Heat stress, groundwater nuisance, pile rot. Social rental properties owned by housing corporations face significantly more of the effects of climate change than the average home in the Netherlands. This is evident from research by foundation Dutch Green Building Council (DGBC).
A total of 830,000 homes from 53 corporations were examined for their exposure to heat, drought, flooding and flooding. This is the first large-scale study of the effects of climate change on housing corporations in the Netherlands. The homes surveyed are owned by 53 housing associations, more than a third of all housing association homes in the Netherlands and about 10% of all homes in our country.
Compared to national
75 percent of the housing corporation homes surveyed have medium or high exposure to heat stress due to warm nights, compared to 55 percent nationwide. Groundwater nuisance (37 percent versus 27 percent) and water depth during heavy showers (33 percent versus 25 percent) also have higher exposure among the housing association homes surveyed than the national housing stock. For foundation problems such as pile rot (5 percent) and difference settlement (5 percent), exposure is low, but the potential damage per home is significant.
On a positive note, however, the exposure of the housing corporation housing surveyed to wildfire hazards is relatively low (7 percent), quite a bit lower than the national housing stock (20 percent). This is mainly related to the location of the housing corporation houses surveyed, namely in built-up areas.
Stacking of risks
You also see that climate risks often accumulate: some neighborhoods have a high exposure to multiple climate effects simultaneously, making adaptation measures more urgent. What is favorable is that corporations are often active in the same neighborhoods, which offers opportunities for cooperation between housing corporations. In 272 neighborhoods, multiple corporations are active, where at least two climate effects with a medium or higher score occur.
Challenge for housing corporations
Incidentally, tenants usually cannot do much to adapt their homes to the changing climate. For example, the vast majority of housing association housing is social housing, where tenants have less financial room to invest in measures. Moreover, the ZAV (Self-Assembly Arrangements) policy limits the type of measure a tenant could take. Making housing associations more resilient to current and future climate effects is therefore also an important social task.
