The pace of “the good life”: Connecting past, present, and future in the context of a housing affordability crisis

Abstract

This article focuses on the topic of the young adult’s cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult’s relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent price increase. The general question addresses if and how social inequalities, sharpened by the current housing affordability crisis, affect the process of narrative life course coherence creation (the connection of past, present, and future) in relation to an orientation toward a vision of “the good life.” We furthermore complement the already existing ideal types of the young adult’s relation toward time— confident continuity and cautious contingency—with two other two types— cautious continuity and total contingency—defined on the basis of our data. We argue that the ability of young adults to envision a coherent future is related to the feeling of secured housing and that the idea of the good life is depicted to a large extent through the ideal of homeownership, although the precarity of the housing market makes homeownership harder to reach for those from unprivileged backgrounds.