Challenges to Achieving Sustainability in Social Housing Construction in New Zealand

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-720-5_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Achieving Sustainability; Social Housing; Social Housing Providers; Challenges to Achieve Sustainability; Sustainable Construction; Government Policy

Abstract

The housing crisis resulting in a lack of affordable housing has become an urgent problem that New Zealand faces due to various socio-economic and historical-political reasons. Social housing is one of the ways to address this problem and currently, the country is experiencing a significant increase in the need for affordable and quality social housing. Given the growing need for social housing, it is vital to understand who should do what and in what actions to achieve a balance between the various aspects of the sustainability of the social housing sector. This is especially important since housing providers face several interrelated issues including financial, political, social, and institutional factors that have a significant impact on their operations. This paper aims to identify the factors influencing the achievement of sustainability and, where possible, provide recommendations to the management of housing providers and the government on how to overcome the emerging challenges. The results of this study reflected the practical experience of housing providers and showed that achieving true sustainability in this sector is possible only with a radical transformation of the existing relationships - the state should assume the function of a social customer, determining the need, parameters, and characteristics of social housing, while housing providers should become project operators, ensuring their economic efficiency. This study is an occasion to reflect on the role and importance of social housing for society, as well as an occasion to encourage the government to change the established practice of manipulating housing policy in favour of political ambitions.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Oleg Nikitin
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/30
TI  - Challenges to Achieving Sustainability in Social Housing Construction in New Zealand
BT  - Proceedings of the Smart Sustainable Development Conference 2025 (SSD 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 4
EP  - 22
SN  - 3005-155X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-720-5_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-720-5_2
ID  - Nikitin2025
ER  -