20 Degrees is a collaborative healthy housing programme, working to ensure homes in the Bay of Plenty can achieve 20°C.

The programme is delivered by Sustainability Options. The social enterprise carries out home assessments, identifying the issues preventing homes from reaching 20°C – whether that be significant structural concerns such as rotting floors or dilapidated roofs, repairs and maintenance needed like insulation, broken windows, draughts and leaks, or behaviours that need to be changed around moisture management, ventilation and heating.

To solve these problems, the programme collaborates with other appropriate healthy housing programmes to achieve a collective outcome that benefits the home occupants – connecting them with any services or subsidies available, whilst helping them with a range of options. 20 Degrees then fills the gaps of any issues left unresolved, typically the minor repairs and maintenance, by fixing these at no or low cost to home occupants.

A prerequisite for the programme is that participants must be open to engaging with the education component of 20 Degrees – workshops and DIY skill sessions that build the knowledge needed to keep homes healthy after these interventions are completed.

Through this it is hoped that homes will not only be healthy, resulting in less hospital admissions and reduced costs to the health system, but a shift in culture can be achieved; one where 20°C is the only minimum temperature that’s acceptable.