Circular strategies for social housing associations: Lessons from a Dutch case

The aim of this research is to explore how social housing associations can introduce circular strategies and integrate social elements, next to ecological elements, within these strategies. In order to investigate this aim, this paper first explores the circular strategy options that can be adopted by housing associations. Thereafter, the paper explores how social elements can be integrated within these strategies via the establishment of relationships with communities in the network of housing associations. By performing an in-depth case study, we identified potential circular strategies for housing associations and indicate how community relationships could be established within these strategies. The findings highlight that community relationships in the vision formulation and activities involved in the execution of circular strategies may assist in creating synergies between the ecological aims of circular strategies and the perspectives and needs of communities. On the other hand, the results indicate that not establishing relationships with communities or only establishing relationships in the strategy outcomes may be detrimental to both community needs and the ecological aims of circular strategies. •Circular strategies need to integrate both social and ecological elements.•The identified circular strategy options only limitedly included social elements.•Social elements could be integrated through relationships with communities.•The type of community relationships effected the integration of social elements.•The main challenge was to find synergies between social and ecological elements.