Lack of awareness and understanding of sustainable housing is a major issue in Malaysia. Developers are reluctant to implement sustainable housing concepts due to higher upfront costs and lower perceived profits. Additionally, stakeholders and the public have little knowledge of the benefits of sustainable housing due to insufficient education and promotion of the concept. This has led to low demand for sustainable homes and reduced quality in housing developments that claim to be sustainable. Improving awareness through education, incentives, and clearer policies is needed to address this challenge and enable wider adoption of sustainable housing practices in Malaysia.

1. School of Architectural,
Building &
Design
Sustainable Housing
Development
Topic: Lack of awareness and
understanding in sustainable
housing
Name: Moy Chin Hoong
Student ID: 0314014

2. In this 21st century, the rapid growth of economy and numbers of people
around the world has led to the invention of technologies in order to fulfill the
humans’ needs. Housing development is also being technologized by not only
using the old traditional method but it has to be green and sustainable. The
need of a high quality and comfortable housing area is very important and
essential for people especially for those in the developing countries like
Malaysia, which focuses mainly in industrialization (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013).
According to Tan (2011), “the concept of sustainability has become central not
just in environmental preservation, but also in the consideration of the quality
of development in human settlements”. Thus, this has led the topic of
“sustainable housing” becoming a hot debate topic among the citizens. But,
do they know what is actually “sustainable housing” defined as? There are
different definitions from several researchers. But as an overall, it is the
housings, which is developed with less waste and maintenance, lower
environmental impacts and costs, more re-use and recycling materials that
produce the better reliability and greater user satisfaction (Finch, 2007). “In
short, it is basically related with the three domains, which are nature,
economy and society” (Tahir & Asmawi, 2012).
This research is carried out in order to find out the challenges of implementing
the sustainability concept in housing development in Malaysia (Goh, Seow, &
Goh, 2013). Regardless of the efforts that have been done by the
government, there are still a lot of issues going on such as lack of awareness
and understanding, awareness on environment, high capital cost and energy
consumption level. Lack of awareness and understanding is the main issue,
which is going to be discussed in this study.
The idea of sustainable housing has been promoted in Malaysia many years
ago, but it is also considered as a “new” concept as the responses from
stakeholders, developers and contractors are not as good as expected. As we
all know, developers and stakeholders always take profit as their first
consideration and they want immediate return from their investment, therefore
they are not interested in sustainable housing as it is a low profit development
and it requires more upfront cost. This is the key issue that makes them not

3. willing to understand and implement the concept of sustainable housing.
Besides, government does not offer enough incentives and benefits like
subsidies for the related parties (Abidin, Yusof, & Othman, 2013). That is
another reason why the stakeholders and developers are not willing to take
the first step beyond this concept.
Moreover, lacking in enforcement is also one of the factors that cause the
stakeholders not aware about this concept. This is because government does
not encourage the stakeholders to understand and implement this concept
and there is no policy that enforces the developers to practice this concept.
Even though there are some benchmarks like Green Building Index (GBI) and
policies about sustainable housing in Malaysia, but the major amount of
developers unwilling to refer to these regulations as the policies are not clear
(Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). Besides, the policies contain a lot of rules and
regulations, which require a lot of efforts from the stakeholders and
developers.
Insufficient education is the main and direct influence that leads to lack of
understanding and awareness. As most of the stakeholders have never been
taught about sustainable housing in university, therefore they usually have
zero or only a little knowledge about this concept. Furthermore, there is a
shortage of professionals or experts with the recognition qualification, skills
and experiences in this field (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). This eventually leads
to less educational conferences and seminars about this concept. There is
also a short of referencing like books or articles, which enables the parties
related to refer instead of going to the seminar when needed (Abidin, Yusof, &
Othman, 2013). All these factors will cause the failure in delivering the
important information like the benefits and essential criteria of sustainable
housing, technologies involved and the related environmental issues.
Besides the stakeholders and developers, the customers or buyers will also
have low understanding and awareness in sustainable housing. This is
because the idea of sustainable housing is not being well promoted across

4. the country and thus they are not aware of the benefits and essentials of this
concept.
In addition, the issue of having low understanding and awareness will result in
some consequences like low market demands and low quality of sustainable
houses. First and the most important, the quality of the building will be
affected. For instant, a developer tends to develop a sustainable housing
area. But, the final products are not categorized as a green and sustainable
building as the quality of the building does not meet the standard
requirements that set by the council. This is due to less effort and commitment
given by the developer as they only have limited understanding in the
concept. Besides, the quality control of the project and the quality of the
building will also decrease since the requirements from stakeholders are not
high.
Low market demand is also one of the consequences that caused by this
issue, as the demand from societies is the critical factor that directly
influences the production of sustainable housing. The societies always think
that it is better to choose a conventional house rather than a sustainable
house due to the conventional house has a lower cost compared to the
sustainable house. Moreover, the societies are not familiar with the benefits of
sustainable housing; as a result they are reluctant to pay more (Goh, Seow, &
Goh, 2013). This will then result in a low market demand of sustainable
houses and thus the stakeholders will not have the intention to develop a
sustainable housing.
However, this issue should be solved before it is getting serious. The
government, stakeholders and societies should work hand to hand i n order to
adopt the sustainable concept throughout the country. The government
should take the lead to make changes such as providing subsidies or
incentives for the stakeholders, developers and even societies in order to get
their attentions. This will eventually increase the profits gained by the
stakeholders and developers while the buyers are able to afford the
sustainable houses at a lower price.

5. The local authorities should also work together with the government to
produce a better sustainable-related rule and regulation with clearer
information. This is to make the parties related to have a clear concept and
information about the sustainable housing. Other than that, the local
authorities should set a minimum standard for the requirement and monitor
the sustainable housing project based on the related laws and legislations in
order to maintain the quality.
Besides, the sustainable housing concept should be implanted into
youngsters’ mind through university education in order to produce more
professionals in the future. For example, this can be done by adding
“sustainable housing” as a core subject for those who are having building-
related courses like architectural, quantity surveying, civil engineering and
interior design. On the other hand, some sustainable housing articles and
books should be produced as the references for the corresponding parties. As
Benjamin Franklin stated that, “an investment in knowledge always pays the
best interest”. The government can also collaborate with the professions to
hold more campaigns and conferences to promote sustainable housing
concept among the stakeholders, developers and societies. Thus, they will be
able to aware and understand more about this concept.
According to Said, Osman, Mohd Shafiei and Tee (n.d.), sustainable housing
is the combination of fulfillment of human needs and protection of the natural
environment, which provides us a good living culture for now and also in the
future. Thus, sustainable housing is considered as environmental and social
friendly and it should be adopted for our future (Goh, Seow, & Goh, 2013). But
the implementation of sustainable housing concept in Malaysia is still in the
early stage, which there are still a lot of barriers to overcome. Hence, the
construction key parties should work cooperatively with the government and
local authorities to solve related issues in order to get holistic results in
sustainable housing.

6. Reference List
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 Tahir, M. M., & Asmawi, M. Z. (2012). Significance Of Eia Study In
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39
 Tan, T. H. (2011). Sustainability and Housing Provision in
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