Holistic approach to healthy homes: A social housing case study of indoor environment quality in Glen Innes, Auckland

Abstract

New Zealand is in the midst of a housing crisis. While the discourse is primarily focused on affordability and housing shortages, the quality of housing is starting to attract more attention, with the subpar standard of housing reported to cost New Zealand millions annually in health-related issues. The burden of substandard housing is mainly borne by vulnerable demographics, specifically children, Māori and Pacific Islanders. As housing becomes more unaffordable, more people are forced to rent (potentially poor-quality) housing with resulting health implications. Multiple responses have been designed and implemented to remediate the poor quality of New Zealand housing, ranging from voluntary housing warrants of fitness/green building certifications to government legislation. This thesis reviews the context of the housing quality crisis in New Zealand, grounding the discourse in the academic literature seeking to determine what constitutes a healthy living environment. The different policy approaches to providing healthy New Zealand housing are reviewed and critically discussed with one mechanism (6-Homestar) identified as the most comprehensive and widely adopted policy approach. The performance of 6-Homestar is then empirically interrogated and contrasted with dwellings constructed to the current New Zealand Building Code and older dwellings constructed to a previous code. The empirical evidence determines that 6-Homestar is not providing a step change in indoor environment quality performance when compared to the current building code. A key finding of the research is the unintended consequence of the focus on cold and damp: both 6-Homestar-certified and newly constructed code-compliant dwellings overheat in the warmer months of the year. In a world that has recognised the coming implications of climate change and global warming, these results have significant policy implications, suggesting that overheating, in conjunction with underheating, requires attention in government legislation, green building rating tools and building codes.