Housing Research Research Articles

A Science Mapping Analysis of Energy Efficiency and Affordable Housing Research

A Science Mapping Analysis of Energy Efficiency and Affordable Housing Research

Between smart housing and home. EU-funded climate smart interventions in Swedish public housing

Smart housing and its consequences for tenants is still a largely absent field in smart city and housing research. Departing from the EU-funded project GrowSmarter, 2015–2019 and a renovation project of a 1960s housing complex in Stockholm, the article investigates tensions around retrofitting older apartment blocks to make them climate smart. The article presents the argument that top-down approaches of EU-funded climate-smart city interventions leave minimal space for different stakeholders to steer the process and limits the tenants’ role and influence. Researching the implementation of smart technology in housing renovations and how it ultimately effects tenants’ everyday lives, the article adds to previous knowledge of uneven development of climate smart solutions through bringing in the outcomes of housing renovation projects, and how ‘actual smart cities’ are played out within the housing sector. The article brings together research on climate urbanism, housing studies and smart cities with the purpose to understand the scalar politics of smart implementations and the effects on tenants.

An idea that refuses to die. Rise, fall and resurgence of “housing class”

In 1967, John Rex and Robert Moore published an influential book on ethnic housing inequality in Birmingham, titled Race, Community and Conflict. The book presented a theory about classes formed in the housing market, inspired by a particular reading of Max Weber’s ideas about class. The basic idea of the housing class is that people’s relation to the means of housing is a class-forming factor that is not reducible to their relation to the means of production. This paper presents the original housing class theory and its revision by Peter Saunders, property class theory, and criticisms of the two theories. Since the 1980s, both theories have disappeared from housing research. In the 2020s, the basic idea of the housing class was revived in Lisa Adkins’ and her co-authors’ asset class theory. This paper discusses the history of the idea of the housing class and its contemporary relevance. It also raises questions about the conceptualization of class and housing inequality.

Feeling–living–fighting the housing crisis: testimonio as methodology in geographic housing research

ABSTRACT While advocates and urbanites regard the housing crisis as a major challenge, federal and city officials seldom act with the urgency demanded of them by their constituency, of which a growing number is either unhoused or housing insecure. The aim of this paper is to study this crisis from the perspective of those most affected and contribute to a debate mostly dominated by economic and policy-oriented approaches. My use of testimonios collected in Washington, DC, between 2019 and 2022 reworks how knowledge on the housing crisis is constituted and highlights both the relational and collective knowledge production by those most affected by changes in the real estate economy. The goal of this paper is to stress the political potential and agency of people who tell their stories as they fight to (re)claim lost and threatened places and battle to protect their homes and neighbourhoods. On a broader scope, this paper sees value in everyday experiential knowledge and questions whose narratives of place are valued, in an effort to bring forth a new methodology in geographic housing research.

Structural Disadvantage in Housing Opportunities

This paper discusses the ways that race and migration have shaped the housing opportunities people experience in England. It explores the historical development of policy and practice that has shaped racial inequalities in housing. It argues that the violence created by national and local state-supported housing policies has disproportionately affected racialised minorities, as has the slow violence generated by the neglect and stigmatisation of working-class housing. In turn, this has provided the justification for clearances and the remaking of space for those with the money to invest in the financialisation of land and housing through dispossession and denial of the right to safe, secure, and affordable housing. This analysis will be used as a basis to propose ways in which housing research can develop a coherent, critical perspective to race and migration and develop an alternative discourse to challenge the dominant market-driven, individualistic narratives. Adopting a critical approach allows researchers to move beyond the logic of housing policies at national and local levels to analyse and propose action to address persistent racial inequalities in housing.

Developing a Participatory Action Research Analytic Network to Advance a More Inclusive Process to Housing Research

Community residents have repeatedly organized and identified policy solutions to address rapidly increasing housing pressures within the greater Boston area. However, resident expertise is often dismissed as anecdotal. Since 2015, The Healthy Neighborhoods Research Consortium (HNRC) has used a participatory action research (PAR) approach to articulate research questions, design mixed methods instruments, collect and analyze data, and share findings to meet community-identified research priorities. We argue in favor of research processes that enable resident experiences and expertise to be used in conjunction with quantitative data analysis, and that support real-time action to address the harms of gentrification in their communities. The goals of this brief are to describe the HNRC’s process for developing a “PAR Analytic Network” — a program focused on building community residents’ power to create new academic partnerships for the purpose of answering their broader systems-level questions. Based on our experience we offer four recommendations: 1) Apply a PAR approach to identify research question(s) of mutual interest; 2) Community control over the academic partner selection process; 3) Academic Partners: Trust the PAR process; and 4) Community Residents: Identify the Silver Linings.

Access to the exclusive city: Home sharing as an affordable housing strategy

Home sharing, particularly via online platforms, is becoming a mainstream housing strategy as social processes evolve and housing costs rise. Recent research has studied shared rentals as a modality for students and kin-based households, as one strategy among diversifying pathways to housing and as a social phenomenon. However, we still know little about whether it actually creates opportunities for home seekers in unaffordable markets. Analysing online rental listings in Los Angeles, we find that shared rentals are both more affordable and more widely available across diverse neighbourhoods than traditional whole-unit rentals. Shared rentals have historically been understudied due to their limited data trail, but they offer important entryways into unaffordable markets. We argue for shared housing research to shift its traditional focus away from students and young adults and towards a broader exploration of the diverse populations that may benefit from or depend on shared housing.

Housing-related companion animal relinquishment across 21 animal shelters in the United States from 2019-2023.

Housing issues are a major contributor to companion animal relinquishment in the United States and beyond. In this study, we analyze a database of shelter intake records from 2019-2023 from 21 shelters across the United States to assess rates and subtypes of housing relinquishment, characteristics and outcomes of the relinquished animals, and longitudinal trends in housing relinquishment. Housing issues represented 14% (n = 28,424) of overall intakes in the broader database (N = 1,021,204 total intake records). Housing relinquishment subtypes were unspecified (54%), pet-related restrictions (27%), landlord issues (8%), housing loss (5%), and unhoused owners (5%). Large (mean weight: 55 lbs) and small dogs (mean weight: 11 lbs) were most common. Pit bull-type dogs comprised 12% of the overall relinquishments and mixed-breed dogs were 35%. Most animals had a live outcome, but live outcomes decreased over time (p < 0.001, z = -6.91, slope = -0.11), and pit bull-type dogs (X 2(1) = 243.63, p < 0.001) and animals relinquished by unhoused owners (OR = 0.64, p < 0.05) were most at risk of euthanasia or other shelter death. Over the study period, intakes due to loss of home increased (p < 0.001, z = 9.82, slope = 0.29), while intakes due to pet restrictions (p < 0.001, z = -6.82, slope = -0.17) and landlord issues decreased (p < 0.001, z = -4.89, slope = -0.08). Overall cat intakes increased (p < 0.001, z = 3.60, slope = 7.34), while dog intakes decreased (p < 0.001, z = -4.89, slope = -0.08). The number of intakes that were pit bull-type dogs (compared to all other breeds) decreased over time (p < 0.001, z = -4.56, slope = -0.06), as did average animal weight (p < 0.001, z = -4.42, slope = -0.07) and age (p < 0.001, z = -7.88, slope = -0.16). We discuss these findings in the context of the previous shelter and pet-friendly housing research and broader housing trends and policies in the United States.

Fostering Social Sustainability: Inclusive Communities through Prefabricated Housing

Over the last decade, many major cities have experienced a housing crisis to keep pace with patterns of urban population growth. Housing continues to face many challenges such as land use, regulatory issues, and environmental issues. In recent years, new housing research has also revealed that prefabricated housing could indirectly be a solution to environmental issues, as the housing sector has observed an increase in demand for eco-friendly housing solutions. However, while prefabricated housing can be a solution to issues of environmental concerns, it still needs more research to explore its influence on social sustainability. Therefore, this opinion paper investigates how socially sustainable communities could be feasible and practicable through prefabricated housing. In this opinion paper, the social sustainability principles in relation to prefabricated housing was analysed to show situations that can be complex with the benefits and challenges as well. The main objective of this study was to find the potential of prefabricated housing to promote social sustainability, with proper analysis of this housing influence on the key elements of community, diversity as well as adaptability. A survey based on the aspect of social sustainability of prefabricated housing was conducted to collect various perspectives that may influence the future trend in the housing sector, hence making necessary steps towards socially sustainable prefabricated housing solutions. The survey findings highlight the social element of prefabricated households, which refers to how accessible as well as adaptable the prefabricated homes are in terms of targets, build and social group, encouraging dwellers’ interaction and participation, which facilitates the implementation of a sense of belonging and social cohesion among societies.

Struggling for Housing Justice – New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

ABSTRACT How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housing researchers’ understanding of the rental crisis and of the systems that underpin this crisis? By presenting papers from Sweden, Spain, Greece, the UK, and Australia this special issue contributes with knowledge on how housing struggles can inform new theoretical and methodological approaches within the field of housing studies. In turn, the SI presents three tenets that together form a framework for housing scholars: institutionalization as politics, tenants as political actors, and learning housing justice. We argue that it is crucial for housing scholars to recenter on struggles for housing justice in their readings of contemporary housing systems.

Country typology reflecting (sub)national conditions for housing policy implementation

The paper demonstrates the importance of subnational data on housing to be systematically reported and added to country typologies. We asked which national and local level characteristics of housing regimes can serve as benchmarks for reasonable country groupings. The aim of this paper is to (1) develop a methodological tool enabling the comparison of conditions for housing policy implementation on national and subnational levels and (2) identify the group of countries where conditions for housing policy implementation on national and subnational levels tend to be comparable. This country classification can be used as a practical instrument for comparative analyses and policy learning. As a conceptual framework, we used the international comparative Housing research 2.0 launched by Hoekstra in 2020. For our analysis, we selected 15 basic factors that were tested in 24 European countries. We have identified three key factors having an impact on housing policy implementation: decentralisation level in housing, local budget housing expenditure and the information on which governance level has core competencies within housing. The numeric database has been run through a k-means cluster analysis. Five distinct types of countries with similarities in conditions for housing policy implementation on national and subnational level have been identified and described.

Housing Vulnerability Reconsidered: Applications and Implications for Housing Research, Policy and Practice

ABSTRACT Social housing policies in neoliberal contexts have become residualized. The notions of housing vulnerability and vulnerable populations emerged as a new organizing principle for the housing policy agenda and interventions in many countries. However, there is no cohesive and shared understanding of the characteristics and types of vulnerable households and housing situations, nor the drivers and consequences of different forms of vulnerability. This leads to questions about how to apply the concept to address people’s right to housing. This special issue presents research into what housing vulnerability means in different world regions, what structures and systems may be driving it, and the variety of experiences of housing vulnerability. These studies use different theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and empirical contexts to examine factors and initiatives that drive or counter housing vulnerability, fostering a dialogue towards critical housing research and policy agendas that meet our expectations of housing as a human right.

고령자 서비스 결합주택의 공급제도 연구

Although social demand on integrated service housing for the elderly, there were not enough researches focusing on supply model in detail. The objective of this study is to develop more sophsticated model concerned on service integrated housing based on the preferece of the elderly viewpoints. Considering its development stage for elderly house with services, delphi method can be a substantial instrument in constructing service housing model. The service integrated housing has a dual components that comprise of housing aspect and welfare one so interviewees were divided by urban and housing researchers and those of welfare division. Two rounds of questionaare was implemented in order to set up supply model for the service housing. Main conclusions are as follows. first, providing home-like arrangement are important for making curing environment and middle size are opt to compared with small or large size complexes. Second, facilitating private participation for service housing, setting up assistant program in supply and operation stage of that housing. Third, new legislation is urgent task in facilitating and making age friendly supply environment. Considering the shortage of service housing provision, legislative endeavour are urgently needed for our future.

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.

Pets and private renting: a rapid evidence review of the barriers, benefits, and challenges

Pet ownership or animal companionship is increasingly found to be beneficial to mental and physical well-being. Despite this, housing situations and tenure, such as living in a private rental, can impact the ability to realise these benefits. Pet ownership is seldom the primary focus of discussion in housing research to date. This paper brings this issue to the forefront of housing research, recognising it as a crucial component of the overall experience within the private rented sector (PRS). We present findings from a rapid evidence assessment of the existing international evidence to provide a broad understanding of pet ownership in the PRS and, based on this review, set out a novel typology of the economic costs and benefits of renting to pet-owners. The review involved scrutiny of 51 sources published after 2000, representing the most comprehensive evidence review of the subject to date. We identified the benefits, costs, and management practices associated with allowing pets in rentals across three key stages of the tenancy. This paper highlights the need for a combination of policy measures to facilitate the acceptance of pets in rental properties and sets out a future research agenda to better understand the experience of renting with pets.

Conceptualising housing as infrastructure: a framework for thinking infrastructurally in housing studies

Drawing on new infrastructural scholarship, this paper conceptualises housing as infrastructure, outlining a way forward for housing researchers to draw the concept into their empirical practises. We demonstrate how and why we should research housing as infrastructure, using co-living housing as our empirical touchpoint to develop a framework for infrastructural housing studies. This paper has two parts. First, we identify what it means to conceptualise housing as infrastructure. Infrastructure is: a socio-material system or pattern, relational and generative. Second, we outline some useful vantage points for thinking infrastructurally about housing. We consider affordances, politics and inhabitation as three useful locations to understand the infrastructural work that housing does to order and organise the social world. We suggest thinking infrastructurally about housing can be done by interrogating how the dimensions of infrastructure work to order and organise affordances, politics and inhabitation.

CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH OF THE STĀMERIENA PALACE. THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN OF THE PALACE IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN HISTORICAL STYLES

The article Cultural and Historical Research of Stāmeriena Palace. The Architectural Design of the Palace in the Context of European Historical Styles aims to study the cultural and historical heritage of Stāmeriena Palace, focusing on the architectural research of the manor house in the context of the influences of European historical styles. The article is based on the research work, which is based on the documents found in the Latvian State Historical Archive, the Herder Institute Archive in Marburg, Germany, the Estonian National Archive, and the Alūksne Zonal State Archive. The research of Stāmeriena Palace as an architectural and artistic unit is based on unpublished research, as well as on observations made by the authors of the article. Based on the information provided in the documents, photographs, and unpublished studies (architectural research materials), the article reveals the four stages of the construction of the palace. Detailed attention is paid to the first two construction periods of Stāmeriena Palace, from 1835 to 1905 and from 1908 to 1940, when the most significant architectural changes to the façade and the overall ensemble of the building can be identified, which are closely related to the characteristic manifestations of 19th-century historicism architecture.

Housing in the Capitalocene: Environmental education and sustainable living

Capital and property have been combined since Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in 1867. Indeed, capitalism and the housing market are interlinked because property is an asset whose indexed value upholds global markets. On the other side of property as real estate is the environmental damage and augmentation of climate change that housing represents - mostly in advanced, technological societies. This paper attends to capital investment in housing as the Capitalocene and subsequently through environmental education according to environmental and social principles (social ecology). This article examines what is offered in the Australian curriculum for pre-tertiary and university students in terms of sustainable housing and uses the latest in sustainable housing research and practice to provide a new, visionary basis for environmental education, that tackles housing through 3D printing. The current Australian curriculum on sustainable housing centers on the ‘Illawarra Flame’ house (University of Wollongong), that presents a retrofitting solution to improve the quality of life of the occupants. Illawarra Flame house is a net-zero, energy-efficient, solar powered house which provides the tenants with thermal comfort. This article expands and updates the data on sustainable housing from the ‘Illawarra Flame’ house to 3D printing and applies the principles of social ecology to make a link with environmental education that deals with the Capitalocene by offering affordable and sustainable housing.

Residential Accumulation: A Political Economy Framework

ABSTRACT Although housing plays a pivotal role in global capitalism, the theoretical links between housing research and political economy remain tenuous. Building on the recent revival of rent theory, this article fleshes out a political economy framework for the analysis of housing provision under capitalism. It opens with an outline of the process of “residential accumulation”, explained as a complex interaction between the opposing dynamics of rent extraction and capitalist production. The article then traces this interaction across the different phases of the housing provision process, starting at the point of production, passing through exchange and finance, and finishing with social reproduction. In doing so, the article identifies the conflictual social property relations at work, as well as how these are shaped by different institutional variables. It thus explores the dilemmas that residential accumulation poses for the governance of urban social formations – and, crucially, of capitalism more broadly.

Discourse Studies, Corpus, and Multimodality in Urban Research

This paper explores the contribution of Discourse Studies (DS) to urban research from two perspectives: the field of inquiry and the research corpus. It investigates which areas have utilised DS in their research and why, as well as which types of discursive modes have been subjected to analysis. An analysis of 126 publications suggests that DS has been widely utilised to investigate urban questions in urban planning and theory, urban policy, housing research, and environmental policy; this capacity can be expanded to other fields of urban research. The study also finds out that the corpus of analysis has mainly remained monomodal, limited to one item or multiple items of the same type, predominantly text-based materials. To address this problem, the corpus of the analysis should be diversified to recognize the multimodality of discourse. This entails encompassing a variety of non-verbal modes such as images, music, gestures, moving images, soundtracks, and 3D objects. The paper concludes by pinpointing directions towards which future research should progress in order to overcome the challenges of utilising DS in urban research.Discourse Studies, Discourse, Urban Studies, Urban Research, Multimodality