Sustainable housing applications and policies for low-income self-build and housing rehab ¬リニ

Recent years have seen an increased focus on the role of house construction and retrofitting within the broader agenda of sustainable development and climate change. To date this focus has largely targeted middleand upper-income residential neighborhoods in urban areas. However, in the United States, and in middle developing countries such as Brazil and Mexico, there is growing recognition that urban sustainability will only gain traction if widespread applications are also incorporated into self-help and do-it-yourself housing construction and home improvements, especially those that address lowerincome housing markets. Here we explore some of the potential ways in which contemporary sustainable housing applications may be integrated into the existing housing stock in low-income and informal settlements in the United States and in Latin America. We document the range of sustainable housing applications that are increasingly available in the U.S. as a baseline for discussion and evaluation of the potential application to lower-income segments of the housing market in both developed and developing countries. A heuristic model is presented to assess the extent to which policy makers, NGOs and lowincome owner households may realistically participate in sustainable home building. Beyond physical development applications we close by emphasizing that sustainable housing agendas must adopt a holistic approach: one that embraces community and social organizational development, as well as fiscal and juridical policy dimensions. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction: making sustainability sustainable Inanoteworthyweatherizationrollout speechgivenonDecember 15th 2009 from a Home Depot store, U.S. President Barack Obama described the notion of retrofitting homes with energy efficient insulation as “sexy”.2 Though themoniker “sexy”may surprisemany, improving existing housing stock has been an integral component of sustainability since the very inception of the term, which is most commonly dated to the publication of the UN’s Brundtland Report in 1987 and which identified “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Sustainable Development, 1987). While it remains a contested concept (Connelly, 2007) within urban planning and housing policy, sustainable development is considered to be the product of three fundamental goals: environmental protection, economic development and social equity (Campbell, 1996). In meeting these three goals, especially that of social equity, the role of environmental protections and improvements for thepoor is key (Higgins & Lutzenhiser, 1995), and must necessarily include attention to low-income and self-help housing e as the Brundtland Report clearly states in Chapter 2. In the decades since its publication there has been mounting concern over the need to “green” the new as well as the existing housing stock, and it is increasingly evident that sustainable rehabilitation must also address informal and self-help housing, and not just formal and better off residential development. Yet this remains largely a blind spot in housing policy and research, notwithstanding a resurgence of interest in informality among q This report stems from the work undertaken in a graduate seminar supported by a 2009-10 grant from the Policy Research Institute to Professor Ward at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. It contains the multiple contributions of the following graduate students who participated in the Housing Sustainability class: Leticia Aparicio Soriano, Dana Campos, Lauren Flemister, Sherief Gaber, Karina Mallaupoma Povez, Daniela Ochoa González, Christeen Pusch, Danielle Rojas, Jacob Steubing, and Elizabeth Walsh. Charts were prepared by Lauren