Housing Pathways Research Articles

Housing Vulnerability, Shared Housing, Informality, and Crowding: The Housing Strategies of China’s Recent College Graduates

ABSTRACT Mirroring developments elsewhere, for recent college graduates in China the transition to employment is increasingly protracted and, for some, precarious. Case studies of individual strategies and cities indicate a diversification of housing pathways, where economic precarity is rendering at least some vulnerable. Based on original survey data collected in 2019, I investigate the housing choices of Chinese college graduate job market entrants and ask who is vulnerable and whether adverse outcomes are mere market entry strategies or lasting. I find that recent graduates generally find housing in central locations, close to their work. However, to achieve favourable locational outcomes on low budgets, many resort to sharing. High-density room sharing of three or more people is illegal but prominent and dominates in first-tier cities. The findings highlight how urbanization interacts with housing vulnerability and contribute to theorizing on the housing crisis, the Global North-South binary, and the very nature of home sharing.

Using Inclusive Research Methods and the Housing Pathways Framework in Future Planning and Housing Research: A Pilot Study

Housing and future planning have been key areas of interest in intellectual and development disabilities research for a number of decades. However, the voices of adults with intellectual disabilities are underrepresented in this area of research. Furthermore, the use of inclusive research methods remains limited in the literature. This study sought to pilot the use of inclusive research approaches to investigate the viability of these methods and to begin to build an evidence base of inclusive research in this area of work. Inclusive data analysis and co-authorship approaches were used on a small qualitative dataset from a larger study investigating future planning and transitions out of the family home by adults with intellectual disabilities and their families in Australia. Three semi-structured interviews with adults with intellectual disabilities and family members regarding their housing preferences and planning were analysed using an inclusive data analysis approach following the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. These were then further analysed using a plain language version of the housing pathways framework. The results of the pilot study will be used to inform the inclusive research methods used for the remainder of the project dataset. Overall, the use of inclusive methods to pilot a conceptual model to better understand qualitative data was found to be feasible. Small adjustments to the process and accessibility to better support engagement with the research process are recommended. Lastly, greater investigation into co-authorship approaches and options is suggested as a fruitful avenue of inquiry for future research.

Housing advantage, hidden curriculum, habitus: students’ past and future housing pathways revisited

ABSTRACT While past research into young people’s transitions out of the parental home identified a distinct student housing pathway offering an institutionally supported ‘housing advantage’, more recently scholars have pointed to widespread housing precarity among university students, reconceptualising the housing challenges students face as a ‘hidden curriculum’ that reinforces inequalities. Meanwhile, time spent navigating this hidden curriculum in increasingly widespread purpose-built student accommodations (PBSA) has the potential to reshape the student habitus, fostering future preferences for the high-density, privatized urban space PBSA represents. This paper re-examines these notions, drawing on interviews with 27 students in Waterloo, Canada, regarding their past experiences and future expectations of housing. While the interviews reveal a multitude of pathways, concepts of housing advantage and hidden curriculum are not as contradictory as they may appear, with many students benefitting from supports offered by university residences before facing an expensive, discriminatory and predatory rental market. Although students’ experiences normalized high-density living, they did not necessarily supersede long-term preferences for detached home ownership, and access to amenities was more important than private space as such.

Housing Pathways of the “Missing People” of Public Housing and Resettlement Programs: Methodological Reflections

This article deals with methodological challenges and presents solutions for the study of people who depart from state-subsidized housing in Ethiopia, Morocco, and South Africa. Having sold or rented out their units, these people have left and now live at dispersed locations. Assuming that many “missing people” leave state housing because of project-related shortcomings, studying the reasons for their departure is crucial to understanding standardized housing programs. “Missing people” urge scholars to emphasize the afterlives of housing policy interventions as a necessary analytical dimension. However, such research is confronted with three major methodological challenges: How is it possible to approach and study people who have disappeared from the area of a housing intervention? How can one link exploratory, in-depth qualitative accounts, rooted in subjective perceptions of the everyday, to potential structural deficiencies of standardized housing interventions? What kind of methodologies may help take into account the temporalities of displacement and resettlement? In order to overcome these challenges, the article presents innovative forms of purposive sampling and discusses analytical strategies, which—based on Clapham’s framework of “housing pathways”—bridge relational and structural perspectives to housing programs.

Women’s life course and precarious housing in older age: an Australian qualitative study

With increasing numbers of older Australian women facing housing precarity, it is essential to understand how this social problem persists and grows despite structural change with greater participation of women in employment and education, and greater societal recognition of their rights. We drew on a life course framework to consider the interaction of personal and societal conditions to understand how older women come to be precariously housed in older age. Life history interviews with 30 older women who accessed social housing due to housing precarity were completed. The qualitative analysis identified three groups: women who were lifelong renters by choice and then struggled with private rental costs on a pension in older age; women who carried into older age accumulated disadvantage over their lives; and women who lost home ownership despite initial advantages in education, employment, and assets. Although events such as ill health can have a longstanding impact on women’s lives and housing security, it is the interaction of multiple structural and personal circumstances across the life course that result in later life housing precarity. The impact of violence including the striking effect of economic abuse on women’s housing pathways was a dominant finding in our study.

Residing without settling: Housing market and tactics of Syrian forced migrants in Turkey

AbstractHow do forced migrants from Syria cope with structural barriers to housing in urban centres in Turkey? More than 3.6 million Syrian refugees have lived in different cities in Turkey since the closing of the temporary accommodation centres in 2018. This study examines the agency of Syrians and their housing pathways in securing accommodation in a neoliberal housing market amidst increasing unwelcoming attitudes by the local population, no social housing, high dependence on rental housing prone to price hikes, and “temporary protection” legal status. Based on analysis of data from 34 semi‐structured interviews with forced migrant Syrians and 20 expert interviews in Gaziantep, a city close to the Turkey‐Syria border with a substantial Syrian population, the research identifies four tactics that characterise housing pathways of Syrian forced migrants: (1) acting through local community members, (2) working with a Syrian mediator, (3) settling down in Syrian‐only buildings or informal settlements, and (4) purchasing a house through circumventing the legal ban on property ownership. The study concludes by highlighting that while these tactics are necessary for meeting forced migrants’ immediate housing needs, they are far from sufficient in preventing exclusion in the Turkish housing market.

Incrementalism, housing supply and city-making from below: learning from Khulna, Bangladesh

Incrementalism is a mode of self-help and continuing practice that is prevalent primarily in the Global South. It enables owner-builders to meet housing needs typically over an extended period of time as they can more conveniently manage the required resources. While (informal) tenure, materiality, and housing conditions have long been the focus of incremental housing scholarship, researchers are increasingly recognising the value of incrementalism’s metabolic interplay with broader urban processes. This paper complements these later works by qualitatively examining four dominant incremental housing pathways in the urban fringes of Khulna, Bangladesh: absentee landholding, makeshift sheltering, speculative land disposal and informal brokerage. Empirical evidence suggests that a variety of actors, primarily motivated by land speculation, participate in these incremental housing pathways. While the implementation of the official plan for Khulna’s peri-urban areas is delayed, I argue that these actors coproduce a complex housing market as well as a self-help city in which urban institutions play more passive and reactionary roles. The findings contribute to rethinking the self-organising logic of urban expansion in many Southern cities, which is often centred on urban land at the crossroads of institutional capacity deficit, speculative housing demand and supply, and informal-formal hybridity.

Post‐2015 refugees in Germany: “Culture of welcome”, solidarity or exclusion?

Post‐2015 refugees in Germany: “Culture of welcome”, solidarity or exclusion?

"Znaš što, ja ću o tome napisati knjigu!" – analize životnih povijesti osoba u situacijama ugroženoga stanovanja

In the context of vulnerable housing situations (homelessness and housing exclusion), the life course perspective, the concept of housing careers and housing pathways emphasise different life experiences, differential circumstances, and the social contexts of arriving at such a position, depending on age. Keeping this in perspective, the research identified the dominant events and circumstances that marked people's descent into one of the vulnerable housing situations across: a) youth and early middle age, b) late middle age, and c) old age. The study was conducted between December 2021 and February 2022 in the city of Novi Sad (Republic of Serbia). 35 respondents who are in one of the vulnerable housing situations took part in the research. Convenience, purposive and snowball sampling were applied, and the data was collected through a semi- -standardised, in-depth interview. The obtained results indicate the multiplicity and cumulativeness of adverse events and characteristics in the life trajectories of persons in vulnerable housing, as well as the specificity of unfavourable circumstances depending on age. In conclusion, the research confirmed the findings of previous literature in the domain of the life history of vulnerable housing and indicated possible directions for improving the understanding of this topic.

Housing Careers and Housing Pathways: Conceptual Evolution or Confusion?

ABSTRACT The use of housing career and housing pathways concepts has increased over the past several decades. The two concepts have shared origins in housing research but have different theoretical foundations. Housing careers and housing pathways concepts are defined as synonyms, distinctly different but complementary, and incompatible concepts. While the lack of shared definitions is common in interdisciplinary research, it may result in a fragmented knowledge base and hindrance to theory development and use. This research uses concept analysis to examine definitions of the concepts of housing career and housing pathways provided in the literature between 2001 and 2020. The analysis findings suggest that the concepts have both shared and unique attributes. However, concept definitions were missing or inconsistent across the literature, and distinctions between housing career and housing pathways concepts were often unclear. Grounding concepts in theory appears to result in greater concept definition consistency.

Understanding the Housing Pathways and Migration Plans of Young Talents in Metropolises–A Case Study of Shenzhen

ABSTRACT In the context of skyrocketing house prices and fierce competition for talents between cities, this study explores the housing pathways of young talents and their future migration plans in Shenzhen, China. Using the housing pathways approach and Bourdieu’s theory of practice with three concepts, this study uncovers how structural factors and the often-overlooked agency factors together influence the formation of different housing pathways. Drawing on 18 semi-structured interviews with young talents, four different housing pathways were identified: staying at parents’ home, private renting to owning, talented renting, and progressive private renting. We found that the interaction of habitus and different forms of capital shapes different housing pathways. In addition, young talents following different housing pathways have various future migration plans. This paper sheds new light on the use of the housing pathways approach and Bourdieu’s theory of practice in providing a nuanced understanding of housing and migration behaviour.

Housing policies by young people, not for young people. Experiences from a co-creation project in Amsterdam

For young adults on the Amsterdam housing market the accessibility of housing has been decreasing for years, due to soaring house prices and rents, the shrinkage and residualization of the social rental sector, and the precarization of the labor market. Consequently, many young people struggle to secure an affordable and adequate dwelling and are stuck in insecure and chaotic housing pathways. Current housing policies in Amsterdam are struggling to effectively respond to these challenges. In an effort to better understand and address the specific housing problems of young people, the Municipality of Amsterdam, housing association Lieven de Key, resident organization !Woon, Delft University of Technology and a group of local young people have started a co-creation process within the framework of the H2020 UPLIFT project. The goal of this co-creation process is to unravel the real-life experiences of young people and to co-create new or improved policy initiatives with them. This paper examines the results of said policy co-creation process in order to evaluate its methodology as well as its impact on the participating actors - young people in particular - and on the policymaking approach. We analyze the benefits and limits of this type of participatory practice in addressing housing issues and try to draw conclusions on its applicability in a larger context.

PUBLIC RENTAL HOUSING (PRH) OPERATIONAL POLICIES AND HOUSING PATHWAYS IN KUALA LUMPUR

The Malaysian Government’s vision is to provide Malaysians of all income levels accessibility to adequate, affordable, and quality housing, particularly those from the low-income group (B40). For several decades, the Malaysian Government has played an important role in the provision of low-cost public housing by building houses either for sale or rent. In Kuala Lumpur, the administration of low-cost public housing is managed by Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL). Recently, there has been a pressing need for more public rental houses in Kuala Lumpur, evident from the vast number of B40 applicants awaiting settlement. However, the number of vacant units for housing is very limited. The paper discusses the role of DBKL in shaping the public housing pathways by reviewing the current DBKL’s PPR Operational Policies. The paper is constructed based on policy review, as well as data from interviews with DBKL officials. The DBKL’s operational policies from the point of view of tenant “Enter” until “Exit” was mapped with the housing pathways. The study found a variety of operational policies that DBKL has implemented to ensure tenants’ successful transition in and out and are strongly influenced by the need to manage the waiting list and political pressure. The paper, which looks from the perspective of DBKL as a landlord, concludes with a preliminary recommendation on some ways DBKL can improve their tenancy management.

Regulation of residential tenancies and impact on investment

This research examined policies and programs relevant to the housing pathways of ex-prisoners with complex support needs in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, including what criminal justice costs and benefits result from current housing assistance settings.

Queer/y/ing pathways through youth homelessness: becoming, being and leaving LGBTQI+ youth homelessness

This article extends Clapham’s (2002) concept of ‘housing pathways’ to explore the nature of specific youth homelessness associated with diverse LGBTQI+ identities. Drawing on in-depth interviews with homeless LGBTQI+ youth in Ireland we offer a queer consideration of the structural challenges and agentic potentialities of young people’s housing pathways. Building on these young people’s experiences of becoming, being and leaving homelessness our queering process focuses on three phenomena: queer temporalities, queer liminalities and queer kinships. We argue that due to their evolving sexualities and gender identities ‘housing and home’ have distinctive meanings for LGBTQI+ youth. These meanings prioritise safe, non-homophobic/transphobic spaces, in which they can be themselves without the pressure to conceal their evolving identities or conform to heteronormative expectations. We suggest these meanings inform pathways into, through and out of homelessness and may contribute to higher rates of homelessness among LGBTQI+ youth. Finally, we argue these queerly informed understandings increase knowledge of how proactive interventions might best be framed.

‘Our home, your home?’ The precarious housing pathways of asylum seekers in Catalonia

This paper investigates the multi-layered barriers asylum seekers face in accessing secure and adequate housing in a host society through the case of Catalonia (Spain). While the existing literature mainly focuses on the effects of micro-level factors, we argue that these need to be analysed in combination with meso-level actors and macro-structural phenomena. Drawing on an exploratory survey of 300 international protection applicants and 60 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and asylum seekers, we analyse their exposure to different dimensions of housing precariousness. Our research finds that, although certain individual characteristics such as age, sex and origin remain relevant in explaining housing pathways, these factors are strongly mediated by the role of NGOs and support networks, and by the structural features of the asylum system and housing market. We conclude that the complex interactions of these factors result in deeply unstable and fragmented housing trajectories that contribute to high levels of disorientation, precariousness, and exclusion among those seeking accommodation.

Patterns of homelessness and housing instability and the relationship with mental health disorders among young people transitioning from out-of-home care: Retrospective cohort study using linked administrative data.

ObjectivesThe study examined the relationship between mental health, homelessness and housing instability among young people aged 15–18 years old who transitioned from out-of-home in 2013 to 2014 in the state of Victoria, Australia with follow-up to 2018. We determined the various mental health disorders and other predictors that were associated with different levels of homelessness risk, including identifying the impact of dual diagnosis of mental health and substance use disorder on homelessness.MethodologyUsing retrospective de-identified linked administrative data from various government departments we identified various dimensions of homelessness which were mapped from the European Topology of Homelessness (ETHOS) framework and associated mental health variables which were determined from the WHO ICD-10 codes. We used ordered logistic regression and Poisson regression analysis to estimate the impact of homelessness and housing instability respectively.ResultsA total homelessness prevalence of 60% was determined in the care-leaving population. After adjustment, high risk of homelessness was associated with dual diagnosis of mental health and substance use disorder, intentional self-harm, anxiety, psychotic disorders, assault and maltreatment, history of involvement with the justice system, substance use prior to leaving care, residential and home-based OHC placement and a history of staying in public housing.ConclusionsThere is clearly a need for policy makers and service providers to work together to find effective housing pathways and integrated health services for this heterogeneous group of vulnerable young people with complex health and social needs. Future research should determine longitudinally the bidirectional relationship between mental health disorders and homelessness.

Reconsidering the interrupted housing pathways of refugees in Flanders (Belgium) from a home-making perspective: a policy critique

This article addresses housing and accommodation challenges for refugees in Flanders, a region in Belgium by merging the author’s distinct disciplinary perspectives—architectural and sociological. It builds upon two core concepts in housing literature: ‘housing pathways’ and ‘home-making’. Integrating results of several research projects, the article explores the entire housing pathways of refugees from their arrival up to their settlement in private housing in Flemish cities. We analyse how the Belgian system, in which asylum applicants are mainly housed in large, socially isolated and anonymous accommodation centres, obstructs refugees’ ability to find integrated, affordable and decent housing once their application has been approved. Combining our research insights, the article formulates a policy critique. We contend that home-making processes of refugees in Flanders are problematic because their housing pathways are severely interrupted due to policy gaps related to Belgium’s complex, multi-level government structure.

The inception of housing pathways in urban China: the declining household formation of young adults from 2011 to 2017

ABSTRACT The homeownership rate of young adults has surged to an unprecedented level in urban China, despite rising housing prices and significant rural-urban migration. A trend analysis of nationally representative microdata shows that household formation is the missing link in the paradox and that many young adults aged 18–44 have failed to form independent households from 2011 to 2017, thereby delaying the start of their housing pathways. When factors such as socioeconomic and institutional attributes are controlled for, age differences in household formation decrease as expected. However, the age differences grow surprisingly larger over the study period, reflective of reform-induced changes in resource allocation. Further analysis demonstrates significant heterogeneity in headship status. While local young adults are squeezing into homeownership, migrants are overrepresented in the relatively stunted rental sector. Thus, while migration has brought newcomers to urban China and kept the headship rates from falling even further, institutional barriers have blocked migrants’ housing pathways. Overall, the pace of change is breathtaking. There is a growing divergence in young adults’ housing pathways, which depends on the timing of market entry, institutional attributes, housing prices, and personal income.

Nowhere to go: Housing pathways of college students with foster care and homelessness experience

AbstractThis study builds on previous research to understand longer term housing experiences in late adolescence and early adulthood for vulnerable college students. Using a biographical, qualitative method, we study high school and college housing and family circumstances for 27 students with homelessness or foster care experience enrolled in 4‐year colleges in Georgia. We identified three different housing pathway types in high school—family homelessness, unaccompanied youth and foster care. Housing instability and frequent moves were common in high school among all housing pathway types. In college, students who were able to find low or no‐cost housing and those who identified a foster care pathway in high school achieved greater housing stability. Others students experienced a continuation of housing instability that began in high school. Additional funding to cover the cost of on‐campus housing would likely contribute to increased stability. Additional strategies, such as rental assistance programmes tailored for college students, may be needed to address housing instability for vulnerable college students. More research on the unmet housing needs and the consequences of housing instability during college for homeless and foster youth is needed to further a housing policy agenda that focuses on practical solutions.