The aim of the article is to indicate the personal and institutional reasons for IGS’s pursuit of housing and settlement issues in the period 1920–2020. The facts presented in the article prove the important role of these premises in the activities of IGS. They indicate two distinct trends in housing and settlement research, often manifested in the achievements of the same researchers. The first is the „photographic” trend based on the method of induction, deciphering the housing and settlement issue with surveys of the questionnaire and memoirs, which constitute an important element of investigations into the living conditions of selected groups of the population. The second – the „process-structural” trend that tries to look in a more deductive and reductive way, confronting the past with scientific ideas about an unrecognizable future, especially the more distant one. An example of the possibilities inherent in the processes of convergence of the „photographic” and „process-structural” trends are studies of the housing situation of seniors extended to the problems of more distant in terms of spatial availability of infrastructure elements and the settlement structure that define the inhabited space. This requires further research with the common denominator of intergenerational justice