Shared Housing Research Articles

Gender role shift: implications for balancing work and family responsibilities among female primary school teachers in Nigeria

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional survey of 1498 married female primary school teachers in Enugu state, Nigeria was used to investigate the association between work-family conflict and shifted gender roles. Gender role shift was measured as female breadwinning and shared house chores roles with husband/partner. Pre-validated work and family conflict scale, and a structured questionnaire were used for data collection. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients of the instruments were 0.913 and 0.871 respectively. Data were analysed using IBM-SPSS version 23, using percentage and listwise binary logistic regression. The results showed that 37.2% of the women were family breadwinners and 18.2% reported that they shared house chores with their husbands/partners. Work-family conflict was found to be 21.6% prevalent. Being a breadwinner increased the odds (OR > 1.00) of work-family conflict, while shared responsibility for household chores decreased the odds (OR < 1.00) of work-family conflict. Breadwinners had higher odds (OR = 4.77; CI = 2.61 - 8.73) of work-family conflict than non-breadwinners. Women whose partners shared in-house chores were less likely (OR = 0.31; CI = 0.20- 0.51) to experience conflict. Gender role shift, therefore, has implications for work-family imbalances among women in the primary school teaching profession in Nigeria.

What does 'feeling at home' mean for adults with intellectual disabilities living in group homes in England?

Shared housing for adults with intellectual disabilities with staff support, is a common housing model internationally. We explored an overlooked aspect of group homes, namely the extent to which they enable a sense of 'feeling at home' for residents. A diverse group of 19 housemates participated in a photovoice study. Participants took photos in their homes and discussed them in individual interviews and in groups. Data was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Residents' experience of home was multi-dimensional. 'Feeling at home' related to home as a site of identity cultivation (personal home); physical comfort or 'misfitting' (physical home) and home as the locus of key relationships (social home). Achieving a sense of 'feeling at home' requires engagement in practices of home-making. Many of our participants required support from staff to engage in these practices. For some housemates their experience of home was conditional and precarious.

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.

Living under the same roof: The impact of housemates on sustainable shared housing tenancy in Shanghai’s condominiums

ABSTRACT Young adults with difficulties finding affordable housing have increasingly been choosing to rent in the private sector and share housing with unknown individuals. Shared living arrangements allow these young single tenants to reduce their housing expenses while enjoying a shared lifestyle that encourages social interaction with a diverse group of housemates. However, physical proximity does not guarantee social proximity, as people may encounter undesirable housemates. Using a rich dataset of shared housing tenancies in Shanghai, China, this study examines how the characteristics of housemates influences tenants’ decision to terminate their shared housing tenancy before its expiration. Our results show that the similarity of housemates in age, gender, occupation, and birthplace reduces the probability of an early termination of the shared tenancy. The impact of housemate similarity measured in the four dimensions is further augmented by tenants’ bargaining power and individual characteristics. Since early tenancy termination increases the vacancy rate in shared housing, sharing with undesirable housemates incurs significant social costs. This study sheds light on how residents living in proximity can share urban space effectively to facilitate sustained shared housing tenancies and suggests the need for policy solutions that are tailored to the needs of shared housing renters.

Sharing risk in shared housing: rental regulations and housing justice in Australia

Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS), where people rent with non-family, is becoming more significant across many countries. However, from a housing justice lens, it is unclear whether housing policies and regulations based on normative understandings of households are equipped to effectively support shared housing renters. Through a case study of Australia, which operates on a ‘consumer protection’ model of rental regulation, we ask how current Australian rental regulations enable or restrict housing justice for people in shared housing in the PRS. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of consumer-oriented tenancy information published by Australian state governments and identify explicit or implicit risks in the text that may be experienced by shared housing renters. Results indicate that risks in relation to finance, eviction, and disputes are variously not acknowledged within the text or responded to with warning, guidance, or stated inability to help. We argue that the unfair distribution of risk in shared households, coupled with the severity of the consequences, constitutes a form of housing injustice. We suggest how the consumer protection framework of rental regulation could be amended to advance housing justice and assist shared housing renters.

Palliative (farewell) culture in shared housing arrangements : The perspective of everyday nursing practice.

Shared housing arrangements (SHA) are alternatives to long-term care facilities for care-dependent people. The collective perspective of nursing professionals working in SHA in dealing with death and dying is missing in recent studies. This study aimed to investigate the perspective of professionals concerning apalliative (farewell) culture in SHA. In this study two group discussions were conducted with nurses and nursing assistants working in SHA. Data were analyzed using the documentary method, with the aim of working out the professional orientation framework concerning acollective palliative culture. Nurses enable apalliative (farewell) culture. This leads to the fact that hospice services are not used in these SHA. The distance to relatives as well as ashort dying process or incomplete dying support can make asuccessful palliative culture difficult. Depending on the conscious assumption of responsibility for apalliative culture in the nursing concept of SHA, death and dying are discussed at an early stage with the relatives and care-dependent people. The constantly progressing palliative culture in SHA is based on nurses' experiences, general practitioners (GP) and relatives. The family carers' role is ambiguous. If they do what they are supposed to do from the professional nurses' point of view and are closely connected to the nurses, they are viewed positively and as enablers of apalliative culture. If family carers' responsibilities are not communicated and they are not in close contact with professional nurses, they are viewed as opponents of apalliative culture. The GPs are seen as enablers of apalliative culture in both discussions. Atimely discussion on what might happen in the end of life phase, formalized or not, helps all involved groups to be prepared.

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.

Sense of community and residential well-being among rural-urban migrants in China

This paper aims to provide an empirical prediction of residential well-being (RWB) and sense of community (SoC) among Chinese rural-urban migrants (RUMs). Multiple linear regressions are used with survey data derived from a representative sample of 15 migrant villages located in three major urban regions of China in order to evaluate the contributions of socioeconomic factors, living conditions, and neighborhood conditions to the SoC score and RWB score. The majority of the sample consists of middle-aged, married men who live in shared housing, are registered in the agricultural Hukou (household registration) system, and have subpar housing. Empirical analyses show that, after adjusting for socioeconomic factors, living conditions, and community neighborhood conditions, Hukou status (urban or rural) significantly influences the RWB score rather than the SoC score. In the simultaneous equation models, the following factors can predict the SoC score and RWB score: age, gender, educational attainment, home ownership, number of housing facilities, monthly household income, number of living rooms, number of problem-solving channels, and converted residences. The SoC score and RWB score have a moderately strong correlation. Therefore, improving the living, institutional, socioeconomic, and neighborhood conditions will help to improve the SoC and RWB of RUMs.

Living together as a solidarity and generative practice: the case of co-housing and organized cohabitations

ABSTRACT In Italy there is a growing interest in shared housing driven by various factors, including the need for affordable housing, the desire for communal living and initiatives that target vulnerable individuals. This also extends into the realm of social services, incorporating a residential aspect. This article explores the factors that render two specific forms of living – co-housing and cohabitation – generative and capable of fostering solidarity among inhabitants and their social environment. The focus is on the creation of relationships and solidarity bonds within these living settings. Shared housing can become a valuable resource, embodying a form of generative welfare that aims to overcome traditional welfarism. With this model, resources multiply through the interventions themselves, regenerating the value available to individuals and the community.

DEMENTIA-FRIENDLY ENVIRONMENTS IN THE COMMUNITY – AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON CONCEPTS AND INTERVENTIONS

Abstract Dementia is one of the major age-related societal challenges and causes enormous demands for persons living with dementia (PlwD). Although dementia is one of the major reasons for relocation into a nursing home, most PlwD want to live as long as possible in a familiar domesticity. Therefore, innovative care concepts for community-dwelling PlwD are being developed worldwide as alternative to traditional long-term care settings. Efforts are made to learn more about dementia-friendly environments in order to improve quality of care and quality of life of PlwD. This international symposium will therefore provide four presentations as well as a concluding discussion addressing new concepts for innovative care environments and measuring dementia-friendliness of the built environment as well as nonpharmacological interventions to support high quality person-centred care. The first presentation explores the functions of 24-hour green care farms as alternative to nursing homes and how these can be transferred to other care settings. The second presentation discusses the impact of moving from traditional care environments to innovative care settings for residents and staff. The third presentation presents results of a cluster randomized controlled trial in German shared housing arrangements where a complex nonpharmacological intervention led to significantly less hospital admissions for PlwD. And the final presentation describes an innovative approach to evaluate the wayfinding infrastructure in urban areas for PlwD and to promote dementia-friendliness in urban living structures. The discussant will synthesize the research findings and lead a discussion of research implications and future directions for policy and practice.

S9: Green care farms and other innovative care environments for older people living with dementia: concept, mechanisms and impact on residents

Key goals of the dementia care environment focus on increasing autonomy, supporting independence and trying to enable the own lifestyle of older people living with dementia for as long as possible. To meet these goals, innovative, small-scale and homelike care environments have been developed across the world that have radically changed of the physical, social and organizational aspects. This symposium presents examples of these facilities in the Netherlands (Green Care Farms) and Germany (Shared Housing Arrangements) for people living with dementia. These presentations cover the whole spectrum of long-term care from day-care services, assisted living facilities and nursing home care. It focuses on the concepts and their impact on older people living with dementia. Furthermore, it presents an overview of other innovative long-term care environments across the world, aiming to provide care for older people living with dementia. The first presentation will highlight working mechanisms of green care farms as alternative to nursing homes in the Netherlands and how these mechanisms can be transferred to other regular care settings. The second presentation focuses on the potential of green care farming as a daycare service for older people living with dementia from ethnic minority backgrounds. The third presentation discusses shared housing arrangements in Germany and has investigated the impact of a complex care intervention to reduce the number of hospital admissions for people living with dementia in these facilities. The final presentation provides an overview of international concepts of innovative care environments for older people living with dementia and gives insights in their characteristics.

From flatmates to realestate? Platform capitalism and the transformation of share housing

The rise of platform capitalism has been instrumental in facilitating capital accumulation at scale through the commodification of previously untradable services and spaces. Digital real estate technology-based platforms or ‘PropTech’ (Property Technology) have transformed how housing is produced, traded, and managed, augmenting existing and creating new housing markets in ways that are still evolving. While ‘home-sharing’ platform Airbnb has become synonymous with ‘peers’ offering residential accommodation online, more traditional forms of house sharing between ‘flat mates’ have also been digitised by global platforms. In this paper we trace the evolution of Australian share housing platform ‘Flatmates.com.au’ from the online equivalent of a campus noticeboard advertising share houses to a sophisticated real estate platform owned by global, PropTech giant Real Estate Advertising ‘REA Group’. In doing so we examine how ‘platform logic’ i.e., converting user-inputted data to information to asset; exponential growth through network expansion and connectivity – has integrated the social practices and relationships defining share households within the global real estate market. The paper contributes to critical literature on the inter-relationships between platform capitalism and housing, focusing specifically on the share housing sector in Australian cities.

Dealing with COVID-19 in Ghanaian urban shared low-income housing: What it reveals and the planning implications

Compound and shared low-income houses in Ghana have economic, social, cultural, and familial advantages. Yet, COVID-19 and its related lockdown and home confinement in two urban cities, Accra and Kumasi, raised questions about the appropriateness of staying in a compound house while observing the COVID-19 protocols. Whereas a few studies have underscored the ineffectiveness of COVID-19 protocols in low-income shared houses, these assume a homogeneity of such households without reflecting on the diversities that exist among and between the different categories of low-income households and the imperative nuanced implications for the spread of infectious diseases. Against this backdrop the paper employed qualitative methodologies of in-depth interviews and non-participant observations to interrogate the experiences of low-income households' utilisation of space as they observed COVID-19 protocols. Drawing respondents from four low-income communities in Accra, the authors examined how traditional family households and non-traditional family households implemented the safety protocols and their implications for shared housing. Issues of sharing inadequate communal facilities and public health concerns as well as lack of access to inadequate water and living spaces impacted the respondents' COVID-19 experience. The study discovered that households' socioeconomic status is directly related to the management of epidemics in urban spaces in Ghana.

Co-Living, Gentlemen’s Clubs, and Residential Hotels: A Long View of Shared Housing Infrastructures for Single Young Professionals

ABSTRACT Shared housing is an important infrastructure for young single professionals living and working in the city. Co-living is a contemporary shared housing infrastructure. But it certainly is not the first. We advocate for what Flanagan and Jacobs (2019) call taking a “long view” by drawing connections between early 19th-century gentlemen’s clubs, mid-19th-century residential hotels and contemporary co-living. We argue each have been dynamic infrastructures of mobility, work, and sociality that make certain practices more or less possible and reflect on how the socio-material form of these infrastructures connects with the infrastructural work it does. We draw on our own research study into co-living, connecting our findings with research on the historical housing types. Our findings show that shrinking private spaces, maximizing productive spaces, and integrating services are strategies that animate the infrastructural work of these housing types. By linking co-living with historical housing types, we demonstrate the importance of taking a “long view” when thinking infrastructurally about novel housing practices.

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.

Discounted housing? Understanding shared rental markets under platformisation

Low-income earners and others facing housing market barriers have long sought to save costs by sharing. Potentially a release valve in constrained markets, the share sector is poorly understood due to the difficulty of tracing informal negotiations between cohabiting households. However, the rise of online accommodation platforms opens new opportunities to view these hidden arrangements while also propelling new practices under the broader financialisation of housing and ‘platformisation’ of daily life. With reference to Sydney, Australia, one of the world’s most expensive housing markets, we use platform data to investigate the contemporary share housing sector, using listings placed by people both seeking and offering shared accommodation via Flatmates.com.au. Our study contributes to emerging literature at the intersection between informal housing markets and platformisation, revealing a complex rental sector where costs may be discounted but are not necessarily affordable for lower income earners unable to access more appropriate or secure alternatives.

Seeing like a region

Abstract Observers of metropolitan dysfunction have long advocated for a regional tier of government that could (among other things) equalize spending across local jurisdictions, pursue cooperative economic development policies, provide for fair share housing, rationalize land use, and coordinate transportation planning. For many good government reformers, right-scaling our fragmented metropolitan areas appears to be an obvious solution to interjurisdictional spillovers and competitive races-to-the-bottom. This article counsels caution. “Region hope”—the idea that the substantive problems of metropolitan governance can be solved regionally by redrawing territorial boundaries to encompass ever-larger areas—is perennial. But territorial manipulation in aid of state centralization has significant drawbacks. The regional impulse exhibits some key features of failed social engineering efforts; seen through the lens of the state, these efforts privilege technocratic over democratic governance, bureaucratic over local knowledge, and mobile over immobile capital. That does not mean that regionalism should be resisted in all cases, but only that the costs of territorial manipulation should be weighed against its asserted benefits.

Housing policy and non-commercial shared housing in the private rental sector: a scoping review

Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS) is becoming a globally significant household arrangement. However, research indicates that shared housing is associated with problems including financial and housing insecurity. Given the growth of shared housing in the PRS, it is necessary for policy solutions to appropriately address the needs of shared housing renters. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between housing policy and non-commercial shared housing in the PRS – that is, autonomous households in self-contained dwellings – and how this has been conceptualised and examined in academic scholarship thus far. To achieve these aims, we conduct a scoping review on non-commercial shared housing in the PRS. Research illustrates that the reality of shared housing is not accommodated well in existing housing policy systems. We analyse reasons that housing policy may not adapt easily to non-commercial shared housing, and outline the need for further research on policy implications and recommendations about shared housing in the PRS.

Vampires: Outside Life, Outside Control

Vampires: Outside Life, Outside Control

Combined Infection Control Interventions Protect Essential Food Workers from Occupational Exposures to SARS-CoV-2 in the Agricultural Environment.

Essential food workers experience elevated risks of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection due to prolonged occupational exposures in food production and processing areas, shared transportation (car or bus), and employer-provided shared housing. Our goal was to quantify the daily cumulative risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for healthy susceptible produce workers and to evaluate the relative reduction in risk attributable to food industry interventions and vaccination. We simulated daily SARS-CoV-2 exposures of indoor and outdoor produce workers through six linked quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) model scenarios. For each scenario, the infectious viral dose emitted by a symptomatic worker was calculated across aerosol, droplet, and fomite-mediated transmission pathways. Standard industry interventions (2-m physical distancing, handwashing, surface disinfection, universal masking, ventilation) were simulated to assess relative risk reductions from baseline risk (no interventions, 1-m distance). Implementation of industry interventions reduced an indoor worker's relative infection risk by 98.0% (0.020; 95% uncertainty interval [UI], 0.005 to 0.104) from baseline risk (1.00; 95% UI, 0.995 to 1.00) and an outdoor worker's relative infection risk by 94.5% (0.027; 95% UI, 0.013 to 0.055) from baseline risk (0.487; 95% UI, 0.257 to 0.825). Integrating these interventions with two-dose mRNA vaccinations (86 to 99% efficacy), representing a worker's protective immunity to infection, reduced the relative infection risk from baseline for indoor workers by 99.9% (0.001; 95% UI, 0.0002 to 0.005) and outdoor workers by 99.6% (0.002; 95% UI, 0.0003 to 0.005). Consistent implementation of combined industry interventions, paired with vaccination, effectively mitigates the elevated risks from occupationally acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection faced by produce workers. IMPORTANCE This is the first study to estimate the daily risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection across a variety of indoor and outdoor environmental settings relevant to food workers (e.g., shared transportation [car or bus], enclosed produce processing facility and accompanying breakroom, outdoor produce harvesting field, shared housing facility) through a linked quantitative microbial risk assessment framework. Our model has demonstrated that the elevated daily SARS-CoV-2 infection risk experienced by indoor and outdoor produce workers can be reduced below 1% when vaccinations (optimal vaccine efficacy, 86 to 99%) are implemented with recommended infection control strategies (e.g., handwashing, surface disinfection, universal masking, physical distancing, and increased ventilation). Our novel findings provide scenario-specific infection risk estimates that can be utilized by food industry managers to target high-risk scenarios with effective infection mitigation strategies, which was informed through more realistic and context-driven modeling estimates of the infection risk faced by essential food workers daily. Bundled interventions, particularly if they include vaccination, yield significant reductions (>99%) in daily SARS-CoV-2 infection risk for essential food workers in enclosed and open-air environments.