Whether the national policy to ensure the safety of buildings will contribute to SDG “Safe and Affordable Housing”Whether the national policy to ensure the safety of buildings will contribute to SDG “Safe and Affordable Housing”​  Photo from the archive of demontaza.lv. taken during the dismantling of a multi-apartment residential building in the municipality of Krāslava in July 2019. ​ The State Audit Office of Latvia (SAI Latvia) carried out a compliance/performance audit “Does one meet with the preconditions for the compliance with the requirements for the safety of the buildings managed by the local governments and launched into operation?” in December 2019 to assess whether the policy stipulated by the state and its implementation ensured safe housing. Safe and affordable housing is also one of the goals for sustainable development of the United Nations (UN) to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable and essential services at affordable prices and slums fixed. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 11.1 aims at ensuring access to adequate, safe, and affordable housing for all by 2030. Image from un.org. Safe housing in the context of global indicators is “Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing” or the proportion of people living in households without at least one of the following conditions met: access to adequate water, segregated (individual for each household) access to sanitation, adequate living space (not overcrowded), durable housing, and safety of ownership. One evaluates the following criteria to assess the durability of housing: -        Structural stability of the building; -        Appropriate building supplies for walls, roofing, and floor; -        Compliance with the requirements of construction standards; -        The building is not worn and torn; -        The building does not require significant repairs; -        The housing is not located in a dangerous site, on slopes, near harmful objects (railway, highway, airport, or power lines), in areas with a high risk of flooding or toxic waste. In their turn, indicators for safe housing set by the European Union (EU) mean housing without significant damage such as leaking roofs, damp walls, floors or foundations, rotten window frames and floors. Latvia has recognised the safe and affordable housing for all as a topical goal. Every year, Latvia collects information on living conditions in Latvia, including the proportion of the urban population living in housing with significant damage, and that is the fourth-highest proportion among the EU Member States. Based on that, the Latvian Supreme Audit Institution looked into whether existing and planned government measures contributed to the achievement of SDG “Safe and Affordable Housing” and reduced the proportion of the urban population living in houses with significant damage (leaking roofs, damp walls, floors or foundations, rotten window frames and floors). ​ The auditors assessed how the SDG “Safe and Affordable Housing” was integrated into the national development planning and budgeting system: -        Whether national strategies, policies, and plans are reviewed by identifying areas covered by SDG; -        Whether the goals and tasks set in national strategies, policies, and plans are compared with the SDG; -        Whether the means for achieving national goals are identified and determined; -        Whether an institutional framework for SDG integration is set up (at all government agencies and levels by ensuring institutional coordination and integrated action).   The audit discovered that the top hierarchical document for national development planning, that is, the draft National Development Plan 2021- 2027, included the goals and tasks related to the achievement of SDG “Safe and Affordable Housing”. However, the Ministry responsible for housing policy has not developed any further action plan with measures to achieve those goals that raises legitimate concerns about institutional readiness. One of the audit conclusions was that such an action plan was crucial in a situation where existing policies, (laws and regulations, financial support instruments) and other measures to ensure quality housing, have failed to deliver the expected results. For a comprehensive insight into the housing situation, the auditors assessed the readiness of the state to achieve the SDG in development planning and institutional terms but also assessed whether the existing policy was appropriate for safe housing:   -        Whether the owners and managers of housing (multi-apartment residential dwelling houses) meet the obligations specified in the laws and regulations and there were no safety-affecting and other significant damages in the housing (leaking roofs, damp walls, floors or foundations, rotten window frames and floors); -        Whether the supervisory authorities control the technical condition of the housing  and act when they establish that the housing is unsafe; -        Whether the solvency of the population is adequate to prevent damage and, if not, whether state and local government support instruments can help providing safe housing to the population. Responsibilities of homeowners and managers The audit included a random checkup of 6% multi-apartment residential buildings managed by ten local and regional governments during the audit to determine whether homeowners and managers were fulfilling their responsibilities. This audit sample size was established, taking into account the consideration that each subsequent unit would not change the conclusion due to the trend observed at the planning stage. Through detailed document reviews, interviews, and the use of expert work, the auditors checked that the state-owned or municipal enterprises that maintained the buildings were fulfilling their responsibilities such as inspecting the house, planning repairs, requesting financial resources from the owners, and then carrying out the work, as well as whether the maintainer performed emergency repairs if those damages required immediate action because they endangered the safety of the population. The auditors reviewed the mandatory annual inspection reports prepared by homeowners and managers where they compiled information on the damage that recurred from year to year, and therefore nobody had remedied it. The audit examined the repair plans and compared them with the damage found in the inspection reports to check whether the maintainer had ever planned to eliminate the identified damage. They also examined the documents requesting the fee for the maintenance of the building to verify whether the maintainer had requested financial resources from the homeowners to carry out the work. The examination resulted in a finding that the managers did not determine the technical condition and damage of the building at all in most cases, or, even if they had detected such damage, they did not prepare repair plans and did not request the homeowners to finance those repairs. In several cases, owners were required to pay a very minimum fee, which can only cover the salary of the maintainer and certain sanitary measures. Inadequately built chimneys, which caused fire risks, were one of the most pressing problems identified in the maintenance of houses during the audit. Aiming to demonstrate how crucial preventing such damage and rebuilding the chimneys or preventing other chimney-related damages were to the homeowners and managers, the auditors requested information from the State Fire and Rescue Service about fires that had occurred for those very reasons. As several managers did not meet the obligation to inspect the dwelling and determine its technical condition, an expert - a civil engineer, was engaged in the audit to assess the fulfilment of the maintainer’s duties, who determined the damage in the dwelling house. Monitoring the safety of buildings In Latvia, the supervision of the technical safety condition of housing is entrusted to local and regional government institutions. When assessing during the audit whether the supervisory authorities control the technical condition of the housing and what one should do if the dwelling is found unsafe: -        The supervisory authorities were interviewed on the criteria according to which they selected the buildings where safety checks were performed; -        Control plans of supervisory institutions were requested to verify whether they provided the planned safety check of the housing; -        The reports of the supervisory authorities regarding the performed inspections and the decisions taken were examined to check in particular whether they also made the decisions motivating the owners for the prevention of damage in the dwelling. The inspections of the houses by supervisory authorities are not systematic - the audit found that the supervisory authorities perform safety checks only at the initiative of the residents or by inspecting slums where the residents do not live. The technical condition of the dwelling may pose threat to the life and health of the residents. On the other hand, if the supervisory authority has carried out an inspection, it does not take decisions that would motivate to repair the damage of the housing. During the audit, the auditors also requested information from the State Fire and Rescue Service on the fires in the multi-apartment houses. Auditors checked whether the supervisory authorities inspected the building after the fire to ensure that the fire had not affected the safety of the building. Support mechanisms available to the population While assessing whether the solvency of the population is adequate to prevent damage and, if not, whether national and local government support instruments can help in providing safe housing to the population, the auditors: -        Obtained data from the Central Statistical Bureau on the average net wage in a particular local or regional government; -        Found costs from the repair plans drafted by house managers how much repairing the most common damages indicated in the inspection reports would cost (roof repairs, replacement of utilities) and calculated what fee house owners would pay in the next three years to prevent the most significant damage to the house; -        Compiled information on the available state and municipal financial support and found that it was not available or its amount was disproportionate to the required investments in housing. Conclusions The audit concluded that the laws and regulations stipulating the obligation to maintain the safety of housing were not observed and the supervisory authorities did not prevent failure to meet the regulations. Financial support instruments are not sufficient as maintenance of the buildings has not been given due attention for years, and major investments are required, but the population cannot afford them. Such comprehensive/ integrated audit approach, which, on the one hand, makes assessing the effectiveness of public housing policy and the readiness of institutions to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals possible, and, on the other hand, provides evidence of policy deficiencies and consequences in individual local and regional governments and houses, delivers an accurate diagnostics of the current situation and creates good preconditions for communicating the audit results to both policymakers and implementers, as well as to the population. The SAI Latvia expects that the audit results serve as a timely reminder to policymakers that integrating the SDG into the national development and budget planning requires a simultaneous reassessment of the relevance of existing policy and its past performance to the achievement of the goals. The implementation of the audit recommendations will eliminate the chance to include existing inefficient measures into policy planning documents and promote both access to safe housing and sufficient progress towards achievement of other SDGs, thus contributing to the sustainable development of Latvia and the world as a whole. ​ ​ Images from the archive of the State Audit Office. ​