Designing for Sustainable Public Housing from Property Management and Financial Feasibility Perspectives

Authors: Kung-Jen Tu

Abstract:

Many public housing properties developed by local governments in Taiwan in the 1980s have deteriorated severely as these rental apartment buildings aged. The lack of building maintainability considerations during project design phase as well as insufficient maintenance funds have made it difficult and costly for local governments to maintain and keep public housing properties in good shape. In order to assist the local governments in achieving and delivering sustainable public housing, this paper intends to present a developed design evaluation method to be used to evaluate the presented design schemes from property management and financial feasibility perspectives during project design phase of public housing projects. The design evaluation results, i.e. the property management and financial implications of presented design schemes that could occur later during the building operation and maintenance phase, will be reported to the client (the government) and design schemes revised consequently. It is proposed that the design evaluation be performed from two main perspectives: (1) Operation and property management perspective: Three criteria such as spatial appropriateness, people and vehicle circulation and control, property management working spaces are used to evaluate the ‘operation and PM effectiveness’ of a design scheme. (2) Financial feasibility perspective: Four types of financial analyses are performed to assess the long term financial feasibility of a presented design scheme, such as operational and rental income analysis, management fund analysis, regular operational and property management service expense analysis, capital expense analysis. The ongoing Chung-Li Public Housing Project developed by the Taoyuan City Government will be used as a case to demonstrate how the presented design evaluation method is implemented. The results of property management assessment as well as the annual operational and capital expenses of a proposed design scheme are presented.

Keywords: Design evaluation method, management fund, operational and capital expenses, rental apartment buildings.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1128821

References:

[1] Lin, Y.H. and H.W. Liang. (2006). Report on the housing status survey, Research Project Report, Taiwan: Construction and Planning Agency.
[2] Ouwehand, A. and van Daalen G. (2002). Dutch housing associations - A model for social housing. DUP Satellite, Delft Univ. Press, MG Delft.
[3] Gruis, V., Nieboer, N. and Thomas, A. (2004) Strategic asset management in the social rented sector: approaches of Dutch and English housing associations, Urban Studies, 41, pp. 1229–1248.
[4] Gruis, V. and Nieboer, N. (2004a) Strategic housing management: an asset management model for social landlords, Property Management, 22, pp. 201–213.
[5] Gruis, V. and Nieboer, N. (Eds) (2004b) Asset Management in the Social Rented Sector: Policy and Practice in Europe and Australia. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
[6] van Mossel, H.J. and van der Valk, W. (2008). Securing customer satisfaction through component service specifications purchasing maintenance services for social rented housing. Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management, 14, 241-252.
[7] Ho, D. C.W. and Gao, W. (2013). Collective action in apartment building management in Hong Kong. Habitat International, 38, 10-17.
[8] Lai, Joseph (2011). Comparative evaluation of facility management services for housing estates. 35(2), 391-397.
[9] Stanford, Herbert W. (2010). Effective Building Maintenance: Protection of Capital Assets. Lilburn, GA: The Fairmont Press.
[10] Braganca, L., Mateus, R. and Koukkari, H. (2010). Building Sustainability Assessment. Sustainability, 2 (7), 2012-2013.
[11] Haapio, A. and Viitaniemi, P. (2008). A critical review of building environmental assessment tools. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 28, 269-284.
[12] Hawtrey, K. (2009). Affordable housing finance. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan.
[13] Goodman, Jack (2004). Determinants of operating costs of multifamily rental housing. Journal of Housing Economics, 13, 226-244.
[14] Dell;Isola A J and Kirk S J (2003) Life cycle costing for facilities, Construction Publisher & Consultants, Kingston, MA.
[15] RSMeans (2012). Facilities Maintenance & Repair Construction Cost Data 2013.