Scenarios for effective climate change adaptation in Dutch social housing

Housing managers are constantly confronted with the changing demands that their building stock has to comply with. One of the change agents is the changing climate, caused primarily by human induced greenhouse gases. Though, even if the emissions of all these gases could now be put to a hold, the process of climate change would not completely cease. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change would most probably be felt for many more years. In urban areas, the impacts are drought, flooding caused by extreme precipitation and heat stress caused by the urban heat island effect. Besides threatening the building stock, climate change is also threatening the quality of life of people in urban environments. In the Netherlands, housing associations are responsible for managing the social housing stock and maintaining their quality of life. Research has proven they are not yet aware of the challenge that lies ahead to adapt their dwellings to a changing climate. Considering the focus on the physical adaptations of the building stock, it was chosen to discuss in this paper the effectiveness of three types of governance strategies that housing associations can directly apply in their maintenance processes. The governance strategies are hypothesised based on research results of earlier studies on the implementation of climate change adaptations in social housing. The strategies are: S1. Take up climate adaptation in the policy developments that guide the overall management of the stock; S2. Involving actors that traditionally stand aside the construction process, such as insurance companies and water boards; S3. Emphasising performance-based procurement stimulating the execution of the projects in a partnering approach. The effectiveness of the strategies was tested by means of a SWOT analysis per strategy with practitioners. Results are five scenarios, based on the combinations of strategies that are potentially feasible for the implementation of climate change adaptation measures in the Dutch social housing stock. A crucial factor in the scenarios is collaboration, because nowadays a housing association is not (financially) capable of assuming the responsibility of climate proofing its housing stock all by itself.OTBArchitecture and The Built Environmen