‘who wins, who loses, how and why’ [110, 111]. In the race towards a more sustainable future, we need to ensure that social aspects of socio-technical dimen- sions are not forgotten. This means that a more sustainable future must also be just [112]. For our definition of ethical aspects, we drew on the work by Barrett et al. [113] work on ethical cities which argues we need to integrate climate action, good governance, and action on inequality to achieve ethical outcomes. From this perspective, ethics shape both pro- cess and outcomes related to sustainable housing.
6.11.1 Half a House
In 2016, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena won the Pritzker prize for his affordable housing concept of providing people with half a house.18 Aravena’s practice, Elemental, was commissioned to design 100 houses with a budget of US$7500 per house (including land, materials, and construction). This amount would normally finance houses that are ~30 square metres, whereas the average middle class family in Chile lives with 80 square metres. Rather than build small single-storey houses, Aravena proposed building ‘half a house’ of two to three storeys. The idea was to build good structures with basics such as plumbing for a kitchen and bathroom and core shelter, while leaving the other half of the house incomplete for the households to finish as their individual resources and circumstances allowed. These half houses are also robust and built to withstand earthquakes and other disasters. Rather than just being a house, the half a house is a tool to escape poverty for the households.
Once families moved into their houses the unfinished concrete cubes quickly transformed into different spaces that reflected the needs and skills of the household. As we have stated earlier in the book, shelter is a basic need, and good quality housing provides many benefits including increased health and well-being for the inhabitants. Aravena’s approach to affordable housing centres ethics and equity, as well as the environ- ment, with the overall aim of increasing the capacity of the households.