Mold in Rented Accommodation - What Next for the UK and Ireland?
Some Thoughts on Condensation Damp and Mould in Housing
For most of us, our homes are a place of refuge and safety, a place we rest and regenerate. But for many in our society, it is a place of risk, anxiety, and even shame. Try to imagine that if you can.
The death of Awaab Ishak, a two-year-old child, as a result of respiratory conditions caused by living in a home with mould is shocking. But sadly, to anyone involved in housing, the conditions that ultimately led to his death while deeply depressing are not a surprise.
Condensation, Damp, and Mold is a huge problem and their impacts on our society are profound. And none more so than in the social and private rental sectors. It’s estimated that somewhere between a third to a half of all rented accommodation could have some degree of mould.
It affects our health and well-being, and our mental health, costs us lost days to work and education and of course, enormous amounts of money in damage to buildings, lost rent, and litigation.
Now, this winter the instinct to shut things down and seal things up is going to be stronger than ever and very understandable considering the cost of living crises. Compound this problem with heating our buildings less often or keeping them cooler to save energy and you have significantly increased the likelihood of condensation and mould.
The impacts of this winter's cost of living crises beyond the immediate misery and suffering it brings could be years of consequential damage to both human and building health.
As one example, Asthma already costs the UK over 1 Billion a year to treat, and in Ireland sees someone admitted to the hospital every 7 seconds. Asthma is a condition that is significantly exacerbated by cold and damp conditions. So, what will the extra burden of this winter be on this condition alone?
How did we end up at a point where almost half of all social and private rented accommodation has mould? That we have in our society, so many in impossible living conditions.
As simply as it can be described, it comes down to the condition of our buildings, our ability to heat them and keep them warm, remove moisture from them effectively, and the pressure we put them under. But here here some of the main ones.
Building fabric, which is the structural properties of our homes, plays a huge part. Poor energy efficiency and state of repair mean loss of heat, cooler homes and colder surfaces all contribute to conditions that cause mould. Years of under-investment in housing and the fact that the UK and Ireland have some of the poorest-performing stock in Europe means this is a big challenge.
Ventilation, the ability of our homes to manage and remove moisture, is critical in reducing risk. It’s estimated that even in modern homes, somewhere between 60% to 90% are non-compliant with even minimum standards for ventilation. Lack of proper ventilation, second to poor building fabric is one of the main factors we see in driving mould issues.
Our use of spaces has changed significantly, none more so than in the last couple of years. The more we are around in our homes and the more of us there are, the more moisture we create making it harder for our buildings to cope. Social housing is typically more densely occupied and has less space, meaning it is particularly vulnerable to this effect.
Knowledge and behavior also play a key role. Not just with tenants and the lack of understanding of some of the behaviors that cause problems like closing off or shutting down ventilation, drying clothes inside, etc. but also from professionals, people who should know better, making the same mistakes time and time again with the poor specification of products and not installing and maintaining homes and systems in a way that limits risk.
In short, years of underinvestment in housing, and a lack of skills and resources mean that fixing the problem will require a large-scale multidisciplinary approach and some serious joined-up thinking and investment.
So, what are some of the key things we can do?
Risk assess the stock
We already have much of the information we need to understand what properties are likely to have mould or be at risk of mould. These include energy performance data, housing databases that have records of previous remedial work, complaints, and inquiries, missed rent and fuel poverty risk, surveys, and more. You can very successfully combine existing information and risk profile stock as a desktop study and I have personally seen this approach identify with 100% accuracy, high-risk properties that subsequent on-site visits found mould.
Leverage the renovation wave
Within Europe and the UK, 90% of our existing buildings do not perform at the level they need to meet energy efficiency targets for 2050. There are already huge resources and focus directed at the large-scale renovation of our housing stock.
Many of the solutions proposed for these buildings also impact mould risk, so there are huge opportunities to piggyback on this work if done so intelligently. Identifying properties at risk with those that need retrofit and multiplying the return.
Get organized
Mapping out works programs within organizations can identify enormous potential to escalate mould remediation and disrepair works. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been in properties that have had a kitchen replaced recently or work done as part of a void program and they have failed to deal with ventilation or another measure that could have an impact on mould at the same time.
It’s a bit like seeing your road dug up for waterworks to see someone back two weeks later doing the same for telecoms!
Get serious
Professionals in the industry are guilty of gross obfuscation, can-kicking, and lack of interest in the problem. The importance of this should be crystal clear from the very top down, right through the supply chain.
Let’s take ventilation as a point in case.
Ventilation companies sing from the rooftops about the merits of indoor air quality and advanced ventilation while at the same time happily raking in profits from selling and installing the same old garbage bathroom and kitchen fans that are as ineffective now as they have been for the past 20 years.
Oh, and just because you slap a fancy cover on it and you can connect it to a phone doesn’t stop it being a crappy bathroom fan!
Professionals in this space, need to wake up as do housing providers and assign the proper value to effective ventilation. We know it can work if done right, but you have to pay for it I’m afraid.
Recognize the scale and complexity
In the UK, following the death of Awaab Ishak, the Regulator of Social Housing has rightly written to the housing providers asking for clear assurance and evidence they have a grip on this problem. Once this is done and the dust settles, the boards and heads of departments of these providers will then have the task of answering the what now question.
Using environmental data to properly understand and unpack the drivers of these problems so that the limited resources that everyone has can be used effectively is going to be critical.
As we move to pick off each off these problems, we have to recognize that there will have to be a spectrum of approaches, that some homes may get a wholesale retrofit, and others might just get a boiler replacement. Some properties may just need a nudge in the right direction on how to manage their home, others may need a ventilation upgrade.
If we are to have any hope of directing the multiple resources required efficiently and answering the “I have a problem, what next” question or assessing if interventions are successful in a precise way then a sophisticated approach to the data we can collect and assess out of the home through connected devices will have to accelerate.
It’s important to move beyond relative humidity from one location as a simple metric of moisture risk here. The complex and nuanced interrelationships between the drivers that cause moisture imbalance in dwellings need a sophisticated approach to environmental risk and analytics to answer them.