Workshop review
- 1. COUNTRY/PROGRAM Workshop Review Bangalore, India JULY 4, 2011 REVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP ON BEST PRACTICES FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING Ashoka Housing for All (HFA), in partnership with the Academy for Sustainable Habitat Research and Management (ASHRAM), hosted an Affordable Housing Best Practices Workshop on July 4, 2011 in Bangalore. The workshop catalyzed the creation of a set of consensus-based best practices for affordable housing across India. The presence of specialists from diverse fields of expertise allowed us to gather a multitude of affordable housing perspectives. This document highlights the key issues discussed during the workshop and proposes next steps. At the beginning of the day, the thought process behind Best Practices was introduced: A set of practices that will provide a manual of how to tap into this unexplored market and cater to an underserved customer segment. The initiative aims to (1) encourage more players to serve this space, (2) ensure that home buyers get a fair deal, and (3) strengthen the quality of both processes and products. The meeting’s hands-on and participant-driven agenda allowed for all the various stakeholders in affordable housing to voice what is important to include in a Best Practices framework, triggering discussions and debates from the moment the workshop began. The interest of stakeholders from relevant fields such as developers, citizen sector organizations, architects, designers, manufacturers, and certification specialists made the day truly unique in the ideas exchanged. In addition to diverse backgrounds, the participants also brought differing experience in the affordable housing field, ranging from established track records to promising actors entering the field. These diverse perspectives drove the conversations to new dimensions. OUTCOMES OF THE PLENARY SESSIONS Throughout the day, the workshop incorporated several plenary sessions inciting discussions of the general issues facing affordable housing in India. The key outcomes were the following: • Customers’ affordable housing life cycles – the journey a customer has gone through during their life prior to being in the target market for an affordable home must be carefully considered – taking into account the stages before the purchase of a new house and covering its maintenance thereafter. Sustainability of the services and products becomes a future concern as the population density in affordable housing will be large, thus having a larger impact on their sustainability. This more holistic view is necessary to develop sustainable communities. • Affordable communities – in addition to thinking beyond the customer’s current situation, affordable housing must be expanded to include the full ecosystem of a community that is necessary to support new homes. Best practices should reflect that these homes are a lifestyle and aspiration. You need to listen and to have empathy about what the market wants – the key is in design.
- 2. • Involvement of customers – Affordable housing should not adopt an “us vs. them” mentality in prescribing what “they need” through best practices or standards. For this reason, we need to build dynamically to allow for upgrades and changes. What must be decided is where and how the community will be involved in the design to close that expectation gap in a productive way. Priorities of affordable housing best practices should take into account that there will always be an expectation gap in what the customer wants and what we can affordably deliver. • Remove constraints - A heavily discussed subject were the constraints that hinder the development of affordable housing. Stringent regulations and slow approval processes were seen as big obstacles to affordable housing. A collaboration with the government addressing advocacy was perceived as essential. In terms of finance, the constraints relate to market flaws. The costs of servicing the informal sector are very high and the risks difficult to appraise in this new mark. Furthermore, the lack of knowledge about the needs and preferences of the target segment impede better affordable housing solutions. Best practices should not add unfair, unattainable targets to affordable housing. Rather the best practices should identify and remove constraints to the affordable housing supply system. OUTCOMES OF THE BREAK OUT SESSIONS Key elements of the workshop were breakout sessions, in which the participants split into groups discussing one of the four verticals- construction, energy and environment, finance and community. In a first session, mixed breakout groups had discussions on a particular vertical. In a second session, break out groups based on the participants’ areas of expertise discussed their vertical in more detail. Below you will find interesting points that came out in most focus groups. Interestingly similar issues were raised in all groups. This applies not only for topics that were raised during the plenary sessions and further discussed in the focus groups such as constraints hindering the development of affordable housing and the need to focus on affordable housing, but also a multitude of others: • Evolution of the rating system - Best practices must be time-bound in order to accommodate new technologies and to incorporate continuous improvements into the rating. Reinventing it too often does not allow them to be a guideline. • Income generation - Another point raised across groups was the need for affordable housing projects to generate income to alleviate the burden of maintenance and operational costs. Ideas such as providing services, renting out common spaces, or growing food were mentioned. • Innovation - All the groups agreed that affordable housing needs to innovate some procedures and methods used in conventional housing. The participants saw a potential for the rating system to promote new ideas and obtain knowledge about the housing needs for the poor. The finance group sees a need for innovation in terms of identification of customers in order to include new customer segments.
- 3. Next to discussing items related to the rating system as a whole, each focus group discussed points related to their particular vertical. The graphic below lists the parameters that developers, citizen elated vertical sector organizations and housing finance institutions need to consider in order to make a project more affordable. Construction Community Energy/Environment Finance •Site selection: Accesible •Access to education • •Location: mobility •Access to finance: by public transport and •Access to health care • inside the campus and involvement of housing proximity to roads •Training and livelihood • connectivity to basic finance institutions in •Amenities (schools, development services the process recreational areas, •Involvement of • •Common areas •Information of health care, common community in design •Thermal comfort: use customers about their areas, shops, work of alternative materials finance opportunities •Process for making • places): Proximity of and appropriate •Financial education: clients bankable amenities or integration ventilation handholding during the in project. •Institutions for • •Energy use: renewable process and financial participatory approach •Design energy, energy saving planning •Sustainabiity planning • •Materials and lighting •Adapted methods to •Institutions to address • customers need: •Construction processes •Water: rainwater gender, religion and collection methods, •Workmanship harvesting inclusion opportunity to •Maintenance and •Waste: Segregation of •Mainenance fund • restructure debt operations waste •Success incicators for • •Support of the CSO to •Mechanical, electrical •Materials: renewable community activities the customers in the and plumbing resources and recycling process of obtaining •Energy and ventilation: •Environmental design mortgages Energy efficiency during •Operations and •Minimum quality and construction, green maintenance safety requirements of technology the building More detailed descriptions of the outcomes of each focus group can be found at our wiki site: outcomes https://sites.google.com/site/hfabestpractices/. https://sites.google.com/site/hfabestpractices/ NEXT STEPS We could observe that most participants had similar priorities when it comes to affordable housing. omes Issues such as the importance of putting the customers in the focus and involve them in all steps of a affordable housing and working on eliminating constraints were raised in the plenary sessions as well as in all the breakout sessions. The necessity to adopt a life cycle approach- interacting with ssions. customers on a long term basis and the importance of creating affordable communities considering basis- the proximity of education, work places and health care of customers were stated. Participants also places suggested that Best Practices will have to carefully define the evolution of the rating system, leave space for innovation and consider aspects of income generation inside the communities. A direct outcome of the workshop is a simple online wiki providing a platform to express your thoughts (https://sites.google.com/site/hfabestpractices/ Please visit the site and contribute your https://sites.google.com/site/hfabestpractices/). thoughts! All the content will be transferred to an open online platform within 6 months allowing entries such as case studies, inspirations and discussions along the framework. The Best Practices Initiative plans to host this type of workshops gathering people from many different fields every four to six months as well as smaller workshops gathering four to six people discussing issues of one le particular vertical. Ashoka and ASHRAM will work on the framework and start contacting stakeholders from all the four verticals gathering knowledge about the processes and products of affordable housing. We hope to have your con continued support for the same!