Housing Vulnerability and COVID-19 Outbreaks: When Crises Collide

ABSTRACT

When communities face infectious disease outbreaks such as COVID-19, their resilience is largely dependent on their social vulnerability. Housing, which functions as a precipitator and outcome of vulnerability, needs to be considered in this context. Using geospatial data, we developed a housing vulnerability index which demonstrates that COVID-19 transmission hotspots in Melbourne are potentially related to where and how people live – which in turn impacts their capacity to isolate. This analysis provides a means of both retrospectively and prospectively highlighting socio-spatial vulnerabilities that can impact transmission, suggesting that addressing some of Melbourne’s housing problems might reduce COVID-19 transmission.

抽象的

当社区面临 COVID-19 等传染病爆发时，他们的复原力在很大程度上取决于他们的社会脆弱性。住房作为脆弱性的沉淀者和结果，需要在这种情况下考虑。 利用地理空间数据，我们制定了住房脆弱性指数，该指数表明墨尔本的 COVID-19 传播热点可能与人们在哪里以及如何生活——这反过来又会影响他们的能力隔离。 该分析提供了一种回顾性和前瞻性地突出可能影响的社会空间脆弱性传输，表明解决墨尔本的一些住房问题问题可能会减少 COVID-19 的传播。

KEYWORDS:

• Housing
• homelessness
• overcrowding
• social vulnerability
• COVID-19
• hotspots

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank AURIN, PHIDU and all of the data custodians for making the data used for analysis publicly available for research. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive feedback.

Data Availability Statement

The Housing Vulnerability Index was constructed using secondary, publicly available Australian Census data, simulated Census-based data from third-party data custodians, and open-source data from the following sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, (2019): ABS - Data by Region - Family & Community (SA2) 2011-2016; accessed from AURIN on 2020-08-05; Torrens University Australia - Public Health Information Development Unit, (2019): Housing Atlas (PHA) 2016; accessed from PHIDU on 2020-08-05; University of Canberra - National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, (2018): NATSEM - Social and Economic Indicators - Synthetic Estimates SA2 2016; accessed from AURIN on 2020-08-05; University of New South Wales - City Futures Research Centre, (2017): UNSW CFRC - Overcrowded Households Australia (SA2) 2016; accessed from AURIN on 2020-08-05. The data that support the findings of this study are available in the Access Portal for the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) at https://portal.aurin.org.au/, and the Public Health Information Development Unit (PHIDU) Housing Atlas at https://phidu.torrens.edu.au/.

Disclosure Statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This “aggressive suppression” strategy (Coatsworth 2020) sought to limit population movement and contact between people (WHO 2020).

2 In mid-June 2020 Victoria entered its second wave of COVID-19, with increases in community transmission in a selection of “hotspots” (DHHS 2020a).

3 Subsequently, area-level case numbers are now available upon request from the Department.

4 For example, the number of people seeking support from homelessness services in Australia rose by 14% in the four years to 2018–2019 (Pawson 2020).

5 In an effort to avoid evictions, the Victorian Government provided a one-off rental payment of up to $2000 for tenants who could prove they were “experiencing rental hardship due to COVID-19” (DHHS 2020b).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NHMRC Centres of Research Excellence (CRE) [APP1196456].