Who keeps the benefit of a warmer rented home?

A retrofit can improve a building without distributing its benefits fairly among current tenants, owners, future occupants, and public funders. This methods note develops a distributional account using Davis’s original appliance-adoption analysis, Fowlie and colleagues’ weatherisation evaluation, and the Magenta Book. A fictional rent-and-bill example distinguishes lower energy expenditure from lower total occupancy costs, while an underheated household illustrates the difference between reduced consumption and improved comfort. The analysis maps authority, payments, disruption, maintenance, and benefit timing, and separates participant transfers from societal resource costs. No housing performance or savings are estimated. Its practical implication is that credible retrofit offers need transparent charging, protection, operational responsibility, and evaluation of who actually receives the intended housing outcomes.