This article examines the international literature on placemaking – practices or initiatives that encourage a sense of place – in public housing communities. Placemaking is likely to be particularly beneficial to public housing tenants, and is a current priority for public housing providers; yet reviews of placemaking research have failed to consider public housing. Our systematic quantitative review of 63 English-language journal articles reveals that the field is dominated by qualitative cross-sectional studies conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, in the context of regeneration, and published in social science journals. Our thematic analysis of this literature shows that placemaking is supported by forming relationships and participating in community activities, by access to quality public space and amenities, and by spending time and forming memories in a place. The review therefore provides guidance to public housing providers and reveals the need for particular research, including longitudinal studies, and studies conducted in both redeveloped and existing communities.

Despite significant policy developments addressing youth housing insecurity in Australia, youth remain subject to multiple housing arrangements that can lead to homelessness more than any other cohort. We focus on the housing sequences of youths, and we seek information in the order and duration of accommodation types used. We employ Journeys Home – a unique longitudinal dataset specifically designed to examine issues relating to homelessness or housing instability in Australia. We combine accommodation calendars with data-driven sequence analysis techniques that holistically consider the information in the accommodation sequence. Specifically, we identify a set of distinct accommodation typologies and find that those who experience the greatest housing insecurity are comparatively less likely to be educated or employed and more likely to have dependent children who are not living with them. Importantly, we find that not all housing insecurity is necessarily associated with primary homelessness.

Energy poverty, i.e., inefficient heating and insufficient access to energy services, can turn a shelter into a health hazard. We find that substandard housing and ineffective heating is associated with a higher risk of poor health in an urban context. We surveyed people living in two middle-sized cities in a coal-dependent region of Poland and used objective and subjective indicators of energy poverty and self-assessed health status. We demonstrate that people who live in substandard housing are more likely to exhibit poor musculoskeletal and cardiovascular outcomes, by 10 and 6 pp, respectively than otherwise similar people living in suitable housing conditions. We show that energy-poor people who use coal or a wood stove have a 24 pp higher likelihood of respiratory disease than the energy-poor who live in flats connected to district heating. We also find that a significant amount of the explained variance in the probability of respiratory disease is attributable to energy poverty. To improve the housing conditions and reduce the risk of poor health outcomes, we recommend two policy instruments: 1) a full subsidy for thermal retrofits and connecting multi-family buildings to the district heating network and 2) a targeted energy voucher for clean heating.

Existing research demonstrates that the mainstream media produces and reproduces highly stigmatising representations of social housing. Such representations are largely underpinned by a moral underclass discourse, which blames individuals’ social exclusion on their own moral deficiencies. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, social, economic, and political contexts have changed significantly, and problems that were once perceived to be the result of individuals’ deficits are increasingly viewed as being beyond their control. It is therefore timely to revisit representations of social housing in the mainstream media, to examine whether such representations have also changed in line with shifting social and economic contexts. To this end, this article examines mainstream media representations of social housing in the Australian state of Queensland before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings highlight important changes in the discourses invoked in the media articles, underpinned by a shift in who is perceived as being socially excluded and why.

One of the measures of housing wealth inequality is the property’s market value. In existing analyses, this figure is often a subjective value determined by homeowners. Little is known about the validity of using this type of data as a substitute for market value in inequality studies. Therefore, this paper aims to examine whether self-reported home values can be applied to evaluate housing wealth inequality. In order to achieve this goal, first, a theoretical framework on the irrelevance of valuation bias for the assessment of housing wealth inequality was developed, followed by an empirical analysis. The latter included gathering information on subjective flat values and their characteristics in Warsaw. Next, a geographically weighted regression was calibrated to calculate the market value of these dwellings. Then, using the Gini coefficient, housing wealth inequality levels were estimated separately for subjective and objective home values. The results revealed that the former could serve as a very good proxy for the latter in housing wealth inequality analysis. The findings hold across almost all identified subgroups based on respondents’ gender, age, income, wealth, education and employment status. Finally, recommendations were formulated for public institutions and housing research.

Trans people are at considerably elevated risk of homelessness, yet services poorly meet their needs. I explore how community support, anchored in queer praxis and concrete utopian thinking enables trans people to survive homelessness. Drawing upon interviews with 35 trans people who have recently experienced homelessness in Wales, I explore how queer practices of mutual aid, contextualized by utopian possibility, engender community support for trans people experiencing homelessness. I argue that trans and queer communities provide extensive, often exhausting, practical, material and emotional support which counters well-established queer exclusion within statutory services. I show that community support is critical to the survival of homeless trans people within a complex and unwelcoming system, and that informal crisis alternatives are enabled by idealism, hope and pragmatism. These findings are important in visibilising how shared precarity produces practices of care, in offering strategies to address inequitable service failures, and in demonstrating the relevance of queer theoretical approaches to housing justice.

This article explores existing evidence concerning the causes and experience of homelessness among lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people. A total of 88 sources, published after 2000, were included in the review. This represents the most comprehensive evidence review to date on the issue, mapping out what is known about LGBT homelessness and identifying gaps in knowledge for future research. With a few notable exceptions, the experiences of homeless LGBT people have been neglected in UK housing and homelessness literature. Despite this caveat, we found clear evidence that LGBT people are overrepresented among homeless populations. We argue, however, that the how and why of LGBT identity increasing a person’s chance of becoming homeless is complex and not yet well understood. The article therefore calls for a future research agenda that offers theoretically informed causal analyses to better understand the intersections of LGBT identity and homelessness.

Recent literature has widely discussed how housing price is linked to consumption and tenure choices, while tended to ignore that consumption and tenure choices are inter-correlated. This study employs the simultaneous equation model to explore how the housing purchase intention affects the non-housing consumption, considering the role of housing market sentiment. The result shows, on average, the housing purchase intention is associated with higher non-housing consumption, and a higher sentiment magnifies this positive relationship. Housing price level and growth decrease the household’s enthusiasm of purchasing a new house, while sentiment is positively related to the housing purchase intention. Renters’ behavior is less likely be affected by sentiment. In addition, the heterogeneous analysis indicates that households face a trade-off between housing and certain kinds of commodities. This study has some significant, practical implications on optimizing households’ wealth allocation, implementing housing policy and improving the social welfare.

Difficulties accessing homeownership and reduced rates of owner-occupation among recent birth cohorts are a major concern for Global North policymakers. However, surprisingly little is known about how patterns of entry into homeownership have varied spatially across the early lives of recent birth cohorts. Using life course perspectives and survey data, this study examines how regional disparities in homeownership trajectories and transitions have varied across the life courses of four birth cohorts who entered the British housing system after 1990. The results show a nonlinear pattern of postponed homeownership across cohorts which has not varied greatly across regions. London is the most distinctive area and delayed homeownership transitions have long been a feature of the capital’s housing market. Taken together, the findings illustrate the value of more thoroughly examining how place intersects with biographical and historical time in nuanced ways to shape housing careers.

Gated residential communities are commonly portrayed as a negative phenomenon, leading to social segregation. However, given gated condominiums are commonly located in older residential areas of cities, it has been argued they have greater potential for social-tenurial mix. Bangkok is now seeing a proliferation of condominium building by transit in such areas. The aim of this research is to establish the extent to which this development results in social segregation. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with gated and non-gated residents in a case study area and the theories of Schutz and the lifeworld were drawn upon to understand the data collected. Findings reveal limited social interactions between the populations and significant physical, social, and symbolic divisions, accentuated by the transient character of the condominiums. Thus, condominiums built in residential areas do not appear to encourage social-tenurial mix. Exploring the subjects’ lifeworlds has also revealed how subjective meanings are constructed and embedded within a particular culture, which is critical to understanding social segregation.