Housing for Health: The Role of Owner Occupation

Abstract

Housing is widely regarded as playing an important role in the mediation and management of health inequalities. British policy-makers are increasingly looking to the research community to specify what it is about housing environments that impact on health, and to identify what housing interventions constitute healthy public policies. To feed into this debate, this paper begins by reviewing the state of the art of research on housing and health. It shows that the majority of work continues to focus on how housing affects health, while the limited attention to how health status affects housing outcomes has concentrated on medical priority for rehousing in the public sector. It is argued, however, that the market sector now merits closer scrutiny among those concerned with the health selectivity of the housing system. Drawing on a series of qualitative interviews, questions are raised about: how readily people with health problems and mobility difficulties gain access to owner occupation; how easily they sustain a position in that tenure sector; and how effective they are in maintaining their homes as healthy enabling living environments.