Social Housing Allocation: A Problem Structuring approach

The demand for social housing (SH) has emerged all over Europe and it is expo-nentially increasing particularly since the 2008 global economic crisis. This growing temporary housing demand comes from a sector of the population living in the so-called “grey zone”, also known as the ‘in-work poverty’ population. The “grey zone” is composed of individuals in a situation of housing vulnerability [39]: people whose housing needs cannot be met by the market and at the same time who are not eligible to access public housing programs, such as the homeless, internal migrants, city users, single-earner families, the elderly, people subject to eviction, single parents. Typically, the process underpinning the selection of SH projects has focused on re-ducing the SH shortage by providing enough supply. Nowadays, the process of selec-tion of SH projects is no longer simply related to the lack of housing stock but also to the social, economic and cultural changes that currently affect a wide segment of the European population [7, 9, 19]. In this new scenario, the focus of SH policies is shift-ing from the building understood as a product to the people who live in the building. In fact where the human factor is fundamental to target the recipients, in order to pursue the integration of different social groups and the improvement the living con-ditions in the buildings. As the attention now being given to the topic in the interna-tional arena testifies, the scientific community and the market are looking to SH as a key area in which to test new approaches to sustainable design and implementation, taking into account not only the three “consolidated” pillars of sustainability (i. e. environment, society and economy), but also relevant additional dimensions, such as ethics, culture and technology [5]. In this scenario, SH represents a challenge that requires to be made with limited investments and at the same time designed to ensure the reduction of housing cost for users, promoters and managers in the use phase, as well as the achievement of the highest quality standards. The housing cost, including both the rental costs and those of utilities should not exceed 40% of the users income [33]. It is a given fact that sustainable design has, above all, the environmental perfor-mance in terms of building envelope as its object and purpose. Usually, alongside this, the use of renewable energy, eco-friendly materials and technological solutions for the quality of life indoors and the optimal management of water and waste are recognized as integrated quality of the intervention. An aspect that nowadays is con-sidered increasingly important is the ability of real estate transactions to generate and preserve value. Moreover, a key objective of SH is the creation of an "active commu-nity" where people can easily integrate into the urban context. Therefore, it is essen-tial to pay particular attention to the location of the project, its accessibility and prox-imity to services, to all the forms of participation and co-planning that the project can stimulate, to the mix of facilities to be offered (in the individual building and in the neighbourhood), promoting reduced economic and social inequalities and avoiding the creation of social segregation [3]. In this sense, along with the architectural design it is therefore essential to simultaneously undertake the "project of social management" of the intervention, which means predicting the set of actors and actions in the use phase that can ensure their sustainability in terms of the community. In the planning phase it a reference profile of the future community that will ensure a balanced social mix should already be established. However, in the light of recent international environmental protocols for assessing sustainability in construction, such as LEED, SB 100, BREEAM communities, CasaClima Habitat, protocol ITHACA, Lidera, AUDIS [3, 24, 25] it is clear that, if these types of assessments are applied to SH operations, the environmental dimension takes precedence, mostly linked to energy efficiency and the attention to building materials, rather than to the social and economic aspects. Little attention is given to interpersonal sphere of living, or the aptitude of the building for the implementation of specific activities of social inclusion, or to the expected interventions and targeted aid to contrast the difficulties of the future users of social housing. These "non-traditional" aspects for a conventional residence become paramount in an SH intervention. In order to tackle this social challenge, meet the user needs and foster effective means of public/private investment, this research intends to propose a new more tailored and effective approach for the decision making process related to the allocation of public (and private) resources for SH projects. Our research is articulated through an overview of the literature of the field and the analysis of the process of evaluation and selection of the SH interventions actually adopted by a banking foundation, in order to develop specific considerations and contributions on the topic. A large and consolidated amount of recent literature concerning SH problems exists in different fields. Mention can be made of the studies conducted in the spheres of the link between energy and technical aspects [16, 18, 19, 20] the relation between technical aspects and construction costs [8, 10, 11, 13, 28, 37, 40], the evaluation methods of the social retrofitting intervention [31, 2, 4, 17, 26, 32, 35, 36], the quality of life and the reduction of social exclusion [12, 14, 21, 23, 29, 30]. The above mentioned extensive literature highlights the need to understand and decide which SH projects are worth funding, based on technical and social considerations, in order to provide access to housing and related social support for those who need it [26, 38]. Therefore, a consolidated and structured evaluation method able to simultaneously consider all the aforementioned aspects in SH field is still needed. The research presented in this paper begins with the experience of an Italian bank foundation that has been involved in SH projects since 2007. This foundation developed its own assessment methodology to screen large funding requests from social agencies (cooperatives, religious bodies, public administration) wishing to implement SH projects. The methodology consists of three decision-making process stages: 1- A technical evaluation of the buildings in which the SH projects will be hosted is performed. A team according to four main criteria: (i) overall architectural consisten-cy of the building; (ii) economic correctness of the adjustment work planned; (iii) accessibility of the spaces for people with disabilities; and, (iv) flexibility/modularity of the building. These criteria are in turn divided into thirteen sub-criteria; 2- A social evaluation of how the projects intend to provide social support destined for the future beneficiaries (mainly the inhabitants but also the neighbourhood communities) of the SH units is undertaken. A team comprising psychologists, community psychologists and psychotherapists assess all the SH projects according to three main criteria: (i) overall quality of the social support project; (ii) fairness of the financial plan of the social project; and, (iii) possibility to create synergies with cooperatives and social agencies in order to perform social activities. These criteria are subsequently divided into eleven sub-criteria; 3- Criteria weights are assigned and aggregated during the technical and social assessments by a multidisciplinary group of experts in order to obtain a ranking of the projects. This study conceives the above assessment methodology as a Problem Structuring Method (PSM) [1, 15, 22, 27, 34], since it is configured as a flexible and real mechanism for addressing complex problems by representing the situation in a structured manner, as it exhibits many similarities with consolidated and recognised PSMs [27]. Moreover, the aforementioned methodology has the potential to be significantly improved in order to address complex issues characterized by the presence of multiple actors often with different perspectives or objectives and conflicting interests supporting participants’ learning about their own and others’ perspectives, as well as the problematic situation of concern [34, 6]. From this perspective, the research intends to experiment a possible improvement to the Bank foundation’s assessment methodology, exploiting a participative method, based on the use of emerging technologies. ICT could provide spontaneous and voluntary data to be incorporated into a structured method, not only to support the Decision Maker (DM) in the ex-ante phase (with portfolio problems or constructing a tender; with the definition of the architectural, technical and social characteristics of the intervention), but also in itinere and in the ex-post phases, when it will be possible to monitor if the final outcomes meet the initial objectives. The decision- making process related to the SH projects will be structured as follows: - The first level of the decision-making process will directly involve the citizens and the stakeholders with the aim of clarifying the real needs of the beneficiaries of the SH units. In this phase the data will be collected in two ways: “spontaneous data”, via the analysis of social networks data, such as tweets and Flickr data; “voluntary data”, through partially structured and partially open surveys, analysed with specific semantic theories and tools; - The second level of the decision-making process will involve the DM, experts, spe-cific stakeholders operating directly in the SH sector (i.e. the managers of the SH buildings) and the citizens, in order to structure the decision-making model through a series of workshops. In this phase the use of PSM and ICT will be strongly supported by visual representation (3D models). After a pilot test in Italy, the research will continue by performing test planning ac-tivities of the decision-making process in other European Countries.