Housing Trajectories Research Articles

The lived housing experience of the urban poor in Chengdu: Four distinct periods in the urban housing career

AbstractCurrent research on the housing careers of urban low‐income groups, dominated by quantitative modelling, has discussed the housing predicament faced by the urban poor at length. While much is known about the factors influencing their housing careers, these studies have failed to provide a satisfactory understanding of the intricacy and depth of human struggles those vulnerable groups experienced in the urban housing market. This contributes a four‐period model, through a dialogue with the established life cycle/life course theories, to the reconceptualization of housing career of the urban poor and depicts a vivid and continuous housing trajectory by analysing their lived experiences at each period. This paper finds that, in a highly constrained and segregated housing market, the housing problems experienced by low‐income earners and their coping strategies are far more complex and variegated than traditional life cycle/course theory would predict. Factors at individual, household, community and even national levels are often interwoven and, more importantly, the combinations of these influences are constantly changing, sometimes repeating along their housing career forming a nuanced dynamism that has been largely overlooked by existing research.

From Cave to Cage? The Evolution of Housing Complexity and the Contemporary Dead End for the Human Brain

ABSTRACT The evolution of the ever-changing neuroplastic human brain is inseparably linked to its environment. While early humans evolved in response to nature’s complexity and unpredictability, over millennia, the housing trajectory has increasingly prioritized sedentary behaviors, predictability, and comfort at the expense of cognitive stimulation. Modern life stress, mental health issues, and cognitive decline are markers of a poor environment. The pandemic lockdown has implicitly exposed that we need better houses for our brains. This paper goes back in time, navigating the cross-cultural evolution of environmental complexity to escape the contemporary dead end for the human brain that needs to evolve further. The paper advocates for a paradigm shift in housing design, emphasizing the need to foster neuroplasticity rather than constrain it. By reconceptualizing houses as architects of our brains, architecture becomes an independent variable embedding what the brain needs rather than embodying what the brain wants.

Can Tenants’ Unions Challenge Neoliberal Housing Governance? The Emergence of a New Movement in Spain and Its Impact on Post-neoliberal Housing Policy

ABSTRACT This paper analyses how tenants’ organizations approach the state for “post-neoliberal housing policy” that challenges decades of neoliberal housing governance. It introduces the concept of “counter-hegemonic legislative strategies” to illustrate how tenants’ movements in Spain have achieved this policy shift by influencing legislative changes. In contrast to traditional lobbying or representation-focused movements, unions aim to organize tenants offensively against the commodification of housing and capitalist relations, positioning themselves as counter-hegemonic forces. The paper outlines three mechanisms used to achieve this: turning tenant evictions and landlord threats into acts of civil disobedience; using the media strategically to shape narratives; and exploiting institutional windows of opportunity through alliances and political crises. While the legislative victories gained by these unions may fall short of their full demands, the paper emphasizes that their impact goes beyond political outcomes. Their activities contribute to contesting neoliberal housing trajectories, disrupting hegemonic governance, and reshaping the political landscape.

Housing Instability and Policy Considerations for Equitable Aging in Place in Canada.

In this article, we apply a gender-based analysis plus framework to research the housing experiences of older, low-income adults living and aging in Hamilton. Low-income older adults with intersectional identities are at risk of not aging in place due to marginalization and housing instability. Policy currently homogenizes the experience of aging by sidelining intersectional factors that have a bearing on aging well in place. The research aims to develop policy recommendations to address this gap. Several methods captured the housing experiences of low-income older adults, including interviews, participant observation, and arts-based techniques. Findings illustrate how gender and intersectional factors shape both housing trajectories and agentive practices low-income adults utilize to try to age well and in place. These strategies encompass practicing cultural citizenship, which is a claim for inclusion when excluded from mainstream ideals of aging in place. We provide policy recommendations informed by participants' lived experiences aimed at promoting equitable aging in place as fundamental to full citizenship.

From collective centres to private accommodation: housing trajectories of asylum migrants in Switzerland

This paper examines the housing trajectories of complete cohorts of asylum migrants in Switzerland. It emphasizes the logistics of housing allocation by local authorities and how it shapes individual opportunity structure. We use full-population register data and analyse one key transition: the transition out of collective centre assigned upon arrival to the private and subsidized housing sectors. Event history models show the association between individual and contextual factors and the speed of access to private housing. Despite the quasi-autonomous management of refugee housing by region, priority rules regarding access to private housing were found to apply across the country. When choosing between different profiles, women, older asylum migrants, married individuals, and members of larger national groups are favoured in obtaining access to private housing. Nevertheless, the time spent in collective centres largely depends on the region to which a claimant is assigned, pointing to the minimal agency asylum migrants have during their first years of residence.

Families experiencing homelessness and the production of everyday urban space in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2017-2022)

This article analyzes the production of space from the perspective of families experiencing homelessness who live in the Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. Based on census data and twelve in-depth interviews carried out in 2022, it explores the demographic, the infrastructure they use daily, their reasons for staying in a particular place, their routines, their social networks, and finally, the way they outfit their living area. In terms of housing trajectories, the article shows how those families alternate between boarding houses, shelters, and the street. This vicious circle of poverty is reinforced by public policies that provide only temporary assistance to cover a boarding house room or shelter. The analysis draws on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of “the production of space” and his triad of conceived, lived and perceived space as well as Angela Giglia’s concept of “inhabiting” [habitar].

Prospective Analysis of the European Union's Domestic Paradigms: An Integrative Examination of Post-Divorce Housing Trajectories, Intergenerational Living Standards, and Demographic Shifts in the Context of Escalating Housing and Energy Costs

Prospective Analysis of the European Union's Domestic Paradigms: An Integrative Examination of Post-Divorce Housing Trajectories, Intergenerational Living Standards, and Demographic Shifts in the Context of Escalating Housing and Energy Costs

HOUSING CONCERNS AND TRAJECTORIES OF KINLESS OLDER ADULTS WITH DEMENTIA

Abstract Housing preferences of older adults (e.g., to remain in residence, or relocate), housing options available, and housing needs related to changing physical and cognitive abilities are common concerns of aging. The challenges are possibly more complex for those living with dementia, who may have difficulty articulating housing preferences, and whose housing needs may include supportive care. For those with dementia who lack close kin, these challenges are likely significantly compounded. This paper focuses on the intersection of housing concerns for 64 participants in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study who were kinless (no living spouse or children) when they developed dementia. All the ACT participants were 65+ when recruited. Everyone in this sample had received a research diagnosis, and their mean age at dementia onset (estimated at the midpoint between the research study that triggered the diagnostic evaluation, and the last research study before that -- usually one year before diagnosis) was 87 (Standard Deviation [SD] 7 years), with a median age of 86 and a range of 71-103.We present an analysis of their housing trajectories, as captured in chart notes from their medical records. We highlight multiple themes illustrating how housing intersects with health and social well-being and conclude by commenting on the potential of medical records for understanding and documenting issues related to housing.

Toward a fine-grained understanding of informality: Subjective meanings, perceptions, and expectations in informal housing trajectories

This article focuses on the role of subjective meanings in the production of informal housing. It argues that, although individual and family meanings, aspirations, perceptions, and expectations have usually been overlooked in studies on urban informality, their analysis is fundamental for a sophisticated understanding of the genesis, features, and developing trajectories of informal housing. To this end, the article investigates the informalization process of temporary self-promoted housing units (the so-called casette, i.e. “little houses”) built in the aftermath of the 2009 earthquake in the city of L’Aquila, Italy. Although it is exceptional, the phenomenon of the casette illuminates several traits of other informal housing practices. Thus, it offers two interrelated conceptual insights for a deeper, fine-grained understanding of the varied ontologies of housing informality. First, it illustrates the concurrence of simultaneous drivers, differing in nature (e.g. subjective and objective, structural and agency-related, micro and macro) at the root of the production of informal space, where a key role is also played by inhabitants’ meanings, aspirations, perceptions, and expectations. Second, it shows that informality is not a fixed and unambiguous state. On the contrary, it is a field traversed by intertwined forces in a perpetual state of tension, so that a housing unit can move through different shades of (il)legality entailing varied combinations of subjective and objective drivers.

Predictors of Housing Trajectories Among Young Adults Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles

Experiencing homelessness during young adulthood is associated with negative health outcomes and understanding housing trajectories of young adults experiencing homelessness may aid in the development of evidence-based public health programs designed to serve this at-risk age group. In the present study, the authors examined baseline predictors of 24-month trajectories of housing stability and unsheltered housing among a sample of 271 young adults aged 18 to 25 recruited from drop-in centers in Los Angeles. In multivariate models, the authors found that identifying as multi-racial/other and better friendship quality at baseline were associated with less steep increases in the likelihood of stable housing over time. Being employed at baseline was associated with a less steep decrease in the probability of being unsheltered over time, while illicit drug use days associated with a steeper decrease in the probability of being unsheltered over time. Continued research is needed to establish important factors determining young adults’ long-term housing trajectories in the effort to promote greater access and engagement with housing services.

Long-term housing challenges: the tenure trajectories of EU migrant workers in the Netherlands

Finding a new house is an essential but challenging undertaking for migrant workers. Current understanding of these migrant housing trajectories is rudimentary, contrasting migrants with non-migrants, or looks at the housing situation at a certain point in time. This article presents a fine-grained and longitudinal perspective on housing trajectories including less-studied alternative tenures. Using sequence and clustering techniques on Dutch register data, it identifies patterns in tenure registrations of EU migrant workers in the Netherlands, over time. In the first years, alternative private rental arrangements are common, after which some migrants move on to more secure accommodation, while others leave the Netherlands or continue to stay in precarious and/or shared-housing arrangements. A distinction is made between relatively progressive improvement (leading to social rental or homeownership) and stagnating trajectories (long-term private rent, long-term informal registration and long-term shared housing). Regression analyses show how these housing trajectories are differentiated across socio-demographic variables and the structural conditions of the arrival city, as well as by employment sector. The findings contribute to the literature on migrant housing careers and underline the wide diversity of housing challenges. Although migrant workers play a crucial role in the economy, especially lower-income, older and single migrants have limited access to permanent and secure housing.

Protracted displacement and housing systems in intermediary cities: the case of Syrians in Torbalı, Türkiye

This article investigates the dynamics of complex housing systems within the context of large-scale protracted displacement in Turkey/Türkiye. It presents new empirical findings from a qualitative study conducted in Torbalı, a rapidly growing intermediate city with a significant population of Syrian displaced people. Drawing on theoretical and conceptual insights from housing studies, urban studies and migration studies, the article assesses the ways in which displacement materialises in place through housing and contributes to city-making and urbanisation processes informally, incrementally, and in locally and historically contingent manners. We argue that the forms and dynamics of emerging housing exhibit both continuity but most markedly significant disjuncture from past housing trajectories in Torbalı. This challenges the implicit assumption of legal uniformity of self-builders common in incremental housing debates and suggests that the notion of incremental housing has limited relevance in contexts of protracted urban displacement. Furthermore, findings underline the significance of legal dimensions in energising housing informalities; in grading socio-legal statuses of resident populations; in bounding displaced people’s mobilities; in demarcating labour flows; in moulding rental markets; and in directing the flows of housing materials. These in turn shape current and future urban built environments and mould the ways in which the urbanisation of refuge manifests.

Health and housing consequences of climate-related disasters: a matched case-control study using population-based longitudinal data in Australia

Understanding the role of how people are housed in reducing the long-term health and housing effects of climate-related disasters is crucial given our changing climate. We examine long-term health and housing trajectories and health effects of climate-related disasters in relation to housing vulnerabilities over a decade. We conducted a matched case-control study using longitudinal population-based data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. We included data from people whose homes had been damaged by climate-related disasters (eg, flood, bushfire, or cyclone) between 2009 and 2019 and matched control cohorts with similar sociodemographic profiles who had not been exposed to disaster-related home damage during this period. We included data from de-identified individuals with at least 1 year of data before disaster and 3 years after disaster. One-to-one nearest neighbour matching was performed on the basis of demographic, socioeconomic, housing, health, neighbourhood, location, and climate characteristics 1 year before disaster. Conditional fixed-effects models for matched case-control groups were used to assess health trajectories, using eight quality-of-life domains on mental, emotional, social, and physical wellbeing, and housing trajectories, using three housing aspects of cost (ie, housing affordability and fuel poverty), security (ie, residential stability and tenure security), and condition (ie, housing quality and suitability). Exposure to home damage from climate-related disasters had significant negative effects on people's health and wellbeing at disaster year (difference between exposure and control groups in mental health score was -2·03, 95% CI -3·28 to -0·78; in social functioning score was -3·95, -5·57 to -2·33; and in emotional wellbeing score was -4·62, -7·06 to -2·18), with some effects lasting for 1-2 years after disaster. These effects were more severe for people who had housing affordability stress or were living in poor quality housing before the disaster. People in the exposure group had a slight increase in housing and fuel payment arrears following disasters. Homeowners had increased housing affordability stress (1 year after disaster: 0·29, 95% CI 0·02 to 0·57; 2 years after disaster: 0·25, 0·01 to 0·50), renters had a higher prevalence of acute residential instability (disaster year: 0·27, 0·08 to 0·47), and people who were exposed to disaster-related home damage had a higher prevalence of forced moves than did the control group (disaster year: 0·29, 0·14 to 0·45). Findings support the need for recovery planning and resilience building to consider housing affordability, tenure security, and housing condition. Interventions might require divergent strategies for populations in different precarious housing circumstances, and policies should target long-term housing support services for highly vulnerable groups. The National Health and Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, University of Melbourne Affordable Housing Hallmark Research Initiative Seed Funding, Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, and Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation.

"Leaving Home Ain't Easy:" The timing and pathways of young immigrants' home-leaving transitions.

Leaving the parental home to live independently has long been a marker of one's transition to adulthood and a sign of immigrant adaptation to the host country. The timing and pathways of home-leaving are important for both the housing trajectories of young adults and the overall housing demand of immigrant receiving areas. However, young adults-immigrants or not- have increasingly been delaying this transition, opting instead to stay in the parental home for an extended period of time. In this paper, we conceptualize home-leaving as a decision made over time-influenced by individual, family, and contextual factors-and use panel data collected in the 2011 and 2017 Canadian General Social Survey (GSS). Through both a Cox proportional hazard model and a competing risk model, we examine the timing of exit from the parental home, the determinants of this exit, and the variable rates of independent household formation across immigrant, non-visible, and visible minority groups. We find, although the relationship is not always linear, generational status, as well as race and ethnicity, play an important role in not only the timing, but also the destination of home leaving, while age at arrival is particularly salient for racialized immigrant groups. Young immigrants of visible minority background are generally less likely to leave their parental home, even though immigrants to Canada are selected for their ability to succeed in Canada.

“It's no foundation, there's no stabilization, you're just scattered”: A qualitative study of the institutional circuit of recently-evicted people who use drugs

People who use drugs (PWUD) commonly experience housing instability due to intersecting structural vulnerabilities (e.g., drug prohibition, discriminatory housing policies), and prejudicial or illegal evictions are common. In Vancouver, Canada, evictions have proliferated in the Downtown Eastside, a historically low-income neighbourhood with high rates of drug use and housing instability, resulting in many PWUD being evicted into homelessness. This study characterizes housing trajectories of recently-evicted PWUD through the lens of the institutional circuit of homelessness, and explores how wider contexts of structural vulnerability shape experiences within this. Qualitative interviews were conducted with PWUD recently evicted in the Downtown Eastside (<60 days). Peer research assistants recruited 58 PWUD through outreach activities. All PWUD participated in baseline interviews on the causes and contexts of evictions. Follow-up interviews were completed with 41 participants 3–6 months later, focusing on longer-term impacts of eviction, including housing trajectories. Most participants were evicted into homelessness, remaining so at follow-up. Participants described patterns of residential instability consisting of frequent cycling between shelters, streets, and kin-based networks. While participants normalized this cycling as characteristic of their marginalized social positions, narratives revealed how the demands of the institutional circuit deepened vulnerabilities and prolonged experiences of homelessness. Experiences were framed by participants' (in)ability to navigate survival needs (e.g., shelter, drug use), with tensions and trade-offs between needs increasing participants' and their peers' risks of harms. Constructions of agency further shaped experiences; accounts highlighted tensions between the control inherent to indoor spaces and participants’ need for autonomy. Findings demonstrate how the demands of the institutional circuit foregrounded structural vulnerabilities to perpetuate cycles of instability. Interventions that address survival needs and preserve agency will be necessary to mitigate risks within the institutional circuit, in tandem with upstream interventions that target housing vulnerability and broader social-structural conditions (e.g., poverty, affordability) that entrap recently-evicted PWUD in the institutional circuit.

Benefits of the PRISM Shelter-Based Program for Attainment of Stable Housing and Functional Outcomes by People Experiencing Homelessness and Mental Illness: A Quantitative Analysis.

To explore the housing trajectory, personal recovery, functional level, and quality of life of clients at discharge and 1 year after completing Projet Réaffiliation Itinérance Santé Mentale (PRISM), a shelter-based mental health and rehabilitation program intended to provide individuals experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness with transition housing and to reconnect them with mental health and social services. Housing status, psychiatric follow-up trajectory, personal recovery (Canadian Personal Recovery Outcome Measure), functional level (Multnomah Community Ability Scale), and quality of life (Lehman Quality of Life Interview) were assessed at program entry, at program discharge and 1 year later. Of the 50 clients who participated in the study from May 31, 2018, to December 31, 2019, 43 completed the program. Of these, 76.7% were discharged to housing modalities and 78% were engaged with psychiatric follow-up at the program's end. Housing stability, defined as residing at the same permanent address since discharge, was achieved for 62.5% of participants at 1-year follow-up. Functional level and quality of life scores improved significantly both at discharge and at 1-year follow-up from baseline. Admission to PRISM helped clients secure long-term stable housing and appropriate psychiatric follow-up. Stable housing was maintained for most clients at 1-year follow-up, and they benefited from sustained functional and quality of life outcomes in long-term follow-up.

‘Finding housing was an illness’: refugees’ sense of continued displacement in Belgium

Housing is a key empirical entry point into the lifeworlds of refugees in host societies. To date, scholarly work has mainly focused on the first phase of arrival, that of asylum accommodation. Here I extend the scope of post-arrival housing research by looking into the housing trajectories of refugees after they have received protection status. This contribution reveals their lived experiences on the regular housing market, which exposes them to contingency, inaccessibility and exclusion. Based on interviews with 20 households who received refugee status in Belgium after 2015, the article puts the urban studies notion of displacement into dialogue with the notion of precariousness in housing studies, arguing that refugees develop a sense of continued displacement. The analysis captures how post-arrival housing trajectories make refugees relive the exclusionary nature of forced displacement, as they not only struggle to secure housing but are also unable to once more find home and fixity. The article highlights the importance of considering refugees’ housing experiences as vehicles to further understand already existing housing difficulties in host societies.

Stay or move out? Young adults’ housing trajectories in Poland over time and throughout economic cycle

The Great Financial Crisis has made it evident that the housing trajectories of young adults during an economic cycle are subject to change. These changes have been recognized in highly developed housing markets little, however, is known about changes taking place in post-socialist, still often defined as developing, countries. This article aims to foster an understanding of shifting housing transitions among young adults in Poland. This article analyzed pre-crisis and post-crisis changes in the living arrangements of Poles aged from 25 to 34 years old focussing on three types of accommodation: living with parents, renting or owning a flat. The results show that in Poland young people’s access to homeownership is declining and is compensated for by postponing moving out of the family home during the recessionary period and relocating to rental properties during the expansionary period.

‘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.

Making Waves and Grids through Drawings: A Visual Methodology for Migrant Homes, Housing, and Moving-Home Trajectories

Abstract: This article describes the process of developing collaborative methods and the outcome for creating ex-situ digital drawings to depict the housing situations and movement trajectories of Russian-speaking migrants in Japan. The study presents a two-part methodology that was applied to ethnographic data, such as transcribed interviews, photographs, and fieldnotes. The first part focused on the emic specifics of the migrant experience of home and housing; we applied to the data a free drawing that followed a six-point extraction technique. The second part focused on the precise housing types occupied by the study participants and the participants’ moving-home trajectories over the course of their lives. Here we employed a taxonomic approach, using drawings and captions for the 14 housing types extracted from the data. The taxonomic drawings served as icons for the entire sample. This two-part methodological combination effectively communicates the research findings and respects the internal perspectives and emotions of the participants. It also provides a holistic and comparable view of the lifelong housing trajectories of migrants in Japan. The unique positioning of the drawer as a participant in this research results in a dense, collaborative approach that allows for an emphasis on indigenous categories.