The management of multi-apartment high rise housing stock: localizing SDG 11 and the NUA

The training event focuses on a critical maintenance and management problem affecting the multi-apartment residential buildings. The adoption of policies targeting the existing housing stock is part and parcel of the localization of the Sustainable Development Goal 11 and the New Urban Agenda-NUA, particularly when it increases the quality and quantity of housing, and promotes compact and well-connected urban development. Thus, the supply of housing opportunities in the existing housing stock is strategic for the realization of the NUA and the SDG11.

It has become apparent that in many parts of the world homeowners living in multi-apartment residential buildings are not assuming their responsibility to maintain the buildings where they live due to inadequate institutional and regulatory systems, poor enforcement of laws and regulations, poverty and low income of its inhabitants combined with the lack of tradition and awareness about living in vertical condominiums comprised of common goods and spaces that call for shared responsibilities, rights and obligations.

This is common problem in cities of Central and Eastern Europe where significant part of the housing stock is comprised of multi-apartment residential buildings. Massive privatization of the housing stock that took place from the 90's onwards when countries embarked into a transition from a centrally planned economy to a free market economy was followed by the disappearance of state-sponsored maintenance and management systems. This led to a rapid and continuous process of deterioration of the housing stock with adverse impacts on the quality of life in cities. In addition to that, the endemic lack of maintenance has exposed the fragility of particular building technologies used during the post-world war II decades that has caused upsurge in energy costs and more pressure on household incomes and their ability to pay for homeownership.

Increasingly, this is becoming a problem in cities of the developing world as well, where public housing frequently adopts the high-rise multi-apartment residential building typology without adequately preparing the new residents for a new way of living subject to financial and social obligations to organize and pay for the maintenance and management of their common goods and properties. Policies frequently neglect the need to harness mechanisms and systems to ensure that the facades, roofs, foundations, entrance halls, lifts, collective infrastructures and the adjacent land are well taken care of. The need to build a financial reserve for cyclical maintenance and capital refurbishments in the future imposes the need for self-organization of homeowners and the existence of property management systems to ensure that the multi-apartment housing stock is well maintained and managed.

The training event will explore this vast array of solutions and approaches, both in institutional, organizational and legislative formats, but also the policies and financial instruments as well as subsidies that can make possible the establishment of a long-lasting property management and maintenance of the multi-apartment housing stock which also includes energy efficiency measures.