Evaluation Framework for Social Impact on the E-Co-Housing Project in Budapest

Abstract

In Europe, today's affordable housing and co-housing projects represent complex products, complementing the physical intervention with economic and social techniques. This means that purely environmental and economical evaluation is not sufficient for these projects. While environmental and economical evaluation methodologies are widespread and advanced in the construction sector, methodologies to evaluate the social impacts of housing projects are rarely used and therefore underdeveloped.
This study elaborates a framework to evaluate and monitor the social impacts of a complex social housing and co-housing project. The method adopted implements the Social Life Cycle Assessment, integrating a Post Occupancy Evaluation as the main tool for collecting and analysing data. The presented assessment framework is elaborated for the E-Co-Housing Model, a new experimental model so far as the development of affordable housing in Budapest is concerned. However, it delivers a starting point for more complex sustainability analysis of residential buildings in general.
The guideline for the Evaluation Framework is the methodology of the Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products, clarifying and improving some of its usual elements. The study of the E-Co-Housing Model shows that housing products, especially affordable and co-housing projects significantly differ from other products. The differences are their main stakeholder groups, their life cycle stages and in their impact ways too. Therefore, housing products need a special S-LCA methodology to assess in a balanced way the complex aspects of its environmental, economic, and social sustainability.