What role does provoking have in understanding housing and society?

This issue of the journal presents a new section, Provocations. Journals have long supported a form of publication that allows academics to share their views on a subject outside of empirical work. Our hope with the provocations section is to extend this tradition but with a clearly critical edge that enables academics to both reflect on contemporary challenges and refresh our understandings of arguments that have been forgotten or ignored. Our intention is that a provocation will provide new interpretations of, or solutions to, housing problems and debates.

Our first provocation, from Rex McKenzie (2024), explores relationships between housing and finance, as well as the embedded societal implications. The provocation engages with contemporary themes of housing financialization, as well as introducing the economist George Beckford and more familiar intellects (e.g., Gramsci and Harvey) to explain McKenzie’s own journey of understanding. The conclusion focuses on a broadening of our perspectives to “generate a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of economic behaviour and outcomes,” a call that we hope will be echoed across the full remit of Housing & Society in many provocations to come.

The four research articles in this issue present original, rigorous research that challenge existing understandings and debates. Kacher (2024) critiques the contention that new demand from younger buyers is the cause of house price growth in the US. Using mortgage data, he challenges this argument, finding that there is little evidence of a correlation between the behavior of younger buyers and changes in prices. Rather, he argues that younger buyers are impacted by high housing prices, rather than their demand being a primary cause. This work chimes with literature in the US and elsewhere that highlights the difficulties encountered by younger adults in contemporary housing markets.

Nguyen et al. (2024) explore autistic adults’ understanding of independent living and the role that residential and built environment design plays in fostering independence. Their research adopts a novel methodological approach to develop an in-depth understanding of the experiences of their research participants, including interviews and creative qualitative methods including photography and drawing. The paper highlights the need for tailored home solutions, challenging existing practices that can treat people with autism homogenously and the importance of understanding the meaning and interactions that residents have with their living spaces.

Langdon et al. (2024) highlight the relationship between disability-related home adaptations and dweller satisfaction. Their findings show that unmet dwelling adaptation needs have a significant impact on housing satisfaction, and a need to expand financial support for dwelling adaptations, particularly in the context of state disinvestment and the responsibilisation of individual households to address their own housing needs. Their work, conducted in a Canadian context, has resonance with housing market developments and inequities evident in other contexts whose housing markets have followed similar trajectories with respect to the retrenchment of the state.

Gerstenberger et al. (2024) focus on the relationship between environmental hazards and the likelihood of mitigation from these in renter-occupied units. Their study finds that the likelihood of hazards being remediated for tenants was less likely were they had multiple complaints, lived in an older home, or had a complaint deemed non-essential. Furthermore, Gerstenberger et al. (2024) research resonates with the literature documenting the difficulties that tenants incur when trying to solve problems in their homes, and the power imbalances between renters and landlords, as they find that large proportions of tenants report problems that are not resolved.

Housing and Society is owned by the Housing Education & Research Association (HERA). Hera will hold its annual conference on October 14-15 2024. The conference will be held virtually, hosted by the University of Florida, featuring a wide range of thematic tracks. Updates about the HERA conference will be available at https://housingeducators.org/. We very much encourage those submitting abstracts to the conference to consider submitting their paper for consideration in Housing and Society.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tom Moore

Tom Moore is Senior Lecturer in Housing and Planning at the University of Liverpool. Tom’s principal research interests are in housing policy and practice and community planning, with a particular interest in the ways in which citizens participate in and influence the planning system. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Housing and Society.

Richard Dunning

Richard Dunning is Professor of Land Economy and Housing at the University of Liverpool. Richard works at the interface of housing delivery and planning. Drawing from heterodox economics, his research focuses on explaining human decision making in the built environment. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of Housing and Society.