What this is
Healthy housing is the idea that a dwelling’s job is not only shelter and low running cost but occupant health and wellbeing — warmth, dryness, clean air, light, space and a sense of place. In New Zealand this matters acutely because the existing stock runs cold and damp: independent studies converge on cold bedrooms (~16.4–16.5°C overnight, below the WHO 18°C minimum), high humidity, and widespread mould — conditions with measurable health costs. For a Neobiome community build, health and wellbeing are design objectives to clear, not by-products of meeting the energy code.
The evidence (NZ, triangulated)
- Cold bedrooms. SR452 found an average bedroom temperature of 16.4°C, below 18°C for 84% of the night/morning OT_048; HEEP2 found 16.5°C overnight in occupied bedrooms OT_042; HEEP1 found 17.9°C living rooms in 2005 OT_037. Three independent studies, the same cold-bedroom finding.
- Damp & mould. SR452: relative humidity above 65% for 46% of the time, with mould common in bedrooms/bathrooms, attributed to insufficient heating and/or ventilation OT_048; HEEP2 self-reports damp 33% / condensation 75% / mould 48% OT_042; LIT_044: 34% damp / 36% mould (2018 Census) with a public-health cost of ~NZ
141m/yr [[lit_044_howden-chapman-2021-housing-health|LIT_044]]. The primary burden study (Riggs et al. 2021) attributes **36,649 of ~39,000 annual hospital nights to damp/mould** — overwhelmingly the dominant condition — vs 1,834 (cold) and 806 (crowding), with ~229 deaths/yr (≈NZ1bn societal cost). LIT_045 - Wellbeing outcomes. NZ community-housing tenants report housing contributing positively to wellbeing (68–90%) and enabling other life goals (87%), with severe-mental-health hospital bed-nights falling from a mean 122 → 10/year after a housing intervention OT_003.
Design implications for Neobiome
- Warmth + dryness + ventilation together. Mould is driven by cold and humidity and poor ventilation — so a high-performance warm envelope (OT_043 H1 baseline, exceeded) must be paired with adequate ventilation (mechanical / heat-recovery) and whole-house (not just living-room) heating. RH>65% is the mould-risk line to design against. OT_048
- Whole-house warmth. The cold-bedroom finding (and >40% of bedrooms never heated, OT_042) means the design target is whole-house ≥18°C, not a heated living room and cold sleeping spaces.
- Health as avoided cost. The ~NZ$141m/yr public-health burden of substandard housing (LIT_044) reframes high-performance build cost as health investment, supporting the I01 economic case.
Wellbeing — the broader frame (beyond warmth & dryness)
Warmth, dryness and clean air are the floor, not the ceiling. The building-for-wellbeing literature frames wellbeing as multi-dimensional, with no single agreed definition, and points to NZ-appropriate lenses — the Māori models, especially Te Whare Tapa Whā (the four-walled house: taha tinana physical, taha hinengaro mental, taha whānau family, taha wairua spiritual), He Ara Waiora, and the Treasury Living Standards Framework OT_049. For a Neobiome community this reframes “habitat” as supporting physical, mental, family and spiritual wellbeing — connecting D04 to health (D06) and psychological self-sufficiency (I10), and reinforcing the Te Ao Māori-grounded design thread also raised for materials (OT_045).
Open questions / to enrich
- Target RH / air-change-rate / dew-point thresholds that prevent mould at the NZ bedroom scale (SR452 reports the problem conditions, not the solution thresholds).
- A quantified link between specific design attributes (daylight, air quality, space, nature/biophilia, acoustics) and wellbeing outcomes — SR493 maps the framework but flags this as a gap.
Connections
Links to
Referenced by
Sources (3): OT_048 · OT_049 · OT_051
EDT domains (1): D04: Sustainable Habitat & Building Technology