Partnerships in Affordable Housing: The Impact of Conflicting Investment Criteria

Accessibility to housing for lower income groups in Australia has been experiencing a severe decline in the last few years. On the supply side the public sector has been reducing its commitment to the direct provision of public housing at a time when market demand has strengthened, creating substantial price increases in all sectors of the housing market and in most urban centres. One possible solution to address the problem of reduced accessibility to affordable housing has been through the development of partnerships but recent investigation of the literature (Susilawati and Armitage, 2004a) and previous research by the author (Susilawati and Armitage, 2004b) suggest that the attractions of this approach may be specious. The research reported in this paper investigates the nature and incidence of these impediments as presented by survey of a number of stakeholders who have been involved in partnership arrangements in the Queensland affordable housing sector. By means of a series of in-depth interviews, the investment criteria and the impediments to achieving the desired outcomes of the participants in the partnerships are identified. Interestingly, the incidence of conflict and diversity between partners has elicited some unanticipated outcomes and responses which have ironically strengthened the process. Some of the negativity attached to future commitment to such partnerships has been found to be the anticipation of a worse outcome than that expected from independent action

Multi-stakeholder partnerships in affordable rental housing: An investigation using soft systems framework

Queensland Department of Housing has proposed the use of partnerships as one possible option to deliver affordable housing outcomes. Although this initiative is supported by other stakeholders, many constraints have impeded its implementation for the delivery of real projects. Whilst it might find application for mixed housing projects with some relaxation on tax and/ or planning requirements, in general, affordable housing has not been seen as a valuable investment. Moreover, the partnerships require stakeholders to work across boundaries and outside their comfort zones.\ud \ud This initial study examines the use of soft systems framework to explore stakeholders’ views of multi-stakeholder partnerships in affordable rental housing. A series of in-depth interviews with major stakeholders representing housing providers, regulators and users in Queensland has been conducted. \ud \ud Soft systems methodology has been used to express the unstructured problem by using systematic thinking to develop a conceptual model to solve the problem. A complex problem is broken down into role, social system and political system analyses. This study provides an example of using systematic thinking in solving conflicting problems. The gap between the conceptual model and implementation in the real world situation was also investigated. Major changes in the socio-cultural aspects of the broader community as well as between stakeholders were required to implement the further development of multi-stakeholder partnerships for affordable rental housing

Barriers to expanding partnerships for affordable rental housing investment

The recent housing boom, experienced across Australian metropolitan markets, has attracted many new investors and resulted in increasing prices across the full range of residential sub-markets for both owner-occupation and investment categories. Of particular concern from a social perspective is the consequential pressure generated in the affordable housing rental market. Moreover, high vacancy rates and modest rental growth in rental housing has caused a deterioration in the investor’s rental yield given these increasing house prices (Powall and Withers, 2004, p.7). In this difficult situation, traditional delivery methods for rental housing are unlikely to continue to attract more investment in this area. Although some innovative proposals - such as public private partnerships in the affordable housing area - have been put forward as solutions, many stakeholders continue to hold doubts about the specious attractions of such approaches (Susilawati and Armitage, 2004). This paper reports the results of a survey of affordable housing providers drawn from a range of backgrounds: namely the private sector, government and non-for-profit organisations. Using in-depth interviews, it compares the opinions of these supply side groups regarding their experiences of the barriers to entry to such partnerships. The findings show agreement across the sector that, for a range of reasons, they have failed to produce better outcomes than would have been expected without the partnership. Further analysis using two-way and three-way cross-tabulation is then used to investigate the importance level between sub-groups

The Effectiveness of Hospital School Re-Entry Programs for Children with Life-Altering Illness or Injury

When otherwise healthy students suffer from a life-altering injury such as traumatic brain injury (TBI), many of them will return to their schools and classrooms, but with dramatically different abilities and needs. Within UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals resides an interdisciplinary team of specialists who collaborate to determine what these children will need in order to prepare not only the student, but also those who will play a part in the success of their return to school. The goal of the team is to create a pre-entry framework that will provide the tools necessary to put into place those services; and facilitate those actions necessary to help the child re-enter the school system. This study will look at the framework they have created and its effectiveness in assisting the children and their larger community, as they prepare for the transition from patient back to student. Students with life-altering illness or injury, benefit from receiving professional services that help them successfully re-enter school

A comparison of artificial driving sounds for automated vehicles

As automated vehicles currently do not provide sufficient feedback relating to the primary driving task, drivers have no assurance that an automated vehicle has understood and can cope with upcoming traffic situations [16]. To address this we conducted two user evaluations to investigate auditory displays in automated vehicles using different types of sound cues related to the primary driving sounds: acceleration, deceleration/braking, gear changing and indicating. Our first study compared earcons, speech and auditory icons with existing vehicle sounds. Our findings suggested that earcons were an effective alternative to existing vehicle sounds for presenting information related to the primary driving task. Based on these findings a second study was conducted to further investigate earcons modulated by different sonic parameters to present primary driving sounds. We discovered that earcons containing naturally mapped sonic parameters such as pitch and timbre were as effective as existing sounds in a simulated automated vehicle

Engaging students with assessment and feedback: improving assessment for learning with students as partners

Within the Higher Education sector in the UK, it is acknowledged that the area of ‘Assessment and Feedback’ receives consistently poor levels of satisfaction from students when they complete module level feedback, course level feedback and the National Student Survey (NSS). There is evidence to suggest that this problem is pronounced within Schools of Architecture, particularly with the assessment and feedback of design work. This case study describes reflective practice at Portsmouth School of Architecture, UK, where academics worked in consultation with students to identify the issues. The aim of the project was to evaluate assessment and feedback strategies from across the School resulting in the creation of a new and innovative set of ‘Assessment for Learning’ tools produced with students as partners. These tools include: a refined marking matrix, an improved ‘design review’ and a ‘lexicon’ for marking design projects to enhance understanding and autonomy. This case study also explores how alignment and enhancement of learning through assessment and feedback and the quality of assessment tools has the ability to increase students’ confidence and assessment literacy, their overall satisfaction and levels of autonomy

Exploring how drivers perceive spatial earcons in automated vehicles

Automated vehicles seek to relieve the human driver from primary driving tasks, but this substantially diminishes the connection between driver and vehicle compared to manual operation. At present, automated vehicles lack any form of continual, appropriate feedback to re-establish this connection and offer a feeling of control. We suggest that auditory feedback can be used to support the driver in this context. A preliminary field study that explored how drivers respond to existing auditory feedback in manual vehicles was first undertaken. We then designed a set of abstract, synthesised sounds presented spatially around the driver, known as Spatial Earcons, that represented different primary driving sounds e.g. acceleration. To evaluate their effectiveness, we undertook a driving simulator study in an outdoor setting using a real vehicle. Spatial Earcons performed as well as Existing Vehicle Sounds during automated and manual driving scenarios. Subjective responses suggested Spatial Earcons produced an engaging driving experience. This paper argues that entirely new synthesised primary driving sounds, such as Spatial Earcons, can be designed for automated vehicles to replace Existing Vehicle Sounds. This creates new possibilities for presenting primary driving information in automated vehicles using auditory feedback, in order to re-establish a connection between driver and vehicle

Using thermal stimuli to enhance photo-sharing in social media

Limited work has been undertaken to show how the emotive ability of thermal stimuli can be used for interaction purposes. One potential application area is using thermal stimuli to influence emotions in images shared online such as social media platforms. This paper presents a two-part study, which examines how the documented emotive property of thermal stimuli can be applied to enhance social media images. Participants in part-one supplied images from their personal collection or social media profiles, and were asked to augment each image with thermal stimuli based on the emotions they wanted to enhance or reduce. Part-one participants were interviewed to understand the effects they wanted augmented images to have. In part-two, these augmented images were perceived by a different set of participants in a simulated social media interface. Results showed strong agreement between the emotions augmented images were designed to evoke and the emotions they actually evoked as perceived by part-two participants. Participants in part-one selected thermal stimuli augmentation intended to modulate valence and arousal in images as a way of enhancing the realism of the images augmented. Part-two results indicate this was achieved as participants perceived thermal stimuli augmentation reduced valence in negative images and modulated valence and arousal in positive images

Paradigm Changes Related to TSAS Viewed Through the Perspective of the FAA/NASA Operational Integration Assessment

In May 2015, NASA and the FAA conducted the Operational Integration Assessment (OIA) at the FAAs William J. Hughes Technical Center (referred to here as the Tech Center). The OIA was an operational assessment of a NASA-developed prototype technology, Terminal Sequencing and Spacing (TSAS, formerly known as TSS), planned for operational deployment in April 2019. The main objective was to identify risks that need to be addressed prior to transitioning TSAS from the laboratory to the National Airspace System (NAS). Key to the OIA was integrating TSAS with recently deployed Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) technologies that the FAA expects TSAS to interoperate with when it becomes operational, such as the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) platform and newer Time Based Flow Management (TBFM) capabilities such as Extended Metering and Ground-based Interval Management for Spacing (GIM-S). The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) controllers and traffic management coordinators (TMCs) from several Air Route Traffic Control Centers (en route) and Terminal Radar Approach Control (terminal) facilities participated in the OIA, and are critical to identifying risks when transitioning TSAS to an operational system. We discuss the OIA, including expected paradigm changes necessary to realize the full benefits of TSAS. Two of the paradigm changes are operational and one relates to testing and evaluation. We start by briefly discussing the impetus for TSAS, followed by its main background components. Next, we discuss the motivation for the OIA, its objective, and key attributes. We then proceed with a section discussing three important and expected paradigm shifts related to TSAS. We end by briefly discussing some representative observations and feedback from the OIA related to the paradigm shifts