Resident-centric retrofits for social housing: A multi-solving approach

Housing around the world needs to be retrofit to achieve our decarbonization goals. Social (or public) housing is a particularly critical sector given that it often serves priority populations who have limited choice in how they are housed. At the same time, social housing in many jurisdictions suffers disproportionately from poor performance that impacts the resident experience including substandard indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal discomfort and broader control issues, often due to underinvestment at the time of construction and throughout the building service life. Further, these performance issues will be exacerbated as our changing climate brings more extreme weather events, including heat waves and wildfires. By focusing retrofit goals entirely on decarbonization, the performance issues impacting residents often remain unaddressed, therefore a framework for considering post-retrofit building performance more holistically is needed. The concept of “multi-solving” retrofits, where multiple performance issues are addressed through a single project, presents a framework through which we can expand our consideration of retrofits beyond energy and carbon. These new directions include reducing life cycle carbon burdens and improving resilience to extreme events; housing affordability; health, comfort and control; and livability and community are described. By applying this framework, retrofit investments can yield benefits for residents that extend beyond initial environmental goals. Following an introduction to the framework and examples of how it can be applied, future directions for the research community, policy makers and industry are suggested to promote widespread adoption of resident-centric retrofits (where resident needs are prioritized) that address the multitude of challenges facing social housing globally. These directions include the need for better data collection on holistic retrofit performance, co-benefit valuation and decision support tools for the building industry. • Many social housing developments face multi-dimensional challenges. • Retrofit investment should achieve more than just energy and carbon targets. • Retrofits can be used to meet environmental, social and economic goals. • Multi-solving retrofits can improve affordability, resilience, comfort & community. • Need policy changes, co-benefit quantification and decision support tools.