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Present directives in municipal housing have been imposed by the Public Municipal Housing Companies Act, put into force on January 2011 in Sweden. The Act, states that public municipal housing companies (PMHCs) should run their operation on “businesslike principles,” e.g., commensurate with new public management. The purpose of this paper is to determine if forthcoming practices are apparent in the owner directives that govern operations of these companies.

The research is both exploratory and qualitative in nature and utilizes in-depth case studies of 20 selected PMHCs. Observations for 2013 were compared with similar documents collected ten years prior (2004) using commercially available NVivo software to qualitatively analyze information.

Results suggest that statistically significant changes in directives have occurred and adaptation to the new Act may already have started to take place at this relatively early date.

Insofar as Sweden might be a model for other countries interested in extending their efforts in managing public housing, observations here provide some insights into possible results.

This is the first attempt to determine the impact that complying with “businesslike principles” has on operations in Swedish housing, which tends to be a model of effectiveness in the global housing sector.

Drawing on paradox theory, this study explores how ambidextrous sustainability relates to organisational performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, and how this relationship is contingent on the organisational structure of these organisations.

The study relies on the data collected from Swedish municipal housing corporations. These data sources consist of a survey sent to the management team members in Swedish municipal housing corporations, financial and non-financial archival data on these corporations, interviews with the management team and board members, and observations of meetings involving the management team and board of directors at a Swedish municipal housing corporation. Quantitative data of the study were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and linear multiple regression analysis. Qualitative data were analysed employing deductive thematic analysis and were used to illustrate and discuss the results of the quantitative analysis.

The quantitative findings show that ambidextrous sustainability, i.e. the alignment between an explorative orientation and an exploitative orientation towards sustainability, has a weakly positive relationship with financial performance and a positive relationship with social performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations. The study further shows that a high level of the structural element “connectedness” weakened the relationship between the ambidextrous sustainability and financial performance of the organisation in the study. In contrast, a lower level of connectedness reinforced and strengthened this relationship. Our qualitative material illustrates how the quantitative findings could be explained by the interaction between the board of directors and the management team of these hybrid organisations.

The study shows how ambidextrous sustainability, employed for conceptualisation of the sustainability strategy in hybrid organisations, represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, can impact on facets of performance (i.e. financial, social and environmental) differently. The study further highlights the importance of organisational structures in these relationships in a hybrid context.

Federal agencies rely heavily on the annual audit report to monitor the stewardship of public funds. This study examines the impact of audit delay on the monitoring of low-income housing projects. Specifically, project characteristics correlated with delayed audit reports are determined. Significant differences between projects filing audit reports on time and those filing late are also analyzed. Importantly, samples of both Farmers’ Home Administration (FmHA) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) projects are examined, with private and public/municipal housing projects included in each sample. The results of this study have monitoring applications for users of the audit report and implications for federal regulators.

This work is initiated under the premise that reliable evaluation methods are necessary to ensure investments in energy conservation, and the purpose of this paper is to contribute to that literature. It describes some pilot changes and their impact in an actual field study oriented toward upgrading municipal public housing (MPH) units.

The research for this paper was connected to an MPH refurbishment project situated in northern Sweden. The overall energy efficiency goal within the project was a 40-50 percent reduction in the supplied energy for central electricity, domestic hot water and space heating. In order to evaluate if these goals were feasible, a measurement system was installed in a pilot building and in a neighboring building used as a reference. The evaluation was conducted by comparing the post-retrofit performance of the pilot building with the performance of the reference building when it was kept in its initial state (a comparison possible because both buildings had initial similarities).

Impacts could be quantified insofar as a reference (control) building in the same environment was sustained for comparison purposes. A 43 percent improvement was observed in energy utilization in the pilot building compared to its reference companion (99.8 vs 174.5 kWh/m² per year). When the approach described herein was applied to new construction, the present goal of 65 kWh/m² was approached as measured by Swedish standards.

Results should be of interest to academics in the housing field, professionals involved in refurbishment and residents themselves, renting MPH flats.

This study is unique in the following ways: first, it really was a field experiment with a control, thus it did not have any exogenous interference in interpreting results. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind. The second interesting characteristic was that results were subsequently used in the refurbishment of other buildings in the complex and in the construction of others. The major value of the paper may be associated with its timing. It comes at a time when the Kyoto agreement has raised concerns about sustainability, but also at a time when many buildings are facing a need for refurbishment.

This paper aims to consider the current situation of relocation in Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in the context of past examples and post-disaster housing relocation projects in other countries.

Information about international cases of post-disaster housing relocation was gathered though desk and literature review, supplemented by field visits to the sites for direct observation and interviews with people involved in the relocation projects.

To be successful, residential relocation must consider livelihood, especially in regards to location. Involvement of the residents in the planning and decision making process creates housing relocation projects that better meet residents’ needs. Japan faces some unique challenges, yet shares commonalities with other countries, for example, in tsunami-stricken fishing areas. Housing relocation in Tohoku must strive to be accountable to the needs of the residents and the specific contexts of their communities.

There is still a limited amount of literature in English that considers the issues of relocation in recovery after the GEJE in an international context, especially comprehensive comparisons with multiple countries. Although this paper does not deal with each international case in great detail, the comparison provides a good overview of the key issues for residents in post-disaster relocation, and suggests how lessons from international cases could be applied to the challenges that Japan currently faces in relocation planning in the Tohoku region.

The aim of this article is to explore the everyday life experiences of elderly (+70 years) living with young locals and refugees in a collaborative housing project before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden. The paper discusses the importance of the spatial dimension in the conceptualization of social integration.

The main method is a qualitative case study based on observations of settings, document/video analysis, online diary entries made by ten residents and eight semi- structured interviews conducted with the residents.

SällBo was conceived as a new type of collaborative housing in which elderly, young locals and refugees share common spaces with the aim of enabling social integration. In this context, COVID-19 interrupted the ongoing processes of living together after four months of moving to the house. The three main themes that emerge from the empirical material are (1) changes in the use of common spaces and social interactions, (2) residents' resilient coping responses during the pandemic and (3) insights for future design of collaborative housing based on their experience. The pandemic caused a moment of institutional vacuum, which triggered the agency of the residents whilst developing social bonds and social bridges among them.

Social connection created in everyday life at SällBo's common spaces has triggered processes of social integration.

The ongoing processes of social integration have included the spatial dimension. We understand social integration as a process that involves people from different generations and ethnical backgrounds, which takes place in common spaces and everyday life as different modes of socialization.

Social sustainability is a concept frequently referred to in public debates concerning how to construct the governance of future societies. The interpretations of its meaning, however, are ambiguous, and practices often dubious. Confronting top-down technocratic governance structures, this paper aims to argue for for tripartite collaborations between residents, higher education institutions (HEIs) and local government, as an approach toward social sustainability that involves residents’ interests in local governance.

This study argues that a specific time-spatial method of analysis can benefit the co-creation of knowledge as it passes through the spectrum of resident–HEI–local government. It provides a way for resident perceptions to become structured knowledge that originates from the residents, effectively engendering a bottom-up governance structure.

This study shows how to include residents in policymaking and implementation processes as co-creators of knowledge, and thereby displays the possibility of examining knowledge and competence within municipal projects for social sustainability.

The model developed in this study can be used as a methodological instrument to analyze and expand resident participation in local social sustainability work. It thereby provides a toolbox for inclusive policymaking and strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically major factors that affect housing prices in Istanbul, Turkey using the classification and regression tree (CART) approach.

The data set was collected from various internet pages of real estate agencies during June 2007. The CART approach was then applied to derive main results and to make implications with regard to the housing market in Istanbul, Turkey.

The CART results indicate that sizes, elavators, existance of security, existance of central heating units and existance of view are the most important variables crucially affecting housing prices in Istanbul. The average price of houses in Istanbul was found to be 373,372.36 New Turkish Liras. The average size of a house was 138.37 m². The average age of houses is 15.07 years old with the average number of rooms being 3.11. The average number of baths is 1.43 and average number of toilets is 1.22. Only 5 percent of homes have storage space, 45 percent of homes have parking space, 64 percent of homes are heated with furnace, whereas only 29 percent of homes are used central heating system. Among the 31 variables employed in this study, it was concluded size, elavator, security, central heating unit and view are the most important factors that have impact on housing prices in housing market in Istanbul.

Future research and analysis of housing market in Istanbul and in Turkey can benefit from the method used in this study and findings derived from this research to come up with more general model(s) to include more houses in a wide range of regions in Turkey to analyze the determinants of housing prices in Turkey in general.

Examining housing prices using the CART model is relatively new in the field of housing economics. Additionally, this study is the first to use the CART model to analyze housing market in Istanbul and in Turkey and derive valuable housing policies to be used by the authorities.