Transdisciplinary research focusing on Policy and Financing

The work contained in this document has been developed in parallel with the work reported in Deliverables 4.1 and 4.2. To carry out these three lines of inquiry along each of RE-DWELL’s three intertwined research areas – “Design, Planning, Building”, “Community Participation” and “Policy and Financing”–, 14 ESRs have been assigned to one of the three research areas most relevant to their research projects.

The process of the three lines of work has been as follows:

• Identifying key issues derived from the work conducted in the ESR research projects
• Deriving societal challenges related to the issues identified the research projects
• Interlinking challenges across the three research areas

Five research projects focusing on the area of “Policy and Financing” have identified key themes, including the residualisation of social and public rental housing, particularly in post-socialist countries, worsening housing affordability for vulnerable and middle-income groups; increasing inequality in acquiring housing assets, which exacerbates social class divisions and leaves renters in vulnerable positions with worsening access to decent affordable housing; the need for effective governance strategies to address energy poverty and ensure a just energy transition; tensions in the EU housing markets resulting from the introduction of market finance, which jeopardises social objectives by requiring social housing organisations to operate within market mechanisms; and the need to incorporate post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of social value into policy measures to ensure housing sustainability and improve well-being.