Scaling Up Affordable and Sustainable Housing Supply. Planning-Led Solutions and Leveraging Existing Housing Stock

Alexandre Apsan Frediani

Facilitator

November 6, 2024 | 15:00 - 16:30

SDGs in Action - room D

Habitat for Humanity International

United States of America

English

Reference:

SDG-D 9

WUF12

SDGs in Action

Summary

Housing is not only a basic human need but also a pivotal determinant of health, economic and educational outcomes, and a source of stability and social capital. However, the current global landscape reveals a compounding crisis: billions of people continue to face various forms of housing inadequacy, insecurity and unaffordability, while the buildings and construction sectors are responsible for nearly 40% of CO2 emissions and 36% of global energy use.

How can we navigate the dual objectives of addressing the housing deficit while minimizing the carbon footprint of the buildings sector and sprawling cities? Our event proposes to delve into solutions that complement the predominant housing policies paradigm: boosting housing supply through good planning and partnerships; and enhancing the existing housing stock through repurposing, retrofitting, and improving.
• Local planning as a housing strategy: in the United States, the Housing Supply Accelerator -a large partnership of planners, local elected officials, builders, financial institutions, and real estate professionals led by the American Planning Association- promotes reforms in land use and zoning regulations to lower housing costs, speed projects, and increase equity. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the Royal Town Planning Institute is advancing a renewed approach to strategic planning to ensure national planning reforms support housing goals.
• Tapping the potential of the existing housing stock: Enhancing existing housing units and communities can be more cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and socially impactful. In Europe, Habitat for Humanity and several public and private partners have engaged in transforming underutilized buildings and retrofitting existing housing units to meet both the housing needs of vulnerable populations and residential energy efficiency goals. Based on evidence from 355 projects across six countries, Build Change’s latest study, “Saving Embodied Carbon through Strengthening Existing Housing”, provides compelling evidence that improving existing housing significantly avoids carbon emissions in the housing construction value chain, thereby having substantial implications for achieving net zero in the built environment.

Objectives

• Discuss the contributions and interlinkages of the urban planning, building, and housing sectors in scaling up diverse, attainable, quality, and equitable housing supply while addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges
• Provide evidence of alternative solutions to the housing deficit in ways that reduce poverty, benefit climate and sustainability objectives.
• Exemplify how cities and towns using planning and land use reforms –including regulatory changes, reinvented planning and public engagement, multistakeholder partnerships, coordination of housing planning and infrastructure and economic development programs, among others- to increase housing opportunity
• Sharing global evidence on the reduced operational and embodied carbon emissions through repurposing, retrofitting, and improving the existing housing stock.
• Promote multi-stakeholder and cross-sectoral collaboration in support of transformative urban housing solutions, advancing SDGs at the local and regional levels, particularly SDGs 7, 11, and 13.