Abstract
While housing can facilitate many of the freedoms associated with a ‘well-lived’ life, the Capabilities Approach (CA) is yet to have transformed housing research and evaluation. This paper explores the relationship between housing conditions and well-being, using Nussbaum’s version of the CA as the basis for analysis. It draws on data from a UK-based qualitative study of the experiences of individuals residing in privately-run hostels in the North of England. The analysis reveals much diversity in terms of the ways in which the residents perceived their housing conditions and the impacts of these on their exercise of key functions, despite all living in similar environmental conditions. This highlights the highly subjective and complex nature of the relationship between housing conditions and well-being. It is argued that a more robust understanding of the key factors that mediate the relationship being investigated is needed if the potential of the CA to advance housing research and evaluation is to be further realized.
Highlights
Dissatisfaction with traditional income-based measures of individual well-being and societal progress over recent decades has resulted in attention turning to alternative approaches, with the most prominent developments coming from thinkers working in the areas of subjective well-being and the capabilities approach (CA) (Binder, 2014; Evans, 2017)
The CA advocates that rather than focussing on levels of wealth and material resources, assessments of well-being should focus on the opportunities that individuals have to lead the kinds of lives they have reason to value (Batterham, 2019; Nussbaum, 2003)
While it should be beyond dispute that housing is an important site for and source of well-being and capabilities are a highly useful informational space for the evaluation of housing outcomes, both of these points were highly apparent in the analysis presented in this paper
Summary
Dissatisfaction with traditional income-based measures of individual well-being and societal progress over recent decades has resulted in attention turning to alternative approaches, with the most prominent developments coming from thinkers working in the areas of subjective well-being and the capabilities approach (CA) (Binder, 2014; Evans, 2017). IRVING strengths, and complexities, of using capabilities as an evaluative space have already been debated in a range of policy and practice contexts (see Evans, 2017; Hartley et al, 2005; Hickel, 2020), this article addresses this debate in the context of housing It explores the impact of objectively poor housing conditions on experiences of well-being, and the implications of the findings for current thinking in the field and future housing research. This debate is highly pertinent in the context of growing levels of homelessness and diminishing access to decent and affordable accommodation across welfare states (Baptista & Marlier, 2019; Fitzpatrick et al, 2019)
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