Housing Improvements,Perceived Housing Quality and Psychosocial Benefits From the Home

In advanced countries, where many of the most deleterious physical health effects of poor housing have been eradicated or substantially reduced, there has been increasing interest in mental health and psychosocial benefits as housing outcomes. Recently available data, based on a large-scale survey of social renters in Glasgow, have offered the opportunity to explore the psychosocial benefits of home in previously unavailable detail, over a range of property types and housing improvement interventions. Findings indicate that home improvements have mediating effects upon the psychosocial benefits, which occupants derive from their homes via their impacts upon perceived home quality. However, landlord relations and the quality of the wider neighbourhood within which improvements take place are shown to be important moderators of this relationship. In particular, landlords' overall service performance, how they keep tenants informed and how they take tenants' views on board, all make a difference to perceptions of home quality and to psychosocial status and control.     

The meaning of ‘home’ in contemporary english culture

This paper develops an earlier and more speculative article on the meaning of the home by drawing on material generated in a recent household survey in three English towns. It first considers the frequently repeated view that men experience home as haven while women experience it more negatively as a place of work and entrapment. No evidence is found to support this view, for although they divide domestic work unevenly between them, men and women seem to express very similar sentiments about their homes. Next the paper looks at the significance of age and shows that home becomes more important to people as they grow older. Thirdly, it considers the significance of tenure. Here it is found that home ownership does not ‘privatise’ people in terms of their life styles (as critics have often imagined), but it does create the basis for a stronger sense of ‘ontological security’ than is found among tenants. Finally, the paper shows very little difference in the cultural meaning of the home in different parts of the country. It is concluded that, although survey evidence like this is limited in its scope and validity, the findings do indicate that we should reconsider some of the myths which have often been taken for granted in the literature on home ownership.     

Intergenerational family support for ‘Generation Rent’: the family home for socially disengaged young people

This paper critically discusses the concept of intergenerational family support in housing for young people. Recognizing increased difficulties faced by the younger generation in the housing market, this paper highlights that support from older family members is increasingly important. Nonetheless, it is critiqued that the role of the family home has been largely ignored in the current ‘generation rent’ discourse. By drawing on recent youth studies debates, this paper argues living in the family home could be an important form of support in housing, especially for marginalized youth. This paper presents insights from qualitative studies in Hong Kong and Scotland and analyses interview accounts of socially disengaged young people. It reflects how remaining at the family home could be interpreted as intergenerational support, and further elicits complexities in expectations, negotiations and emotions involved. This analysis offers new evidence and a more nuanced perspective of intergenerational family support in housing research.     

Home is Where the House is: The Meaning of Home for People Sleeping Rough

Contributors to the housing field broadly agree that home is a multi-dimensional concept. Indeed, informed by the proposition that home and housing should not be conflated, the social, psychological and emotional elements of home have been well documented. Home is thought to be subjectively experienced. As such, some have shown that people defined as homeless may not actually feel homeless, but rather experience their accommodation or situation as home. This paper is based on ethnographic research with a group of people sleeping rough in Brisbane, Australia. It argues that their problematic experiences residing in public places, together with their biographies of feeling disconnected from society, underpinned their ideas of home. For people in this study, housing and home were synonymous. The physical structure of a house was important to assume control over their day-to-day lives. Home, however, stood for something beyond housing. Home was constructed as a signifier of normality, and as a commitment to participation in Australian society.     

Home ownership,mortgages and psychological distress

Although many studies have established that owning a home is associated with a variety of health benefits (lower mortality and morbidity rates), important gaps in our understanding of the relationship between housing tenure and health remain. In particular, previous research has tended to rely upon single, binary measures of housing tenure (home owners versus renters). These broad categories do not capture the heterogeneity that exists within housing tenure classifications. This paper uses an expanded measure to differentiate home owners with mortgages, from those who do not have mortgages and from those who live in rental accommodation. The results reveal a gradient in housing tenure and psychological distress; individuals in rental situations report the highest levels of distress, home owners without mortgages the lowest levels. Moreover, housing tenure modifies the impact of stress on distress in these data. The findings are interpreted in the context of changes to housing policy in Canada, and the economic climate during the period in which these data were collected. Future research directions are discussed.     

No Home Away from Home: A Qualitative Study of Care Leavers' Perceptions and Experiences of ‘Home’

This paper explores the cultural and biographical specificity of home by examining the connections between young people's experiences of out-of-home care and their definitions of home. The paper draws on 77 in-depth interviews with young people who had lived away from their families in the Australian out-of-home care system. The paper applies a psycho-social conceptualisation of ‘home’ to argue that home was a crucial symbol through which these young people imagined a less challenging future and claimed identities of ‘being normal’. The majority remembered their time in out-of-home care as a time of instability and insecurity in terms of both housing and relationships; they did not feel at home in these contexts. These histories informed young people's experiences and imagining of home and their sense of identity within and after out-of-home care, as they defined home as fundamentally different from out-of-home care. Their definitions incorporated shelter, emotional well-being, control, routine, caring relationships and stability.     

The Meaning of Home and Its Implications on Alternative Tenures: A Malaysian Perspective

The discourse on the meaning of home is largely centred on the Western experiences and perspectives, producing insights into the economic and psycho-social aspects of home, with less attention on the Eastern context. This paper explores the emotive meaning of home from the perspective of Malaysia, a nation of homeowners. Gurney’s view of home as an emotional “warehouse” framed this inquiry, supporting the notion of feelings associated with the dwelling being created, deposited and drawn by its occupants. This paper represents part of a larger housing study into an alternative housing tenure for Malaysia that argues that the sense of home can be independent of housing tenure. This paper reports the meaning of home as derived from 10 diarists who have been actively involved in creating the “home” and were therefore capable to describe the process of emotional appropriation of their lived space. Findings suggested that the process of assigning meaning to home was dependent on diarists’ feelings, perceptions, attachments and relations regarding their lived space. Diarists mainly associated their emotive construction of home with family-centred activities and space, which took place in both the micro-sense (within the dwelling) and the macro-sense (the neighbourhood).     

Establishing stability: exploring the meaning of ‘home’ for women who have experienced intimate partner violence

There is evidence that involuntary housing instability may undermine health and well-being. For women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV), achieving stability is likely as important for other groups, but can be challenging. Through our analysis of 41 interviews with women who have experienced low income and IPV, we argue that definitions of housing stability are multifaceted and for many centred on a shared understanding of the importance of creating an environment of “home”. We found that obtaining housing that satisfied material needs was important to women. However, in asking women to define what housing stability meant to them, we found that other factors related to ontological security and the home, such as safety, community, and comfort, contributed to women’s experiences of stability. Through our discussion of the importance these women placed on establishing stable homes, we argue that future research on women’s experiences with housing stability and IPV should include definitions of stability that capture both material security and women’s experiences with building emotionally stable homes.     

Moving Out of Home Ownership in Later Life: The Influence of the Family and Housing Careers

Home ownership is often regarded as the preferred housing tenure; however, situations in parallel life-course careers might make moving to a rental home necessary or attractive to home owners. Retrospective data from the SHARELIFE survey were used to study the short- and long-term impact of situations and disruptions in the family and housing careers on leaving home ownership at middle (45–64) and older ages (65–80) in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. We found that directly after separation and widowhood, the likelihood of leaving home ownership was the greatest. However, more than 10 years after separation and widowhood, individuals were still significantly more likely to leave ownership than those in their first marriage. Furthermore, late first childbirth and early first-time home ownership were associated with lower chances of leaving home ownership. We conclude that situations and changes in family and housing careers have both a short-term and a long-term impact on the likelihood of moving out of home ownership.     

Access to homeownership in urban China: A comparison between skilled migrants and skilled locals in Nanjing

Radical economic restructuring has resulted in a large flow of skilled migrants into ever-expanding Chinese cities in the past decade. Dreaming of owning a home in the destination city, skilled migrants compete with locals on the housing market. It is important to know how and when people acquire their home and, by the same token, what prevents others from doing so. Based on the life histories of 804 skilled workers in Nanjing and employing event-history analysis, this paper examines the differences in the timing of entry into homeownership between skilled migrants and their local counterparts and identifies the factors in parallel life course careers that contribute to these differences. Results show a delayed but accelerated increase in the homeownership rate for skilled migrants, indicating an assimilation process. Migrants' later entry into homeownership can be attributed foremost to the limited intergenerational transmission of wealth, while restricted knowledge about the local housing market and later partnership also play a role. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the timing of entry into homeownership is largely determined by the availability of financial resources and progression in the life course rather than institutional factors.     

Developing design guidelines for inclusive housing: a multi-stakeholder approach using a Delphi method

Increasing interest and investment in inclusive housing for people with complex disabilities has resulted in a greater focus on research evidence and industry replication. In the absence of practice standards and regulatory structures, building design principles and guidelines for purpose-built supported housing have an important role within the sector. The current project was a first attempt at developing a set of principles and design features that have the potential to inform future inclusive housing guidelines. The researchers applied a multi-stakeholder Delphi process to generate nine design principles to guide future supported housing, and a parsimonious set of design features (n = 247) across ten design spaces. The framework such as developed in this study can be further tested to develop a more robust understanding of what works in supported housing design, and therefore what can be replicated over time.     

基于灰色关联分析的公租房项目造价控制

住房问题近年来成为社会关注的热点问题,各地政府积极探索新型住房保障形式。在此背景下,公租房逐渐成为我国住房保障体系的核心。公租房项目的造价控制关系着其在住房市场的成本竞争优势,从而对公租房的长远发展有着重要影响。运用灰色关联分析理论对筛选出的影响工程造价的六大因素进行定量分析,计算出各因素与工程项目总造价的关联度并进行排序。通过灰色关联分析得出影响公租房项目工程造价的主要因素,找出控制主要因素的方法和途径,以期提高公租房项目的经济效益和社会效益,加快我国住房保障体系的建设进程。     

Housing quality as environmental inequality: the case of Wallonia,Belgium

First in the USA and then in many other countries, scholarship on environmental inequality has sought to shed light on the unequal environmental conditions borne by poor people and ethnic minorities, and to challenge public policies and their unjust impacts on those target groups. Housing quality, especially the indoor characteristics of homes, offers an innovative perspective in this field of research. In previous research on environmental inequality in the Walloon context, housing quality has been proven to be a major determinant of quality of life and environmental well-being. This paper analyses housing quality through a twofold approach: indoor characteristics on the one hand, and outdoor subjective and objective externalities on the other. It reveals the disparities between the most deprived and the wealthiest segments of the population. The evidence for this study is based on a housing quality survey carried out in 2012 and 2013 on 6018 households in Wallonia (Belgium). The key findings are that poor people are found to live in housing of lower quality, in densely populated neighbourhoods and those with mixed use, with compensating amenities provided at the local level. Moreover, consistent with environmental inequality scholarship, deprived households are found to bear the burden of environmental degradation outside the home. People live in areas with poorer air quality, but are found to benefit from greater access to green spaces. The results of the survey reveal an interesting point concerning the environmental inequality literature; the interior features of housing are found to differ more widely between deprived and wealthier people than the surrounding environment does.     

Gentrification or social renewal? Effects of public supported housing renewal in Denmark

This paper analyses social change, particularly the processes of social decay, in obsolete and deteriorated housing in the older housing stock in Denmark between 1986 and 1996. These changes are compared with the development which has occurred in similar kinds of housing that have been physically upgraded through a government program for housing renewal.

The study shows that this kind of housing attracts a quick turnover of residents and a tendency towards more unemployed or lower income occupants. It is also used by young people as their first home when moving away from their parents.

It is also shown that public supported housing renewal stops this type of housing pattern and increases the share of households that have high incomes. The changes, however, are not considerable and there are also many unemployed people among the newcomers. These changes depend to a large degree on the size and tenure of the renewed dwellings. In private renting, particularly co‐operatives and in larger dwellings the socio‐economic composition of residents undergo greater changes than in smaller dwellings in non‐profit or public housing. Extensive renewal often results in high rent compared with rent from the regulated housing market in Denmark. As a result the renewed dwellings have difficulties in competing with other kind of dwellings. For that reason residents of this type of housing primarily consist of welfare or pension recipients or others who receive high housing benefits. A minority of people with higher income also use these dwellings but mostly as temporary housing as after a few years they often move to owner‐occupied housing.     

Move histories and socio-economic position

Conclusion The results are based on the Utrecht survey and earlier findings in the Amersfoort region. Perhaps the exact proportions differ from the average Dutch situation, but it is very clear that the dwelling careers of people of the three socio-economic groups differ enormously. The group with the best education, jobs and income has a more favourite start of the dwelling career and manages to reach a good house in several steps. The others also succeed in improving their housing situation, but not to the same extent as the wealthier people. They stay in another segment of the housing market. Not only money in a direct way, but also labour and housing market, urban structure and government control cause differences between the groups. New patterns of household formation are emerging. It is obvious that in the near future other types of careers will emerge. There is a growing demand for small houses. In our view it is not only important to decide how much and what kind of dwellings are necessary but also the location of those added houses, for a diversified housing supply in a neighbourhood is conducive a good use of the whole housing stock.     

Beyond stated and revealed preferences: the relationship between residential preferences and housing choices in the urban region of Turku, Finland

The deconcentration of urban population is a widespread phenomenon in Western societies. Whatever the reasons for residential deconcentration, an inevitable consequence is that an increasing number of people will choose to reside on the outskirts of urban regions. In this paper, the relationship between residential preferences and housing choices is examined using questionnaire data from 1,137 residents of the Turku urban region. This study examines how congruent their stated and revealed residential preferences are in the urban region and to what extent residential preferences affect residential mobility within the urban region. The results show that the stated residential preferences of the respondents correspond closely with their housing choices but the relation of residential preferences to changing population distribution is not straightforward. Although preference for low-density housing is the most important factor describing population decentralisation, the population flow towards the central city is predominantly determined by demographic factors. The results emphasise the latent nature of residential preferences, as the preferred residential environment does not necessarily correspond with the chosen housing. The results stress the importance of gaining thorough knowledge of the subjective values given to housing in order to understand what aspects of housing are important for people and what kind of influence residential preferences actually have on housing choices.     

The Wartime Home as a Paradigm for Today's Affordable Housing Design

The current quest for affordable housing in North America has focused on reducing the size of the housing lot and on downsizing the house itself. Proponents of the small home maintain that given the diminished size of today's family compared with the traditional and larger family household of the postwar era, the smaller home does not in fact represent a diminution in space standards. When we consider available living space on a per person basis, the smaller family inhabiting a smaller house belies the notion that affordable housing directly signifies any real reduction in living standards. This article uses the wartime home as a research model to explore how people meet their spatial needs within a restricted housing space. Using the wartime home as a paradigm of the small house (no larger than 1,000 square feet) we investigated this housing type as a prototype of affordable housing. Our research included interviews with the owners of twenty-five wartime houses that had retained their original footprint, drawn from three areas on the island of Montreal. The field study determined the types of spatial conflicts that arose in these homes and demonstrated how they were resolved The study also reinforced the proposition that people are willing to make several trade-offs when choosing to live in a smaller home and that as soon as household finances permit, the owners will modify the layout to suit their lifestyle requirements. The spaces in the wartime home that underwent the most significant degree of change during the household life cycle (that is, kitchen, bedrooms, and storage) indicate their critical status in the accommodation of users' needs and suggest that they should therefore become central priorities in the teaching and design of future affordable housing.     

The peoples housing process … getting the quality in the quantity?

This paper introduces the PHP (People’s Housing Process) approach to housing provision in South-Africa as a noteworthy third way that allows housing provision for the urban poor. In this contribution we will illustrate how, in an assisted approach of self-help housing, the government can play an important role in safeguarding the production of homes rather than merely providing dwellings. In doing so taking into account the more intangible and symbolic meaning of the house and home, which we argue is a central factor for a sustainable housing strategy. This assisted self-help housing scheme was approved in 1998 and was inspired by the work of the homeless people’s federation and saving and housing schemes from around the globe. The further development of the scheme has been a challenging process but we argue that the PHP programme deserves more attention as a housing provision mechanism. Additionally, one of the strengths of the PHP approach is its applicability in a wider area of project types, from township upgrading to hostel redevelopment projects, and illustrated in this contribution by introducing the hostel redevelopment poject Ilinge Labahlali in Cape Town. In what follows, the PHP approach is introduced, and the increasing interest of the government illustrated. Then, using two case studies, the importance of the assistance of the government and NGOs is elaborated upon. In conclusion the challenges that still need to be met are highlighted.     

Self-build communities: the rationale and experiences of group-build (Baugruppen) housing development in Germany

Group-build housing developments can bring together the cost and customisation benefits regularly attributed to self-build housing with a communitarian ethos associated with ‘intentional’ communities. This paper presents an initial examination of the rationale, motivations and social experiences of group-build housing from Germany, where over half of all new homes are produced independently from volume-build developers. The paper aims, firstly, to test the hypothesis that group-build delivers general ‘community’ benefits; secondly, to contribute to an understanding of the processes leading to successful schemes; and lastly, to demonstrate that by making individual home building dependent on the success of a larger group, collective interests can prevail over personal pursuit. This research draws attention to the motivations, the social experiences through the development process and the social legacy – aspects of particular interest for policy-makers as well as prospective builders – of group-build housing projects.