FOSTERING RESILIENCE IN COMMUNITIES IN HOUSING RENEWAL PROJECTS - ICON CONSTRUCTION
SOcial Impact Advisory & Strategy • ENGAGEMENT & COMMUNICATIONS DESIGN • TRAINING & CAPACITY BUILDING • FACILITATION
The Challenge
Under the Ground Lease Model 2 (GLM2) program, Homes Victoria is delivering 1,370 new homes across South Yarra, Prahran, Hampton East, and Port Melbourne - a partnership between the public, private, and community housing sectors. The consortium, led by Icon Construction, is also targeting Green Star Buildings certification, including a new and largely untested ‘Community Resilience’ credit from the Green Building Council of Australia
This credit asked project teams to demonstrate how their developments could foster social, environmental and cultural resilience - a challenge that went far beyond bricks and mortar, requiring a method to measure and plan for how communities adapt, connect and thrive in the face of shocks and stresses.
The Task
Amplifier Collective was engaged to design and deliver a Community Resilience Framework and a suite of site-specific Community Resilience Plans for the four GLM2 projects.
Each plan needed to meet Green Star requirements, reflect its local context, and provide a replicable structure for future use across Homes Victoria’s portfolio and future Icon bids.
The work was also intended to operationalise social impact thinking - turning abstract concepts like “community resilience” into actionable, measurable plans that aligned with design, construction, and long-term tenancy management.
Our Approach
Amplifier’s process combined research rigour, system mapping, and co-design:
Framework design: Developed a GLM2-wide Community Resilience Framework — adapting Minderoo Foundation’s national model into a place-based tool integrating five environments (Health & Safety, Social, Cultural, Economic, Natural, Built) and five guiding principles (Community-led, Risk-aware, Inclusive, Integrated, Accountable)
Local insight: Conducted a 5Ps analysis (Place, People, Policy, Politics, Partnerships) for each site to shape context-specific priorities.
Partnership engagement: Collaborated with consortium partners including Community Housing Limited, Women’s Property Initiatives, and Aboriginal Community Housing (Vic) to embed housing operator perspectives and social service integration.
Pilot development: Prepared a detailed Community Resilience Plan (Version 1) for the Hampton East site, aligning resilience actions with other Green Star credits such as Climate Adaptation and Movement & Place to ensure format was effective, acceptable and scalable.
Co-design and testing: Delivered workshops with a “mirror community” representing likely resident profiles to test assumptions and ensure actions reflected lived experience.
The Result
Amplifier produced:
A Community Resilience Framework adopted by Icon across all four GLM2 sites — now serving as a reference model for future social sustainability initiatives.
Four Community Resilience Plans, each providing:
Local analysis of acute shocks (e.g., heatwaves, floods, pandemics) and chronic stresses (e.g., family violence, economic insecurity, social isolation).
Resident-led resilience actions, such as safety walks, community gardening, skills exchange and peer wellbeing programs.
Stakeholder map including partnership opportunities and relevant community organisations.
Cross-links with sustainability and transport planning, to integrate social and environmental resilience thinking.
Metrics for tracking community capacity-building and wellbeing over time
The work also defined a pathway for future community ownership, with each plan designed to evolve post-occupancy as residents move in and take the lead on updating local resilience goals.