Barriers to Building Partnerships Between Major Stakeholders in Affordable Housing Investment in Queensland

Barriers to building partnerships betwen major stakeholders in affordable housing investment in Queenslan

Do Public Private partnerships facilitate affordable housing outcomes in Queensland?

Internationally, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) are becoming a fashionable supplement to traditional public sector funding models for delivering public infrastructure and related services by using private funding (Broadbent & Laughlin, 2003; Edwards & Shaoul, 2003). The Queensland government released a PPP policy in September 2001 with the aim of improving ‘value for money’ in public infrastructure and service delivery projects, including housing. As a consequence of the reduction of Commonwealth government funding for housing, these partnerships with the private sector are seen as providing an opportunity for the supply of affordable housing. This study aims to identify current problems in implementing PPPs in affordable housing by conducting open interviews and literature searches. PPPs become a specious attraction for the public sector. No affordable housing projects have been implemented using the PPP framework in Queensland because of the restrictive definition of PPP projects. Moreover, the contradiction in traditional investment decision-making criteria between public and private sector has impeded the implementation of PPPs. Accordingly, PPPs may not facilitate increasing the supply of affordable housing without major guideline changes

The validation of the rating for sustainable subdivision neighbourhood design (RSSND) in Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), Thailand

In recent years, the problems resulting from unsustainable subdivision development have become significant problems in the Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), Thailand. Numbers of government departments and agencies have tried to eliminate the problems by introducing the rating tools to encourage the higher sustainability levels of subdivision development in BMR, such as the Environmental Impact Assessment Monitoring Award (EIA-MA) and the Thai’s Rating for Energy and Environmental Sustainability of New construction and major renovation (TREES-NC). However, the EIA-MA has included the neighbourhood designs in the assessment criteria, but this requirement applies to large projects only. Meanwhile, TREES-NC has focused only on large scale buildings such as condominiums, office buildings, and is not specific for subdivision neighbourhood designs. Recently, the new rating tool named “Rating for Subdivision Neighbourhood Sustainability Design (RSNSD)” has been developed. Therefore, the validation process of RSNSD is still required. This paper aims to validate the new rating tool for subdivision neighbourhood design in BMR. The RSNSD has been validated by applying the rating tool to eight case study subdivisions. The result of RSNSD by data generated through surveying subdivisions will be compared to the existing results from the EIA-MA. The selected cases include of one “Excellent Award”, two “Very Good Award”, and five non-rated subdivision developments. This paper expects to prove the credibility of RSNSD before introducing to the real subdivision development practises. The RSNSD could be useful to encourage higher sustainability subdivision design level, and then protect the problems from further subdivision development in BMR

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

Expectation and Reality of Implementation of ISO 9000 Quality Management System in Contractor Companies

The opening of free market in 2003, leads into the stridently escalating business competition both in domestic and global market. The company, therefore, is trying to win the competition by obtaining ISO 9000 certification which can be applied in the construction business. The purpose of the research is to investigate the reason, the obstacles, the gap between expectation and reality of using ISO 9000, as well as the main priority to be implemented in the company. This research uses survey on contractor companies in Surabaya and Gresik which has implemented ISO 9000. The statistical results show that the main reason to implement ISO 9000 is to increase consistency and to improve its quality. Meanwhile, the main obstacle is time constraint to complete the implementation. Companies still need to increase customer satisfaction and attend on customer focus principle to increase the quality of their outcomes

Community engagement for disaster resilience: flood risk management in Jakarta, Indonesia

Understanding dynamics of interactions between community groups and government agencies is crucial to improve community resilience for flood risk reduction through effective community engagement strategies. Overall, a variety of approaches are available, however they are limited in their application. Based on research of a case study in Kampung Melayu Village in Jakarta, further complexity in engaging community emerges in planning policy which requires the relocation of households living in floodplains. This complexity arises in decision-making processes due to barriers to communication. This obstacle highlights the need for a simplified approach for an effective flood risk management which will be further explored in this paper. Qualitative analyses will be undertaken following semi-structured interviews conducted with key actors within government agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and representatives of communities. The analyses involve investigation of barriers and constraints on community engagement in flood risk management, particularly relevant to collaboration mechanism, perception of risk, and technical literacy to flood risk. These analyses result in potential redirection of community consultation strategies to lead to a more effective collaboration among stakeholders in the decision-making processes. As a result, greater effectiveness in plan implementation of flood risk management potentially improves disaster resilience in the future

Maturity Level of Project Management: a Survey Conducted in Several Places in Indonesia

This paper presents the results of a pilot survey aimed at ascertaining the level of project management maturity in Indonesian companies. Kerzner’s Level 2 assessment tool was used, which basically assesses maturity levels throughout the various phases of an organization’s project management life cycle. This study compare maturity of current situation and expectation of 70 respondents working in 6 different types of organizations in Indonesia. Differences were identified between types of organisations, with Financial Institutions, Consultants and Manufacturers belonging to a group with the higher of the current maturity scores, with the Consultants, Manufacturers and Service Providers belonging to a group with the higher of the expected future maturity scores. However, there were no significant differences between the results for the various stages of the project life cycle. The results indirectly confirm that the organisations of the participants of the survey are less effective/ excellent than they could be

Integration of Saudi Arabia's conservative Islamic culture in sustainable housing design

The cities of Saudi Arabia have perhaps the largest growth rates of cities in the Middle East, such that it has become a cause in shortage of housing for mid and low-income families, as is the case in other developing countries. Even when housing is found, it is not sustainable nor is it providing the cultural needs of those families. The aim of this paper is to integrate the unique conservative Islamic Saudi culture into the design of sustainable housing. This paper is part of a preliminary study of an on-going PhD thesis, which utilises a semistructured interview of a panel of nine experts in collecting the data. The interviews consisted of ten questions ranging from general questions such as stating their expertise and work position to more specific question such as listing the critical success factors and/or barriers for applying sustainability to housing in Saudi Arabia. Since the participants were selected according to their experience, the answers to the interview questions were satisfactory where the generation of the survey questions for the second stage in the PhD thesis took place after analysing the participant’s answers to the interview questions. This paper recommends design requirements for accommodating the conservative Islamic Saudi Culture in low cost sustainable houses. Such requirements include achieving privacy through the use of various types of traditional Saudi architectural elements, such as the method of decorative screening of windows, called Mashrabiya, and having an inner courtyard where the house looks inward rather than outward. Other requirements include educating firms on how to design sustainable housing, educating the public on the advantages of sustainable housing and implementing new laws that enforce the utilisation of sustainable methods to housing construction. This paper contributes towards the body of knowledge by proposing initial findings on how to integrate the conservative Islamic culture of Saudi Arabia into the design of a sustainable house specifically for mid and low-income families. This contribution can be implemented on developing countries in the region that are faced with housing shortage for mid and low-income families