4. A Complex Sector and Implications for Getting to Outcomes

What are complex issues?

Issues can be thought of as simple, complicated or complex (30).

• Simple issues - there is broad general agreement on the issue and how to address it, with the same ‘generic solution’ easily replicated many times over with a high degree of certainty (e.g. baking a cake by following a recipe).
• Complicated issues - solutions can be found with some specialist technical assistance (e.g. flying to the moon).
• Complex issues - outcomes are far less certain, as is the agreed pathway to success. An analogy often used to describe complex issues is raising a child. Children are distinct individuals with very different personalities. Strategies successfully used to raise your first child guarantee no success of automatically working for your second or subsequent children!

What makes an issue complex?

The Stacey Matrix in Diagram 1 is one of a number of tools for thinking about and understanding complex or wicked issues (31).

Why healthy homes is a complex issue

Using the framework presented in diagram 1, healthy homes can be viewed as a complex issue or sector. Over the last decade, many millions of dollars has been spent on insulation retrofits around the country.

Significant investment is still required to ‘retrofit’ the nation’s cold and damp housing stock. There are multiple players are involved (32), with large differences across New Zealand in terms of:

• communities
• climates
• housing typologies
• households needing to be reached.

Difficult to frame

Extending diagram 1 (above), healthy homes has been difficult to frame, often seen as being about energy reduction, air quality, economic development, community infrastructure development and health gain – or a combination of these at various times.

Many root causes

Many root causes can be attributed to the unhealthy nature of New Zealand’s housing stock including:

• poverty
• culture of putting up with cold in New Zealand
• un-insulated older housing stock
• housing construction and design
• historically low cost of energy
• poorly maintained housing stock
• shame
• mistrust of people who retrofit homes
• lack of appropriate building regulations
• apathy
• weak understanding of investment benefits and tradeoffs
• energy poverty.

Multiple stakeholders

As alluded to above, making homes healthier involves multiple stakeholders including:

• landlords
• house owners
• renters
• central and local government
• community organisations
• philanthropic and energy funders
• health, energy, housing and social development sectors

Emergent

The best ways to tackle the retrofit problem are emergent, with most effective and resource efficient strategies still being developed. Connecting with landlords and New Zealand’s poorest and coldest households is proving easier said than done, meaning different kinds of engagement and incentive strategies continue to be tested.

Unique solutions

The diversity of climates, communities, houses and households across New Zealand means that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work for all communities - unique solutions need to be developed. The way healthy homes outcomes are visioned and delivered locally need to reflect the partners, context and cultures of each different community. This is why initiatives in the Far North are different to those in the Hutt Valley and Christchurch. A successful healthy homes retrofit model used in one community is not automatically guaranteed to succeed in another.

Difficult to eliminate

The problems that healthy homes initiatives address are difficult to eliminate - the scale of the problem in New Zealand requires a potential $5 billion or more long-term investment and a complex analysis of private and public costs and benefits. The magnitude of the problem also means there are no short-term, quick fixes.

Technically complicated

Healthy homes is also technically complicated - with the funding available, there is still discussion as to the ‘right’ standard to insulate to, with which products, and for what level of net benefit. Perceptions and understandings of what constitutes a healthy home are also evolving over time.

Socially complicated

Healthy homes is socially complicated, with many diverse stakeholder opinions and ideas on how to best:

• get landlords to buy in
• change the culture of putting up with cold temperatures inside homes
• get multiple agencies across multiple sectors to collaborate effectively
• more effectively engage with communities that are hard to reach.

In a nutshell, complex issues mean different situations require different solutions.

Implications for achieving healthy homes outcomes

As outlined above, with simple problems or issues, you can define the problem and strategically develop actions, timeframes and milestones along your path to success. However, the same cannot be said for complex issues like healthy homes.

In the complex space, action planning and problem solving are generally non-linear and outcomes far from certain (33). Strategic plans, while useful to undertake, provide no definite recipe for success and should be viewed as guides rather than rule books.

Cause and effect of individual interventions are difficult to predict, with unanticipated effects from new policy and programmes frequency arising. This requires those working together to be proactive and responsive to what they see changing and/or working/not working – and adapt accordingly.

In addition, positive changes to complex problems generally flow from a range of innovative and organic actions rather than increased funding for “more of the same.”